Videodrome
A surrealist science fiction horror film, Videodrome released in 1983. When Max
Renn, the president of a Canadian UHF tv station is told to pirate a new show
that features torture and apparent murder that is broadcast on a signal from
Malaysia, he becomes involved in a war that is fought to control people’s
minds. A strange philosopher who is only seen on tv shows Max a tape that
causes him to have hallucinations afterward. The hallucinations are revealed to
be due to a brain tumor that is attributed to the signal. The movie performed
poorly in theatres, but was met with positive reviews and won various awards at
the time of its release.
Village of the Damned
Adapted from the novel The
Midwich Cuckoos written by John Wyndham, the original 1960 version of Village of the Damned was directed by
Wolf Rilla. In a small village, everyone is rendered unconscious, even the
animals. No scientific explanations were found and once the villagers woke up,
life resumed as normal. Until two months later when all women and girls in
childbearing age were found to be pregnant. The babies, all born on the same
day, grew at an enormous rate and were all born similar in appearance, white
hair and commanding eyes. They communicated telepathically and could cause
events to happen, including harm against other people. A professor who lived in
the village and had a son that was one of the children born that day began to
work in conjunction with the government concerning the children, finding out
sinister information about the possibility of others like them. The film
received positive reviews and has since seen a sequel and a remake.
V
Kenneth Johnson wrote the screenplay and directed the
two-part television miniseries V,
which premiered in 1983. It was the story of a race of aliens, known as the
Visitors, who play nice with the authorities, claiming to need assistance for
their dying planet and promising in return to share their advanced technology
with us. A journalist boards one of their ships and finds out that the Visitors
are actually meat-eating reptilian aliens. Soon a resistance movement gathers
to try and make known the Visitors true desires, to take all of Earth’s water
and harvest humans for food. The familiar red, spray-painted V that was seen on
promotional material and throughout the series on posters that promoted
the Visitors in a good light was a symbol that stood for "victory",
painted on by the resistance. Johnson had originally written a script based on
an anti-fascist novel, It Can’t Happen
Here by Sinclair Lewis, but changed the fascists to the malicious aliens in
order to sell the script. A sequel followed the successful miniseries, and a
weekly tv series. Johnson left during the sequel, and has since tried to
campaign for a theatrical remake of the original miniseries.
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