SCANNERS (1981)

DIRECTED & WRITTEN by David Cronenberg.

STARRING  - Jennifer O'Neil as Kim Obrist,  Stephen Lack as Cameron Vale,  Patrick McGoohan as Dr. Paul Ruth,  Lawrence Dane as Braedon Keller,  Michael Ironside as Darryl Revok,  Robert Silverman as Benjamin Pierce.

PLOT - Cameron Vale is a homeless drifter, a man without a past or a future, he's been on the streets for years, keeping himself away from mainstream society due to the fact that he has mental superpowers including telekinesis and telepathy.  

One day, Vale is captured by a private military corporation - ConSec and taken to thier headquarters. There he meets Dr Paul Ruth who tells him that he is not alone in having these abilities. Vale is a Scanner - one of 237 other people who all share similar mental superpowers.  Ruth believes the Scanners to represent the next stage in the evolution of humanity. Ruth helps Vale to get his abilities under control with the help of a drug known as Ephemerol. In return for this help, Ruth assigns Vale with a mission...

It transpires that there is a rogue Scanner at large, a man known as Darryl Revok. Revok is one of the most powerful Scanners that Ruth has encountered, and he is totally and utterly insane. Revok is recruiting other Scanners to his cause and is bent on using his powers to take over humanity. Vale is tasked with infiltrating Revok's group and stopping the madman before he causes any more deaths.

Vale teams up with another Scanner - Kim Obrist - to take down Revok but there are revelations headed his way and a day of reckoning is coming...

DIALOUGE  - Revok - "We're gonna do this the Scanner way...I'm gonna suck your brain dry ! Everything you are is gonna become me !"

PERFORMANCES  - Scanners is a film full of great ideas but it is let down by one major flaw...it's characters. All the performances are of a good standard but sadly the characters somehow fail to connect with the audience. There's a sheen of coldness to the proceedings that makes us not care about these people and that harms the entire film. Afterall, if you cant invest in the characters then how can you invest in the story ?

Case in point is the main character, Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack). Vale has spent years (maybe decades) living on the streets. At the point that we meet him Vale has completely retreated into himself. He's sealed off his emotions and empathy for other people in an effort to make sense of his strange abilities. He comes across as cold and aloof and pretty much stays that way for the entire film. We just don't have any connection to this man because he has no connection to us. He's disconnected from humanity so, in turn, the audience disconnects from him. It's not a bad performance by any means but you do find it difficult to dredge up any kind of enthusiasm for spending time with the character. 

The other main character is Kim (Jennifer O'Neil) and she too is difficult to feel anything for. Once again, it's a perfectly solid performance but the character just fails to make any real impression on the audience. Kim is so bound up in the internal politics of Scanner culture that, like Vale, she's pretty much retreated into herself. Again this makes it very difficult for the audience to actually give a damn about what happens to her.

Another problem with this movie is that there are some great actors that are severely underused. For example take Patrick McGoohan in his role as Dr. Paul Ruth. McGoohan was a brilliant actor, he had an intense and sometimes unnerving screen presence, his role as Number 6 in the cult TV series "The Prisoner" is rightly considered to be an iconic character by many. McGoohan brings those same qualities to the screen here. Dr. Ruth is essentialy the Professor Charles Xavier of the story (Scanners shares many similarities with The X-Men), the problem is that he's only in it for a handful of scenes before he gets unceremoniously bumped off. His death doesn't leave any impression upon the audience, its literally a blink and you'll miss it moment. It seems a shame that Cronenberg hired a great actor like McGoohan only to then waste him so badly.

The same problem also happens with Michael Ironside's performance as Darryl Revok. Ironside is great in this film, Revok is a completely unhinged murderous psycho, drunk on his own powers. He's a nasty nasty bastard who'll throw anybody under the bus to achieve his goals, he's also shown to be very manipulative and charismatic. In short - he's a great villain, Ironside just OWNS the entire movie and is by far the most interesting character (To use the X-Men analogy again - if Dr. Ruth is Xavier, then Revok is DEFINITELY Magneto). 

The only problem is that he's hardly in it. Ironside appears in about four scenes and thats your lot. There's the famous scene where he causes a guy's head to explode, a flashback scene to when he was a younger man, a scene where he's sat in an airport lounge talking to his henchman and then the final scene when Revok and Vale battle it out and that's literally it. Once again it's just a waste, I know one of the rules of showbiz is "always leave the audience wanting more" but this is ridiculous...

SFX & VIOLENCE  - I might as well lump all the effects work into the same category as the gore for this film, as all the effects shots result in some form of bodily dismemberment anyway.

Most famously we get THAT exploding head shot...

Apparently they filled a dummy's head with offal and then blasted it with a shotgun to achieve this effect - its a classic and its the one part of the film that everyone whose ever seen it ALWAYS remembers.

Then we get Vale's eyeballs liquefying as he battles Revok...

Another great practical effect in a film thats full of them.

RATING  - Scanner's is a flawed film that manages to be entertaining in parts. Its cold and uncompromising, Cronenberg really pushes the audience out of thier comfort zones in this one.

Unfortunately that lack of a comfort zone is also this film's biggest downfall. Cronenberg is so intent on shocking and alienating his audience that he forgets to make his characters likeable, so we have no one to root for as a result. We don't see enough of the most interesting characters and we see far too much of the least interesting ones.

Many people consider this film to be a stone cold classic but sadly it just didn't do it for me. Great special effects though...

I'm giving this 3 exploding heads out of 5. For me,  it's a movie that's easier to admire than it is to enjoy.

POSTER/VHS/DVD ART -