The year was 1981.
Body horror was almost non-existent.
Bulgingsnake would not be born for another 2 years.
In the Great White North, David Cronenberg was concocting a sci-fi horror/thriller that would catch the public eye and display his prowess to an international audience. This movie, although a sleeper, would go on to become the first of many cult classics on the part of Cronenberg; the opus to a grand symphony of some pretty fucking weird shit.
Scanners live among us; individuals born with the ability to read our thoughts and wreak havoc with the world around them. Cameron Vale is a scanner and a derelict, living rough on the fringes of society. When he is captured by agents of the ConSec corporation, he gets brought under the wing of Dr. Ruth, a research scientist determined to harmonise the scanner community back into society.
With a rogue scanner movement on the loose and Hell-bent on world domination, Ruth is forced to hone Cameron’s abilities as best he can and send him after the groups leader, the anarchic Darryl Revok. But all is not what it seems, and before long conspiracies and lies about the nature of scanners begin to accumulate.
Scanners for me is an absolute triumph. It looks, sounds and feels like a well-earned culmination of Cronenberg’s previous efforts. It would be remiss of me to over-hype it as the perfect Cronenberg movie; it isn’t. Rather it’s where he found his groove and complimented it with experience and style.
It’s basically Cronenberg’s “Jaws”, albeit with lesser-scaled but better-executed effects.
Perhaps the best thing about Scanners is Michael Ironside’s performance. It’s also probably the first time in Cronenberg’s career that the acting began to match the concepts and effects in his movies. Ironically, the main lead is played by actor Stephen Lack and his performance is, well…..short of the mark.
He’s fine, but Ironside totally dominates this movie. He even over-shadows Dr. Ruth’s Patrick McGoohan, who was a well-established actor in both film and tv.
Last, but not least the movie’s effects are top notch. Scanners would in essence set the bar for the quality and fucked-upness of special effects in Cronenberg’s movies. From here on out, his horror efforts just get weirder and more vomit-inducing and I couldn’t be happier about that.
At 40+ years of age now, I can’t blame anyone for thinking Scanners is over the hill.
It has its audience, but it also has its detractors and that’s about as fair as it gets.
Cronenberg’s next offering in 1983 would come with an even more disturbing patina of grime and fetishistic debauchery. It would embrace the video nasty sub-culture, coupled with sexual obsession, suffering and inter-human filth. It’s a weird, disgusting movie that to this day makes my stomach churn.
It’s also my all-time favourite.
