The Fly (1986)

I saw the 1958 original a few years ago. It struck me as decent but more tragic than scary. At the same time, it bordered on unintentionally comical with a few ludicrous premises. Well, David Cronenberg is no stranger to ludicrous premises, but I can count on him not to be funny. He might have been just the director for the remake.

Seth (Jeff Goldblum) gains the interest of science reporter Veronica (Geena Davis) by showing her his invention of a teleportation device. He wants her to hold off on reporting it until he gets it to handle a living thing properly. With her assistance, he succeeds. But when he gets drunkenly rash enough to teleport himself, he doesn't notice the housefly in the "telepod" with him....

Videodrome (1983)

My past exposure to David Cronenberg consists of The Dead Zone and A History of Violence, which I liked; Eastern Promises, which I found OK but unmemorable; and eXistenZ, which I thought ill-executed and needlessly disgusting. I was also aware that he did the 1996 Crash and Naked Lunch, suggesting that he has a thing for drugs and "trips" as well as (anti?)violence. He's something like David Lynch and something like Darren Aronofsky. So I approached with some trepidation a movie whose premise would not be used nowadays.

Max (James Woods) runs a niche Toronto cable station always looking for shocking material. One day he sees a video, allegedly a pirated TV series, showing people chained and whipped to death for hours. He figures that's right up his target audience's alley, so he plans to air it. A correspondent traces it to Pittsburgh, and Max's masochistic girlfriend (Debbie Harry) goes to audition...and doesn't return. Another correspondent says the program involves actual murder. Max seeks further answers in person, despite the obvious risk. No, nobody seeks to give him the torture shown on TV; they have a much more insidious agenda, starting with the hallucinations he experiences right after his first viewing....