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[Exclusive] Seeker’s Bryce Lucien Reviews ‘Videodrome’
Seeker vocalist Bryce Lucien raised a lot of eyebrows back in February when he brought a Top 10 list to Bloody Disgusting entitled 10 Horror Movies You May Not Watch With Your Girlfriend. Aside from the feminist uprising that the article spurred, it featured some truly fantastic horror films that many readers had not seen nor had even heard of before.
Now Lucien is back with his take on the Cronenberg classic Videodrome, which is widely loved and appreciated by the horror community. After all, who hasn’t at one point in their life said “Long live the new flesh!” after seeing the film?
Head on below to read Lucien’s thoughts on the film.
Videodrome
It dawned on me a few weeks ago that while I am very well versed in monstrously extreme, obscure, and art-house horror movies there are quite a few quintessential and obvious films that I’ve never even tried to watch. I can talk your ear off about Fassbinder, Noe, or Zulawski, but I’ve never seen Hellrasier, Poltergeist, or Day of the Dead. This realization made me feel like a pretentious asshole. It’s not that I ever had anything against these movies. I just got so caught up in the really extreme side of things that I never got around to it, and because of this I decided to sit down and start working through them.
First up is Videodrome. This was the only movie from David Cronenberg that I hadn’t seen, and after years of hearing about it from everyone I know it was starting to drive me crazy. I’ve actually owned a copy of it for several years, but forgot about it until now. I’m upset that I did. Videodrome stands up as one of Cronenberg’s finest moments. On the surface it’s fairly stock Cronenberg…a healthy amount of campiness, obsession with transforming the human body, and some very dark humor. But underneath all of this lies an extremely unsettling, apocalyptic story that becomes more disturbing and thought provoking the longer you think about it. This is an extremely angry film that finds Cronenberg absolutely railing against censorship and the media’s ability to shape our perception of reality. Now, 30 years later, the film feels prophetic, and the line “After all, there is nothing real outside our perception of reality…is there?” seems to ring truer than ever.
–Bryce Lucien
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A hospital stay grows more nerve-frazzling when memory loss distorts reality in our exclusive clip from This Tempting Madness, inspired by a true story.
The mind-bending psychological thriller will be released in select theaters and on demand on June 12 via Vertical.
Simone Ashley (“Bridgerton”) stars as Mia, who awakens from a coma, grievously injured, her memory fractured. As she puts the pieces of her past together, she starts to question her own actions and her perception of reality.
In This Tempting Madness, “Mia awakens from a coma grievously injured, her memory fractured. As she puts the pieces of her past together, she starts to question her own actions, and her perception of reality.”
Jennifer E. Montgomery makes her feature directorial debut from a script she co-wrote with director of photography Andrew Davis, inspired by Montgomery’s first-hand experience with tragedy involving her best friend.
“Months before the incident, there were signals that her world was unraveling,” says Montgomery. “I could feel the pressure building, though I didn’t know what form it would take. I never could have known what violence would come, and I certainly never imagined making a film about it.”
Austin Stowell (“NCIS: Origins”), Suraj Sharma (Happy Death Day 2U), Mojean Aria (Reminiscence), Amol Shah (“For All Mankind”), and Zenobia Shroff (“Ms. Marvel”) round out the cast.
Smoke Jumper Films and Mango Monster Productions produce in association with Catchlight Studios (Heretic, The Blackening).
This Tempting Madness is rated R for “language, violence/bloody images, and brief sexuality.”