The 1981 David Cronenberg film Scanners is available on HBO Max if you want to watch it.
This film has been stuck in my mind since I was around the age of thirteen when I first listened to the song Couch Potato (A parody of Lose Yourself) off of the album Poodle Hat by Weird “Al” Yankovic.
In that song, there’s a bar that goes as follows:
Network execs with naked ambition
Next week on FOX watch lions eat Christians
Like to tie up those programming planners
Make them watch all that junk until their heads explode just like Scanners
Since hearing that as a child I wondered “how do people’s heads explode like in Scanners"?”
And now I finally have my answer.
It’s pretty gross.
The film opens up with some Ben Mendleson-looking guy, named Cameron Vale, in what looks like a combination Taco Bell and Pizza Hut in a mall. He’s hearing voices and then people start acting weird and he gets taken away by two dolts in suits.
Then there’s a scene with a guy played by that actor from Starship Troopers. Where he demonstrates his telepathic abilities and blows a weirdo’s head off with his freak mind powers. This leads him to be taken away by special agents only to escape after making these government clowns crash their car and in one officer’s case commit suicide.
After Vale is taken away he is told he is a “Scanner” (HEY THAT’s THe TITL-) and this beleaguered doctor wants to induct him into the ranks of a special task force. After using a serum to lessen his mind-powers and learning the ways of The Force Vale says why not.
Then the plot begins in earnest, Vale has to hunt down what’s his name from Top Gun to stop him from trying to give everyone telepathy using the serum as mentioned before to then control the populous through the need for the serum that both causes and reduces the telepathic abilities. A great lesson in supply, demand, and the need for anti-trust cases.
Vaccines don’t cause autism but they do turn you into Professor X.
In any event, Vale goes to an art show to track someone who knows the guy from Highlander II. After meeting the possible informent Vale learns that there’s a network in league with that guy from The Littlest Hobo and so Vale goes off to look for them.
In the meanwhile, that guy from Jackie Chan Adventures meets up with one of the people Vale is working for. From there it’s decided that Vale has goooooot to go!
Vale finds the network and teams up with Lady. Lady, much like many of the Ladies in the Eighties films, doesn’t end up doing much other than smoking and having a bad attitude, something to which I aspire.
In the end, the people for whom Vale is working end up dead, Vale confronts the dude from Barry, who turns out to be his brother who was gifted their shared abilities from a weird antidepressant made for women, and using his psychic abilities transfers his mind to his brother’s body. He therefore wins??? I don’t know, he seems in worse shape at the end.
So that’s the movie.
Was it good? Yes. Would I watch it again? Yes. Are these questions rhetorical? No.
The film was an excellent piece of speculative fiction in that, you can apply many metaphors to the conflict: the pharmaceutical industry, mental health issues, the military, and the list goes on.
The film was so good I looked up who made it halfway through the movie and realized, of course, it’s good, it’s Cronenberg.
There were many times I said out loud to no one in my apartment, “That’s how you make a movie!” The film’s cinematography is staggering; the way the camera moves to accentuate the storytelling is fantastic, yet at no point does it become so flashy that you’re distracted by it.
The score, composed by future Lord of the Rings music guy Howard Shore, is haunting, exciting, and perfectly placed.
The sound was also wonderful, it’s nice to hear mixing that makes sense and sounds like an actual movie these days.
The visual effects are also wonderful and hold up.
All of the performances fit perfectly the tone of the piece especially the performances of those playing Vale and Revok.
Though a stand-out was Patrick McGoohan as Doctor Ruth. He looks like he’s about to fall asleep due to boredom at any moment, which is perfect. It reflects how people who are in charge of these strange and terrible companies do not view themselves as megalomaniacal or evil, simply trying to get a 401K.
This film also has themes from most of the basic storytelling tropes done impeccably well. Man vs society, nature, self, and man are all explored in the movie and I just think that’s neat.
Scanners is a wonderful commentary on misinformation, the banality of evil, and what it would be like if your head explode.
I highly recommend you check this picture out!
Michael Ironside! THAT’S HIS NAME!