APT PUPIL / VIDEODROME

Dir. Bryan Singer US 1998

Dir. David Cronenberg CANADA 1983

"Death to Videodrome! Long live the new flesh!"

Both of these were movies I'd been meaning to see for a long time and fortunately they both shared creepy themes about voyeurism and sexuality. So here we go.

Apt Pupil is based on a Stephen King short story and was Bryan Singer's sole directorial effort between The Usual Suspects and X-Men. Set in 1984 Southern California, the film stars Brad Renfro as Todd Bowden, a straight-A high school student who develops a disturbing interest in Nazis after studying them in history class. Eventually he recognizes a elderly local shut-in named Arthur Denker (Ian McKellen) from a concentration camp photo he discovered. Threatening to expose Denker, who's real name is Kurt Dussander, unless he tells him stories of his time as a concentration camp officer, the two develop a disturbing friendship that eventually devolves into blackmail and worse as Todd, revealing himself to be a budding sociopath, causes Dussander's old murderous impulses to resurface.

I'd been interested in seeing this movie since high school, mostly because I dig Bryan Singer (X-Men and X2 allow me to forgive him for Superman Returns) and Ian McKellan (who is just fucking awesome). Apt Pupil brings a lot to the table, including Singer's preoccupation with homosexual issues as well as his apparent interest in Nazism (which is odd coming from a gay Jewish guy, but whatever). The film takes its broad strokes from Silence Of The Lambs, tracing a love/hate (or I guess 0bssession/loathing) relationship between a deeply disturbed mentor and his equally disturbed protege. Singer does a good job of keeping the tension crackling throughout the film and the relationship between Todd and Kurt fluctuates enough to keep the audience on their toes. Some of the scenes are a bit clunky (I'm thinking of the sequence early on when Todd is showering in the school locker room and imagines it as concentration camp and his classmates as starved prisoners) but several others are terrifically creepy. I don't want to spoil anything, but there's a scene toward the end of the first act where Todd orders an SS uniform from a costume shop and forces Kurt to wear it and goosestep around the house. Kurt resists at first but eventually falls into a furious trance as it all comes back to him, while Todd looks on in rapturous wonder/fear. It's...about as fucked up as it sounds.

I'd never really seen Brad Renfro in anything prior to this, other than Sleepers and...that's about it, I guess. He really had the chops, even at a young age. As Todd, he does a great job of keeping you firmly on his side despite the characters increasingly grotesque actions and the competing charisma of McKellan's Dussander. His career dropped off pretty sharply toward the end of his life thanks to a drug addiction and he even ended up being overshadowed postmortem, dying exactly one week before Heath Ledger. McKellan is equally and unsurprisingly excellent as Dussander, never once letting his age mask the fact that he is an evil, evil bastard. Keep an eye out for pre-Dawson's Creek Joshua Jackson as Todd's friend at school and the always pathetic David Schwimmer as Todd's dipshit guidence counselor.

As much as I liked Apt Pupil, Videodrome is the film I was more eager to discuss in this review. I seem to be working my way through David Cronenberg's career backwards, beginning with his recent collaborations with Viggo Mortensen (2005's interesting A History Of Violence and 2007's utterly fantastic Eastern Promises) before delving back into his earlier work, which is way more fucked up to say the least. And if you've seen his newer stuff, you'll realize what a strong statement that is.

Videodrome is set in Tornoto during what may or may not be an early 80s version of the near future, shortly before VHS became the dominant/common format for home video. James Woods plays Max Renn, the sleazy executive of a private, small scale cable TV station that specializes in sensational/trashy programming. Growing bored with their regular schedule of softcore porn and the like, Max seeks edgier programming via a pirate satellite dish that is able to pull video from around the world. He finds what he's looking for in Videodrome, a bizarre, plotless show which depicts anonymous men and women being raped, tortured and killed. Convinced that (what he believes to be staged) snuff shows are the future of television, Max attempts to track down the source of Videodrome, only to discover the horrifying reality behind it in a series of increasingly surreal and disturbing events.

So this is one of those movies where you watch it stone sober and by the end you feel like you've been smoking weed all night. It's really goddamn strange. The film begins with a off-beat, but grounded premise, and by the end has veered into sci-fi/horror/exploitation. And of course no David Cronenberg film would be complete without disgusting bodily transformations/mutilations. Plus, Deborah Harry's in it. Like I said, strange.

The aspect of the film that I recall with the most clarity, however, is how bizarrely prescient it is. Of course, it seems silly now to describe anything like VHS as advanced, given that we're two formats past it, but in a weird way this film more or less predicts the rise of the internet. Allow me to explain. Part of the plot hinges on a character called Bryan O'Blivion, a sort of television guru/philosopher who only appears via pre-recorded video broadcasts and advocates a soon-to-be realized world where the majority of human experience and interaction occurs through television. He even refers to his pseudonym 'Bryan O'Blivion' as his 'television name'. The parallels between this and screennames/message board handles are obvious, as is the broader idea of people living their lives through the internet. Cronenberg managed to pull off a similar feat with 1997's Existenz, predicting MMORPGs and highly interactive videogames through (surprise!) invasive bodily horror. Even Videodrome itself invokes thoughts of all the nasty, fucked up porn that's only a few clicks away everytime you go on the internet. None of this is anything Cronenberg could have predicted, but it is kind of eerie how clear the parallels are.

So that about wraps this one up. I watched an old noir the other night called Born To Kill, which I enjoyed immensely. I'll most likely be pairing that with Fritz Lang's Blue Gardinia, which I plan on watching sometime in the next few days. Also, I'll be seeing Predators tomorrow, so expect some strong opinions about that as well.