ELECTRIC DREAMS

Second Sight Video, £19.99 (Blu-ray), £12.99 (DVD)

In the Fifties and Sixties, the pathway into film directing was television; in the 1970s it was commercials and by the 1980s music videos, for this was the age of MTV. One of the most successful directors of these little marvels was Steve Barron, the man behind A-ha’s ‘Take On Me’ and ‘Money for Nothing’ by Dire Straits, among others. The inevitable move into theatrical features followed swiftly and Barron’s first effort was this 1984 rom-com. Lenny Von Dohlen stars as a nerdy architect who buys an elaborate home computer system to organise his muddled life. Somehow, the PC develops a life of its own and starts to take over Miles’s, to the extent that it muscles in on his burgeoning romance with cellist Madeline (Virginia Madsen) who lives upstairs. As you might expect from a director of pop videos, it’s all about the surface visuals; the rest is flimsy, shallow and slight. The most interesting aspect is the film’s emphasis on fear of technology and the way it has begun to control human life. Unfortunately, it’s an idea that is never really developed after the first 10 minutes, leaving us with a further 80 minutes of vapid light entertainment. By far the best thing here is the sublime theme song by Giorgio Moroder and Phil Oakey. Martin Parsons