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Stills from the 1988 sci-fi horror miniseries VIDEONOMICON, in which a mysterious AV club lures university students into a paid “research program” that isn’t what it seems...

A group of volunteer students, eager for some easy cash in exchange for “providing feedback on a series of audio-video test patterns,” find themselves hypnotized by a bizarre video pattern, becoming addicted to watching it for hours a day under the guidance of a mysterious figure who only speaks through a microphone installed in wall-mounted goat heads. Soon the AV club reveals itself as a front for a demon-worshipping video cult that is using the students as flesh vessels in a Techonocallistic ritual to transfuse demonic spirits through interdimensional video signals, trapping the souls of the students in a netherverse while their bodies become warped meat puppets controlled by demons to conquer earth.

Videonomicon was the first in a series of original films produced for the obscure premium cable network Zolmax that were also written and directed by Zolmax’s eccentric founder, mysterious auteur turned media mogul Maxim Voronin. After having his films rejected by major studios and networks for being too disturbing, Voronin founded Zolmax, pitching it as “Cinemax for the strange.” A mix of curated cult films and original content, Zolmax’s programming was described as “some of the most bizarre and deranged material to ever find its way onto television.” Black magic, devil worship, sexual depravity, and excessive gore were common sights on Zolmax, “painting a picture of a very disturbed man at the helm of this blasphemous sewer of a network,” wrote TV Guide in 1989.

Unphased by criticism, Voronin continued to produce his own films for his network for eight more years, including two sequels to Videonomicon.

To be continued…

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NOTE: This alternate reality horror story is part of my NightmAIres narrative art series (visit that link for a lot more). NightmAIres are windows into other worlds and alternate histories, conceived/written by me and visualized with synthography and Photoshop.