Showing posts with label Patrick McGoohan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Patrick McGoohan. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Sunday, January 14, 2024
Scanners (1980) - still blows my mind … kind of:
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.
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!”
He’s excellent as the villain, Revok, and his presence in a movie has always inspired me to view it.
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.
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:
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!
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