'Videodrome' ahead of its creepy time.(TICKET)(Primal Screen)(Column)

Byline: Amanda Schurr

Into every home-video library, a few wonderfully warped, "out-there" titles must fall.

Thank goodness for the ever-consistent folks at Criterion, whose latest exhaustive treatment gives appropriately mad props to one of the most bizarre, uniquely influential movies of the past 20 years.

All this and, according to Roger Ebert, "One of the least entertaining films ever made." How can one resist?

I first saw David Cronenberg's "Videodrome" a decade ago, as a college freshman. A classmate selected the 1983 film for a course on "Modernism and Madness," and it certainly fit the bill.

From the inspired pairing of …