As far as I can remember, that’s the first time I’d ever heard of Scanners. Sure, I may have seen it on the shelf of my aunt’s video store when I was a kid, but I had my go-to horror flicks and that wasn’t one that ever caught my eye. However, once I heard the phrase “the dude’s head blew up,” it nestled itself into my consciousness and never left. But that’s about all it did, because for some reason it didn’t climb that high on my priority list and I just never got around to watching it.
Until now.
Scanners (1981) – Buy it from CHUD
And that’s surprising, honestly, since I’m a pretty big Cronenberg fan and have been for a while. The Brood, Dead Ringers, Videodrome, The Fly, Eastern Promises, The Dead Zone (which, admittedly, I haven’t seen in AGES) – they only make up a small sampling of the man’s overall oeuvre (and there‘s still a lot I haven‘t seen), but I love them. Scanners, on the other hand? Well, not so much.
The basic plot is fairly interesting (if not entirely original) – Cameron Vale (a barely there Stephen Lack), a homeless guy with telekinetic powers he doesn’t understand and can’t control, is snatched up by ConSec – a weapons/security firm (think Stark Industries meets Blackwater) – so that they can use him as a weapon in their quest to infiltrate and defeat bad-guy Scanner Daryl Revok’s (a sizzlingly evil Michael Ironside) rogue faction of scanners bent on bringing humanity to its knees. But, and I’m about to spoil the shit out of this 29-year-old movie, our titular group of super humans aren’t necessarily freaks of nature; in true Cronenberg fashion, they’re freaks of science. See, scanners were created when a pharmaceutical company started giving an experimental new drug to expectant mothers. When the drug resulted in babies born with telekinetic birth defects, ConSec bought the lab and funded the drug in an effort to breed scanners for use as weapons. Shit backfired, obviously.
Earlier I mentioned that the little twist was in true Cronenberg fashion and that’s true – thematically it’s definitely a Cronenberg film. Scanners fits pretty nicely in between, say, Rabid and The Fly in what it says about science and what scientists can unleash on society and themselves. That said though, I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable labeling him as anti-science as all of these films feel more like morbid curiosity as opposed to outright commentary, but it definitely has a lot on its mind.
Is it a Cronenberg film visually? Well, yes and no. The man’s certainly got a certain visual style in the way he shoots and directs and it’s apparent here for sure. It’s not something that’s so recognizable that you could watch a few minutes of a random movie and say “OH – that’s Cronenberg” (at least I can’t), but you can feel his touch when you’re watching it. It doesn’t hurt that longtime collaborator Howard Shore wrote the score for this, so it also sounds like a Cronenberg film. And then, of course, you have the (in?)famous head explosion and the final battle between Cameron and Revok – both master classes in practical effects that are EXTREMELY effective and visceral without being cartoonishly over the top. Again – all trademark Cronenberg. But, well, that’s about it. Aside from those two scenes, everything is very straightforward and talky (with the exception of one scene in which Cameron scans a computer mainframe over the telephone in a glorious “what the fuck” moment). Think about it this way – in a David Cronenberg movie about people who can make other people’s heads explode with their minds, the most destructive force on display throughout the entire film is a shotgun. And don’t get me wrong – those shotgun blasts are very well-done and brutal, but given the subject matter and the talent at hand, it feels like a bit of a disappointment that we only got two unique displays of the power these guys are playing with. That’s not to say that we don’t ever see what the scanners are capable of, but more often than not it’s rather laughable – contorted faces and dramatic head movements that result in a body either bursting into flames (okay, that was kinda cool) or flying across the room. In one scene, Revok makes a ConSec agent shoot his partners and then shoot himself in the head. That was actually pretty effective and Ironside sold it remarkably well. With regards to the narrative itself, I read a review somewhere in which someone criticized the film for being a bit too coherent. I tend to agree with that. What we have here feels more like a straightforward spy thriller as opposed to a proper Cronenbergian mindfuck. And I know there’s a whole side to the man as a filmmaker that I’m not too well versed in, but given the period in his career in which he made it, Scanners just doesn’t hold up too well.
Now, in all fairness – that’s not entirely Cronenberg’s fault. I did a little reading about the film and it turns out that due to some fucked up rules in Canadian film finance, the movie had a bit of production trouble. The crew was only allowed two weeks of pre-production before filming had to begin and Cronenberg ended up having to write the screenplay little by little every day during shooting. Given those constraints, the fact that they were able to pull off what they did is even more impressive and while I just can’t bring myself to love the film like I love his other works, I can’t necessarily hold all of the problems against it either.
So, after all of these years of hearing about it and not seeing it, does it earn its legacy? Well, sure. You have to look at what its legacy is, though. And it’s this:
That’s it. Scanners has been referenced in countless movies and TV Shows and it’s all because of that. And yeah – it’s fucking spectacular. In a lot of ways the final Scanner-battle is more impressive in terms of the different things shown and the execution of smaller intricacies in effects-work, but, in my opinion, it never really reached its full potential as a whole. The sudden transference of the inside of this guy’s skull to the other side of his face is just such a perfect moment and a wonderful payoff to a fairly tense little scene. And the fact that my seeing that picture (or the animated .gif) a million times over didn’t take away any of the punch says a lot about just how powerful that little explosion was. It’s definitely a moment to build a reputation around, it’s just too bad that there couldn’t be a better movie on either side of it.