Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Sounds like it must hold up better than The Running Man. I’m often skeptical of re-visiting films for fear of them losing the magic they hold. Good to see this one still holds some of its charm.

My first thought of you ranking this higher than Predator is wondering where my pitchfork and torches are. Then I realize how these movies resonate differently with people and can go back to looking for my phone charger instead.

Those Veerhoven hits (and I guess in the rise of fandom for Showgirls, his catastrophic flops as well) have the reputation of having aged really well.

I think Total Recall has aged really well, much like The Terminator, and certainly a lot better than The Running Man (though I still like that a lot) but then, it's always been better and had more about it than the usual run of the mill 80's action movie.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

I don't doubt it - The Running Man is fun, but it's severely limited by how much of a campy piece of schlock it is. Total Recall is gaudy and grotesque, but it's in service of a fairly cerebral and well-crafted piece of sci-fi. It's very much a different beast to Predator and its elemental simplicity.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Perhaps one of the most unforgettable images in horror cinema is scuzzy cable executive Max Renn (James Woods) suddenly developing a throbbing vagina-like cavity in the middle of his abdomen, an image rendered decidedly pointed when another character pushes a videotape made of pulsating flesh into said cavity. Cronenberg had already established himself as a master of creating viscerally unsettling imagery by the time he made Videodrome but this is where his nascent obsessions with physiology and culture really crystallised as part of a commentary on the growing extremity of media content and its potential influence on mass audiences. Renn's reality-bending search for the truth behind the eponymous television program that consists of nothing but meaningless sadism brings him into contact with all sorts of kooky characters, whether it's hypersexual radio host Nikki Brand (Deborah Harry) developing her own masochistic fascination with the show or Professor Brian O'Blivion (Jack Creley) delivering pre-recorded monologues that take their own sinister turns as he delivers exposition under increasingly implausible and surreal circumstances. Cronenberg has arguably made better and more mature films that still traffic in all manner of flesh-rending grotesquerie, but even now I question whether any of them could ever truly overtake the one that burned itself onto my brain like a still image will burn itself into a television screen if exposed too long.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #64

Yeah, Videodrome ranks amongst Cronenberg's best films. What keeps me coming back to it is that it seems to resist any attempts for me to interpret it. I've slowly been piecing it together over the years, but it still always manages to impress me. Not sure I like it more than The Fly, but it's still great.

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Videodrome is powerful stuff. It is kind of an ideal of what cinema can and should do more often. It is loaded with confusions and contradictions and impossible to process images, but it never loses sight of the truth that it is telling. As lost as we become in its hall of mirrors, we understand the world it is showing us on screen, and the terror that it is only reflecting back to us something we already implicitly understand about our own lives, and their slow fusion with the media we consume, and the technology we become beholden to. It mattered then, and it obviously matters now, and while I find it at times an almost impossible film to parse every detail to understand absolutely everything that has happened in it, it remains a movie I understand deeply and bring with me to my nightmares every night.


Cronenberg is of course, always great. No matter how much he cloaks his movies in an intellectual frigidity, and makes his audience keep their distance with his images of bodily decay and metamorphisis, they are always brilliant at portraying the humanity that is trapped inside of these things. There is a terrible understanding of the world in his movies, that both empathizes with humanity while simultaneously turning its gaze away from it. They are like being filled with the urge to scream and finding you don't have a mouth.


In short, Videodrome is great. And while it's not my personal favorite, it's very arguably Cronenberg's best.

- It really does work on just about anybody.
- Anybody who watches it, Max. But why would anybody watch it? Why would anybody watch a scum show like Videodrome? Why did you watch it, Max?
- Business reasons.
- Sure. Sure... What about the other reasons?

I definitely need to watch Videodrome again. While I loved it when I first watched it, it's been well over 15 years. I think I'd probably get more out of it now.

This is probably one of my favorite movies of all time, though I would have to make a list to figure out where it would land.
As I've said around here before, I saw this at a way-too-young 13 years old and it really helped to shape how I thought about film, art, and the world. I don't think my mom was thrilled about that but I guess if it bothered her she should have been more vigilant.

Long live The New Flesh.

I feel attacked.

And yeah, put me down as another fan. Definitely a formative movie for me, opening my eyes to the kind of strange possibilities that were out there. I guess I can relate a little to the main character.


I remember when I was in high school I first caught a glimpse of the movie (a scene where somebody stuck a videotape in James Woods' chest) during some interview program. I was of course intrigued, but my parents also caught this sequence. Not only were they less than thrilled by the scene itself, but they seemed to hold it against me that the scene was even aired on TV, as if I was somehow responsible for not only the decision of the broadcaster but the very creation of the movie itself.

I think I didn't hit Videodrome until later in life. Debbie Harry in a red wig with, um, certain elements of the movie may have altered the nature of some of my... internet searches in the following months.

Kinky redheaded Debbie Harry definitely broke teenage Rock's brain.


She's in Blondie. Why does she have red hair?!?!?

The band should have been called "Ruby".

I will allow a Family Guy reference just this once. Woods was legit really funny on there.

Yup, even though it was yet something else they stole from The Simpsons. Oh well; "Ooh, piece a candy..."

What to write about a film as indelible, iconic, and inevitably discussed-to-death as Jaws? Never mind how it revolutionised cinema for better and for worse, what matters is that it still holds up as a well-realised piece of work that rises above its pulpy roots to tell a simple but effective tale of a resort town being terrorised by a great white shark and police chief Brody (Roy Scheider) who does his best to protect it despite every obstacle in his path. I can certainly understand why it doesn't tend to get characterised as straight horror as it spends so much time unfolding like a conventional drama that's only occasionally interrupted by the arrival of the shark, but it wouldn't be the same without that level of care being dedicated to making such characters and scenes work (regardless of how much that can be credited to - or blamed on - production troubles). Whether it's finding an emotional arc in Brody dealing with his own fear of the water or making a certain cynical commentary through its business-minded mayor (Murray Hamilton) being more of an obstacle to keeping people safe than anything else, Jaws does understand the importance of making sure that when the shark eats people, it has an effect (even just surviving takes a toll if the infamous monologue by Robert Shaw's grizzled seaman Quint is any indication). When Jaws does opt to go for suspense and thrills, it delivers so well as aforementioned troubles encourage a less-is-more approach that is amply paid off during the film's exquisite ocean-bound third act (and even then it still finds room for technically adept scares throughout the rest of the film - that head popping out of the sunken boat works all too well on a big screen).

2005 ranking: #47
2013 ranking: #4

My favorite Spielberg film.