Overdue Videodrome Post + Mama Rosemary
Videodrome deserves the best compliment that I can give to a horror film... It gave me nightmares. Seriously. I was exhauasted and scared the next morning.
I watched Videodrome in two sittings - about 40 minutes the first night and the rest of the film the next night. After the first night, I was making fun of the film and ready to give up on it. After the second night, the power of Videodrome overwhelmed me. The hallucinations started that night in my sleep.
Long live the new flesh.
That said, I'm stll not fully behind Videodrome. I'm hesitant to embrace any film that uses extremes to critique human lusts for extremes. Maybe I'm misreading the film and there is no critique. In that case the film is even more audacious than I'm giving it credit for, but I can support it even less. I'm not sure at the end of Videodrome whether television is a gateway to slavery and death or liberation and new life.
I'm completely unsure of how to feel about Videodrome and I think that's a good thing. I do know that Cronenberg is one of the few true science fiction auteurs that the cinema has produced so far. Other directors have made better science fiction films, but none think in pure science fiction terms like Cronenberg does.
Rosemary's Baby's primary importance is that it gave John Cassavetes a paycheck that he could use to finance his own films. There's nothing wrong with Rosemary's Baby as a horror film. It succeeds in hitting the right notes of dread and anxiety while playing on deep fears of betrayal and feelings of insecurity. It's fine and Farrow carries the film with grace. I just don't care. There's enough going on for a single cheap thrill, but there's nothing here I'd care to return to.
I don't really care to return to either film, but I know that Videodrome will haunt me and I may get a future chuckle or two thinking about Mama Rosemary.
1 comment:
I’ve always loved Cronenberg, ever since I was a kid. I saw SCANNERS and THE FLY at a very young age and was as fascinated as I was terrified. I saw Videodrome as an adult through netflix and it was soon after the release of A History of Violence. I will always associate Cronenberg with the type of body violence, the 80s gore that you would see in his films and Carpenter’s that still to this day grosses me out big time. Remember the baby fly fetus coming out of Gina Davis’ you know what? That haunted my dreams and I’ve always been afraid of the human body because of Cronenberg and Carpenter. I suppose my fear of something inborn coming out came from Ridley Scott’s Alien. That was my first R rated movie.
Rosemary’s Baby is another of my favorite horror films. I still need to see The Tenant because I think Polanski understood the horror/suspense genre and this film is often regarded as his most underrated. I think Cassavettes was in this because he believed in it, especially considering the fact that Polanski was regarded at that time as an art house director. I actually think this film is incredibly scary, specifically the people running around Rosemary’s house in the night. This was another film that dealt with the fears of the body, being pregnant with Satan’s spawn. It could have been more overblown and full of kitsch, but instead it plays its outlandish subject matter straight and it’s much better for it.
What are some of your favorite horror films John?
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