David Cronenberg’s early cinema was largely an exploration
of body horror, a subgenre that dealt with infections and other invasions of
the body usually with state-of-the-art special effects. Cronenberg’s first two
features dealt explicitly with viruses, while The Brood and Scanners were much
more about mental disorders that had disturbing physical manifestations.
Cronenberg’s best body horror films, Videodrome and The Fly, married these two
strains and coupled them with an intriguing philosophical approach. Scanners is
an early suggestion of the great things that Cronenberg would go on to do, but
it remains interesting in its own right.
Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) is a
rootless derelict who is captured by Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan, who gives
a great hammy performance as a scientist just on the verge of madness), who
believes he can help him. Cameron has a severe mental condition; he is a
Scanner, which means he can hear people’s thoughts and enter their minds
through telepathy. Evil Scanner Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside) is recruiting
people like Cameron in order to take over the world. Ruth recruits Cameron to
find Revok and kill him…
If you know anything about
Scanners, it has probably got something to do with the scene in which Darryl
Revok causes another Scanner’s head to explode. The film was originally marketed
on the shock value of this scene, with a teaser trailer that showed the preview
audience’s reaction. The anecdote of how the brutally realistic head-explosion
was achieved is recounted on all five of the cast and crew interviews on the
DVD. One could be forgiven for thinking that there is little else of interest
in the film itself apart from that one short, early scene.
However, if the head-explosion
quickly and inevitably loses its shock value, the film is still not devoid of
interest. Cronenberg’s films have always been powerfully visceral and Scanners
is remarkably successful at conveying the gruesome tactility of the telepathy
at work, visualizing the invisible mental processes of its characters. In the
much more impressive final sequence, in which Cameron and Revok have a battle
of the minds the marks of the battle appear physically on the body. This idea
refers to the mind-body problem, most specifically to Cartesian dualism, in
which it is believed that the mind can exert control over the body. In
Scanners, scanning someone can increase their heart rates, cause their veins to
burst or, as we know, make their head explode. Indeed, the mind might even
become so powerful that it becomes independent of the body and jettisons it,
leaving it to burn into smouldering ash.
Aside from an emphasis on
visceral horror and the latest (for the time) special effects, Cronenberg is
primarily interested in addressing philosophy. Though Scanners is much more of
a horror movie and a thriller than a rigorous exploration of certain channels
of thought, it does make for an entertaining and nasty film that is full of
interesting ideas. It is also of interest as an early sign of what Cronenberg
went on to be – his latest two films, A Dangerous Method and Cosmopolis, are largely
dialogue-driven though at times the old head-exploding Cronenberg shows
through. Similarly, the film is a surprisingly successful mix of arthouse and
exploitation, in which the crowd-pleasing money shot might double as the
conclusion to a chain of thought. The result is a film that can be thoroughly
entertaining and intellectually stimulating.
That said, the film is far from
flawless. Cronenberg here is much more interested in making an exploitation
horror film than an arthouse film and it does show in the film’s high quotient
of shoot-outs and violence, often at the expense of plot or character. As well
as this, Cronenberg is not yet as in control of his medium as he would later
be. In comparison to his best films, Scanners often feels clunky and amateurish.
Stephen Lack and Jennifer O’Neill are rather bland leads. Lack, an artist
rather than an actor, has great eyes for the role but little else. McGoohan and
Ironside have great fun, though their performances suggest that they thought
the script was so much pap and was not to be taken seriously. Cronenberg is
noticeably absent from the interviews on the DVD, suggesting that he has moved
on from and might even be embarrassed by the film. Scanners can be considered
as Cronenberg’s last film in his exploitation period since his next film was
the much more arthouse and thoroughly mind-bending classic Videodrome.
Scanners is a decent horror film,
an entertaining mystery-thriller with an exploding head and a fantastically
visual mind battle, which will divide its audience between those who will laugh
and those who will think it effective. The film defies easy categorization, and
remains an effective early entry in the back catalogue of one of the most
interesting and visually powerful filmmakers working today.
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