Category: Videodrome

Out of the Blue (1980) marks Dennis Hopper’s return to the director’s chair after a decade of exile, transforming what was intended to be a light-hearted coming-of-age drama into a domestic tragedy about wayward youth during the apex of the punk scene.

For a special “Halloween edition” of the VIDEODROME column, we sat down with author and screenwriter Sara Gran to discuss The Legacy (1978). It’s a rollicking conversation about the film’s impact on Gran’s life and work, satanic cabals, psychoanalysis, and much more.

The Reflecting Skin looks at explosions of both the emotional and nuclear kind and the ghastly fallout they leave behind. As the film navigates the battlefield of youth and innocence—of false narratives confused for honest declarations, of skeleton-filled closets that no one wants to open—it poetically reminds audiences that the worst nightmares occur during waking hours, committed by flesh-and-blood beings in the glow of golden sunlight.

Obsession is Brian De Palma and Paul Schrader at their most deliriously Hitchcockian, their fandom for the revered British director bursting forth from every frame. Obsession functions as a tale of memory and fixations as much as it works as a fanatical, meta-textual analysis of its creators: two young filmmakers obsessed with Vertigo, attempting to recreate their memory of it in their own image.

Shot during the contested 1992 presidential election between George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, The Last Party is both an American time capsule and a disheartening case of déjà vu.

Possibly in Michigan has been called a pioneering work of lo-fi aestheticism, an advertisement for Satanism, and a “cursed film.” But is it really a surreal revenge fantasy based on the director’s relationship with the infamous Unicorn Killer?

Husbands is the unvarnished truth of masculinity in crisis, as deeply flawed and unflattering as it may be. In the absence of judgment and editorialization of its character’s actions, Husbands becomes one of the most wounded and unflinchingly honest deconstructions of the American male in cinema.

Before Lynch and Villeneuve, Alejandro Jodorowsky spent the mid-1970s trying to bring Dune to the screen. Frank Pavich’s documentary examines Jodorowsky’s ill-fated adaptation — what many consider to be the greatest film never made.

Rollerball’s current reevaluation is mainly due to its prophetic look at the future — a future that doesn’t seem too far off from where we may be headed, sans roller-skates and leather pants.

In its examination of aspirations, complacency, and the fine line between talent and persistence, few documentaries have come close to capturing the pursuit of artistic ambitions with as much raw sincerity as American Movie.

While being a low-budget exploitation film, Race With The Devil transcends its genre trappings and sets itself apart from other drive-in movies of the 1970s. It understands that true horror — the kind that gets under your skin and lingers with you long after the credits roll — doesn’t come from blood and guts, but from the universal fear of the unknown: not knowing who to trust or who is out to get you.

Following the success of Easy Rider, Peter Fonda tried his hand at directing with two wildly different films. Both feature a score by the influential musician Bruce Langhorne, and one is a minor masterpiece that attempts to rewrite the rules of the western genre.