Synopsis:
Max Renn runs an unauthorized cable channel in Toronto that caters to viewers demanding increasingly violent and pornographic material. One night, in search of new programming fodder, he stumbles across a scrambled satellite transmission emanating from unknown regions -- a startlingly graphic broadcast that routinely depicts the brutal torture and murder of women. Excited by his find, Renn attempts to track the show to its origins, but he continually encounters resistance, including a warning from one of his programming suppliers that the broadcasts are not dramatizations but depictions of actual murders. Undaunted, Renn finally traces the show to Pittsburgh, where he encounters the transmissions of a Messianic madman known as Brian O'Blivion. Although O'Blivion is dead, his daughter continues to spread his twisted gospel by broadcasting old videotapes of his sermons, encouraging people to embrace the barbarous new TV world as reality. Eventually Renn finds the man who is controlling all the hallucinatory video violence. But by then, Max has begun his own descent into madness, an insanity culminating in physical manifestations of the exploitative sleaze he has profited from over the years.

Notes:
Additional production company: Guardian Trust Company Filmed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Began shooting October 27, 1981; completed shooting December 23, 1981. Released in North America February 4, 1983.

Reviews:
"...[Cronenberg] is developing a real genius for this sort of thing....[Woods] gives the performance a sharply authentic edge..." - 02/04/1983 New York Times, p.C9

"...[The] picture is a real find for horror buffs looking for new thrills..." - 02/02/1983 Variety

"[I]t looks outright prophetic and, even scarier, absolutely coherent." - 10/01/2004 Premiere, p.112

4 stars out of 5 -- "Cronenberg's media-fried semi-satire is a pivotal film in his career....Cronenberg scrupulously blurs realities..." - 02/01/2012 Total Film