Podcasts
Kicking Off Weird Sex Month with the 40th Anniversary of ‘Videodrome’ [Horror Queers Podcast]
Long Live The New Flesh, Bitch!
And just like that, we’re into February. After starting the new year with a redo of our episode on The Perfection, followed by AIDS metaphor Safe, del Toro’s Gothic Romance Crimson Peak and slasher remake House of Wax, Trace and I are settling into our birthday month with four weeks of ‘Weird Sex’ films.
First on the docket: David Cronenberg‘s iconic body horror film Videodrome, which just celebrated its fortieth anniversary last week. In the film, Max Renn (James Woods) works at a Toronto TV station that programs sexy, violent content and he’s always on the hunt for new fare. Enter Videodrome: a pirated signal originally thought to originate from Malaysia (but is actually from Pittsburgh) that is basically snuff.
The trouble is that Videodrome is also a weapon, causing physical changes in the body of viewers (tumors), as well as vivid hallucinations. While Max’s kinky new girlfriend Nicki (singer Debbie Harry) sets off to audition for the show, Max is pulled into a conflict between Spectacular Optical, headed by Barry Convex (Leslie Carlson), and media prophets, the O’Blivions – father Brian (Jack Creley) and daughter Bianca (Sonja Smits). Can Max trust what he’s seeing, or is he merely a pawn in a larger philosophical battle of wills?
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS.
Episode 215 – Videodrome (1983)
Ready for invagination? For the first week of ‘Weird Sex Month,’ we’re returning to Canada to discuss David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983), just in time for its 40th anniversary.
Expect body horror courtesy of FX master Rick Baker, communications theory courtesy of Marshall McLuhan, and oversharing about anatomy courtesy of Trace Thurman.
Plus: wanting more Debbie Harry, feminist and trans readings of Max’s situation, talk of the alternate ending, Canadian history lessons, and just how many Americans have guns?
Cross out Videodrome!
Coming up on Wednesday: Weird Sex month continues with Andrzej Żuławski’s histrionic ode to the dissolution of marriage in Possession (1981).
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for more than 226 hours of additional content! This month, we’ve got episodes on Roxanne Benjamin’s There’s Something Wrong with the Children, Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool, Elizabeth Banks’ Cocaine Bear, and an M. Night Shyamalan double bill: Knock at the Cabin, complemented by an audio commentary on The Village.
Maybe you haven’t thought about your good friend Sweeney Todd in a while, or maybe you have. The 2007 movie is a bit of a memory, though a fond one – it has a healthy 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, for what it’s worth. But 2023’s Broadway revival starring Josh Groban, who your mom thinks is “so talented” (she’s right!), was enough of a hit that its run was extended.
It appears we’re in a bit of a Sweeneyssaince.
For the uninitiated, Sweeney Todd is the story of a barber who kills his customers and disposes of the bodies by passing them off to pie shop owner Mrs. Lovett, who uses them as a special ingredient. But there’s more below the trap door.
Sweeney Todd isn’t just a late 70s musical that turned into a movie; it started as a penny dreadful called The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance (author unknown), told week-to-week in the 1840s. Penny dreadfuls were essentially fiction zines featuring serialized stories that were usually horror-based and cost a penny, leading to the very literal nickname.
The String of Pearls differs from the more well-known Sweeney Todd plot in that it follows the investigation of a missing persons case that leads to the reveal of Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett’s arrangement, as opposed to the more modern iteration which treats audiences to the duo hatching their homicidal plan and then giving the worst haircuts ever. What a delightfully wild reveal that must have been if you were a reader in Victorian London after weeks of wondering what had become of the missing sailor carrying a string of pearls to deliver to a lovely girl.
Kristen and Will discuss the history and future of Sweeney Todd and works inspired by it this week on Guide to the Unknown. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to get a new episode every Friday.
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