| Type | Multifaceted Corporation |
| Owner(s) | Barry Convex |
| Featured in | Videodrome |
- “Keeping an eye on the world.”
- ―Spectacular Optical's motto
Spectacular Optical is a multi-faceted eyeglasses corporation that is in truth a front for far more sinister enterprises. It is featured in the 1983 horror film Videodrome.
Overview[]
The Spectacular Optical storefront
Spectacular Optical was a notable corporation responsible for managing a chain of eyeglasses stores across the country, but in truth this was merely a front, as the company's true enterprise was their intergovernmental weapons manufacturers, and beyond this, the company had an even darker investment, Videodrome, a cable TV show produced in a company-owned studio that secretly gave its audiences hallucination-inducing brain tumors which could cause all manner of gory side-effects and blur the line between hallucination and reality, a truly sinister project created as a result of the company's leaders who saw it as the ultimate means to finally end the corrupting influence of media upon the masses by exposing them to the absolute worst possible incarnation of media imaginable, a display of constant gore, death and erotica, hoping to attract only the worst sort of viewers in the country and then use the effects of Videodrome to kill the depraved viewers who enjoyed such horrific displays.
Videodrome itself was made possible through the research of media theorist Brian O'Blivion, who had spent his life creating it as a means of accessing what he believed to be a "higher" state of reality that could only be accessed through hallucinations, but O'Blivion could not have foreseen that his invention would be used for such murderous goals.
The effects of Videodrome would eventually be felt by the president of CIVIC-TV, Max Renn as well as those around him, who goes on a quest to uncover the truth about Videodrome and put an end to its horrific influence, eventually putting him face to face with the leader of Spectacular Optical, killing him in the process, and Max eventually killing himself as well so as to "ascend to the next level" in order to destroy Videodrome once and for all.
Staff[]
CEO[]
- “Okay we're rolling. The taping mechanism is all self-contained. You won't have to do anything now but hallucinate.”
- ―Barry Convex
CEO of Spectacular Optical, Barry Convex
Barry Convex was the chief executive officer of Spectacular Optical. Mr. Convex was a prideful man of twisted ideals who wished to cleanse the world of its dirty and depraved population, believing that media itself is the source of much of the worlds ills and was willing to use the vileness of Videodrome itself in order to show the world just how terrible television can truly be when taken to its extreme, with the hopes of using Videodrome's power to kill those who actually enjoyed its gory content and have the rest of the population shun the corrupting influence of media once and for all even if it means using Videodrome's corrupting and violent power.
In the end, he would not live to see his ambition realized, having been killed by Max Renn for his actions, with Convex himself even falling victim to the gory effects of Videodrome.
Trivia[]
- The name of the company would later be used for a real life small-press publisher of cult films and pop culture books in Canada.