Category: Videodrome

Between 1972 and 1985, Dennis Hopper was persona non grata in mainstream Hollywood circles. As Hopper was unable to score a decent mainstream acting gig in American cinema, he headed to West Germany to appear as a disheveled and burned-out music manager in German director Roland Klick’s White Star (1984).

As a coherent film, White Star might not hang together, but it offers a lucid experience of Hopper’s dangerous, real-life psychological decay, and his own persona bleeding into his character’s wild nature.

In many ways, 1982’s Vigilante is the scrappy kid brother of Death Wish. But its approach is leaner and meaner, rough around the edges and unvarnished. There’s a primal and animalistic undercurrent to Vigilante, grittier and sleazier then the Death Wish franchise or any of its “revengeplotation” contemporaries. The visual aesthetic and thematic philosophy is exploitative and nihilistic; ice in its veins and hate in its heart.

Welcome to Videodrome. A recurring column plumbing the depths of vintage and contemporary cinema – from cult, exploitation, trash and grindhouse to sci-fi, horror, noir, documentary and beyond.

The Holy Mountain is offensive and grotesque in the same breath that it’s beautiful and transcendent, challenging all methods of interpretation and blowing the doors off meta-narratives in its rejection of form. It’s as subversive and tripped-out as any contemporary piece of media, serving as a gateway drug into the hardcore realm of mind-bending world cinema.

The Last Tycoon seems to view the fabled “hero’s journey” of Hollywood storytelling as a pandering lie; a disingenuous roadmap to regurgitate while navigating narratives, as phony to the audience as it is to the real life of the people who make the kinds of films that propagate it. It presents a contrarian disposition to the cinematic tradition of happy endings that works on a meta-level, unapologetically concluding itself in sorrow and confusion.

Considered a monumental flop at the time of its release, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie has since developed a vehement cult following. It’s widely regarded as one of John Cassavetes’ best films and Ben Gazzara’s greatest on-screen performance. Part of the delayed attraction may be that audiences have finally caught up to what Cassavetes was attempting to do. At a time when other American directors such as Coppola and Scorsese were releasing films that would serve as the consummate blueprint for future genre films, Cassavetes was already eradicating pre-conceived narrative standards and deconstructing archetypical characters, searching for the unaffected moments where these histrionic gangsters and gamblers could be vulnerable, flawed, and resolutely human.

Welcome to Videodrome. A recurring column plumbing the depths of vintage and contemporary cinema – from cult, exploitation, trash and grindhouse to sci-fi, horror, noir, documentary and beyond.

Released in May 1982, Urgh! A Music War is one of the most salient artifacts from the musical movement that would later be dubbed “new wave.” Clocking in at just over two hours and featuring over thirty live performances, the anthological concert film showcases artists in their prime as well as their infancy.

An illustrious example of the power and influence of “The Monster’s Golden Era,” The Black Cat (1934) is arguably one of the most significant horror films from its time. But the enduring significance of the film is its influence on the horror genre to come.

Doctor Death isn’t your typical Halloween fare. More sci-fi than horror, it’s a post-apocalyptic Super 8 film from 1989, made by a teenaged Webster Colcord and starring his friends and family. Featuring homemade special effects that would make Rick Baker or Tom Savini smile, the nuclear fallout has dissipated as our titular anti-hero cruises around in his tricked-out school bus, tossing chemical bombs out the window, terrorizing anyone (or anything — poor dog) unfortunate enough to cross his path.