Scanners (1980) - still blows my mind … kind of:

Review by Jack Kost

 

Whenever I hear the subject of “guilty pleasures”, Scanners (1980) is one of the movies I immediately remember.

At the time I first watched Scanners, I’d already seen director David Cronenberg’s previous cinematic ventures into the “body horror” genre: Shivers, Rabid, and The Brood.

I wasn’t too impressed with any of those movies.
They had interesting concepts, but were flawed, and often hampered by wooden acting.
Scanners is no exception, sadly, but it still entertains me.
If I had to make up a category, I guess Flawed but Fun would fit.
 
Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly – I enjoyed.

Videodrome, The Dead Zone, Dead Ringers, and eXistenZ – I loved.

Naked Lunch – I hated.

Eastern Promises and A History of Violence were both thought-provoking and gripping conventional thrillers, breaking away from his principal horror genre.

I have yet to see his other works.
 
Scanners, released in the United States on January 14, 1981, is a mix of horror, science fiction, and espionage-thriller, with a James Bond-esque plot of world domination.

The Scanners of the title are people with an invisible mutation: a form of telekinesis enabling them to link, control and even destroy humans and computers by the power of thought.
This is a fun movie to be enjoyed simply for what it is: fantasy.
Whenever I watch Scanners, I ignore the numerous plot holes and inconsistencies.
I wish I could ignore the lousy acting in particular … however, that’s simply impossible.
Stephen Lack, as great and jovial a guy as he is, in my movie-watching experience, gives the worst performance of a lead actor I have ever seen.
He acts as if he’s in a daze and says his lines in a droning monotone.
He’s so wooden; I felt I could have made a solid bookcase just out of his performance!
The man was cheated out of his Razzie Award!
I laugh every time I see and hear him deliver the line:
“The future! You murdered the future!”

On the plus side: this movie made me a fan of Michael Ironside.
He’s excellent as the villain, Revok, and his presence in a movie has always inspired me to view it.

Ironside, along with Patrick McGoohan, Jennifer O’Neill, and Lawrence Dane, all give good performances.

The special effects fall into the “good for the time” category, but even with no CGI at the time it was made, and a limited budget, Cronenberg still did a great job.
The vein and eyeball-popping final battle between the hero and villain will make you smile at how fake it all looks.

For all its faults and fall-shorts, there’s still a lot to enjoy in this movie, and no blog about Scanners would be complete without mentioning the landmark exploding head scene.

This effect alone makes Scanners a classic must–see … even if you do have to ignore the fact that there is not one spot of blood or gore on either Michael Ironside, or the table at which they were seated!

When I first saw Scanners, I knew very little about the story, so this scene had a similar surprise element of the head falling out of the hole in the bottom of the boat, in Jaws, or the shock ending of Carrie.
It was a long time before a making-of documentary revealed to me how they achieved the exploding head effect in Scanners: a latex life-cast was made of actor Louis Del Grande’s head:

The cast was fitted with a plaster support, filled with dog food, fake blood, rabbit liver, portions of burger, syrup, and sealed with wax.
After numerous failed attempts to produce a convincing effect, special effects artist, Gary Zeller, finally took a shotgun, positioned himself low behind the seated dummy, and blew its head off!

The resulting effect is … even now … mind blowing!