Yesterday I wrote folktales and watched folk horror.

Today, back into thinking about #EldritchGirls and watching Videodrome (1983) w/ its um considerations of media desensitisation, neg/pos discourse around the depiction & consumption of sex&violence + blood/knife play kink...

Not seen this before! How?!

Comparing this to Vacancy (2007) & it’s already a much more interesting film. In Vacancy, the snuff films were boring and used for personal titillation, very heavy-handed blunt force trauma, & used to scare the guests before their own films.

Vacancy focuses on the central couple’s relationship & how it starts off on the rocks but nothing like base fear & the threat of shady motel guys coming to get you Barbara to get you back into the love groove.

Videodrome is more bang on #EldritchGirls themes, but gender flipped.

The focus on snuff as business/political is Hostelesque, with that encroaching sense of Capitalism/mafia behind the production of the films. EG does this too, in a more sleazy London mob way than slick big business way, and Tosh (24M) is the masochist character w/ Sasha (26F) as-

-the business-like professional who has no real sense of sadism but tortures & kills her “props” live on camera (and more in rehearsals) for art - seeing her performances as the next step for avant-garde.

Videodrome is kind of like this? Intrigued by Prof. O’Blivion’s ideas...

Also I’m invested more in Videodrome’s characters (Nicki Brand played by Debbie Harry & Max Renn played by James Woods) than I was in Vacancy’s central couple (Amy & David Fox, played by Kate Beckinsale & Luke Wilson). There’s far more interesting things going on here.

Plus, Vacancy kind of relied on there being no philosophy to create the horror. There was no purpose to the films; only raw basic titilation and the fact the backwoods motel owners just enjoy it.

Videodrome has a whole (weird, trippy) philosophy/backstory and hallucinations.

The weird bit where video and reality started blurring & Max starts trying to make out with TV lips bulging out of the screen is a fun concept - his hallucinations are caused by the cassette tapes, playing with panic around subliminal messaging & brain tumour causes.

“The evolution of man as a technological animal” is an interesting concept as well as constructions of immortality & posthumous engagement with society via recordings is more fun to play with along with “what’s real? What is our perception of reality?” So the films = sidelined.

Videodrome has some classic 80s effects too with (hallucinated) body horror moments linking to the (mild) on-screen on-screen torture Max watches via the satellite link, and the Big Business backstage creates that sense of little man fighting Evil Corporation.

This kind of reminds me of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2: The Next Generation - and we’re back on the Hostel franchise again too. Also the corporation behind the scenes in Blood Drive which in turn parodies things like Resident Evil’s the Umbrella Corporation (et al)... idk just me??

I think in a way writing the Evil Mob backstage is the hardest bit of #EldritchGirls even though part of the Evil Mob are an Eldritch family of abominations. Melding the Weird into a gangster story and mapping a steamy dark romance on top has been w i l d.

Nicki : “what are you waiting for Lover? Let’s perform” is exactly Sasha / Tosh’s dynamic in his fantasies, but I also love how Videodrome goes a bit American Psycho with the “is this real? What is happening?” element. Not sure if we’re doing that with EG but maybe? Rewrites? Idk

I mean I know that I’m mentioning stuff out of chronological order so it’s more likely to have influenced other stuff than the other way around, but you know what I’m trying to say I guess

I love the “why would you watch this?” qu - asked w/ cold curiosity. What’s the appeal?

It’s interesting that the Videodrome streaming is about *stopping* people getting soft by being passive consumers of sex&violence - constructed as moral rot/infection “softening” N America while the rest of the world gets tough... soooo 80s!!

Vacancy had opportunity for motive-

-but there wasn’t really (iirc) any kind of monologue or anything that did that, unlike say, the Fireflys in House of 1000 Corpses/Devil’s Rejects, or I guess Leatherface’s family? So I think maybe that’s why it fell a bit flatter for me, since it relied on “meh why not” 4 terror

Re: terror vs horror, like I find a lot of that stuff not scary, so there’s no terror for me in that, like The Strangers didn’t *scare* me bc it too was more about an atmosphere of *terror* rather than *horror*. I think that’s a big diff between Vacancy &Videodrome. EG is neither

It’s pulpy, gratuitous and lurid, and a big send-up of toxic families and not really about anything deep, except religious trauma and consumerism and fate vs self-determination. The lighter stabby, sexy stuff. It’s not *meant* to scare, at least. Perceptions will differ I guess.

I am loving the hallucinogenic body horror stuff in Videodrome though, it’s really campy early 80s prosthetics and effects, so as gross as possible with heavy emphasis on metamorphosis & transformation from inside-out/outside-in. Transcendent technoman - Video Is The New Flesh

Long Live The New Flesh

*climactic ending*

Yay! And no idea what’s real & what’s not still. Much enjoy.

Here ends the snuff film horror ramble.