When I was about 10, I saw "Scanners" on home video and all I took away from it were the gory special-effects. Hard to forget a head blowing up or enormous veins popping out of someone's face and arms. It was all I could remember. Now, Cronenberg's intellectual horror film is a cautious warning about experimental pharmaceutical drugs and human evolution involving ESP. It may not all make sense but it is Cronenberg at his finest, using shock, scares and an unrelenting sense of gloom over the proceedings. You might still get a migraine after watching it.
Scanners are special human beings who possess ESP and can telepathically cause someone to have headaches and nosebleeds. Others with evil intent on their minds can blow someone's head apart, including a scanner's head. One opening sequence shows a derelict-of-sorts, Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack), who eats other patrons' leftovers at a mall cafeteria before scanning a woman who gives him disapproving looks. She suddenly goes into convulsions and Cameron turns away, perhaps in disgust at what he has done or unable to know what he has done, and is chased by government agents who shoots tranquilizer darts at him. Next we have am auditorium session with scanners and a demonstration is necessary with a volunteer. Of course, nobody in the audience wishes to participate except for one, a purely evil man named Revok (a perfectly cast Michael Ironside). Yes, this is where the head exploding scene occurs that became the highpoint of the film's trailer.
Cameron is eventually taken to Dr. Ruth (Patrick McGoohan, speaking with a soft, articulate tongue that may drive you bananas), an expert on scanners and on the board of ConSec who owns a pharmaceutical company that the good doctor had initiated. The mysterious doctor hopes Cameron can track down an underground scanner group that includes its supposed leader, Revok. It seems there may be various scanner groups and they can all scan in unison! We find a reclusive artist named Ben Pierce (Robert A. Silverman), a viable lead to this underground movement in a sequence that is both funny and genuinely bizarre. Pierce's laugh sounds sarcastic and fake but then I read that it was meant to evoke Alan Alda!
"Scanners" starts off with potent scenes of violence and Revok being able to scan agents and force them to kill themselves. Once you get past those gory moments, the movie settles down a tad and becomes a frenetic chase picture with a soundtrack that sounds like it was designed by a scanner. Cameron runs along towards the last half of the picture with another scanner, Kim (Jennifer O'Neill), as they try to evade assassins, agents and guards before discovering the truth of ephemerol (a drug meant to tranquilize a scanner's abilities that also might be used to create a new army of newborn scanners). Unbelievably, in what seems like a last-minute plot contrivance, Cameron scans the ConSec computers by using a payphone. Still, despite its often ludicrous nature, Cronenberg plays the film straight and keeps you riveted even if you occasionally laugh at yourself for taking it seriously. I will say there are powerful moments that caused me to have some nausea, a couple of stomach cramps but no nosebleeds. Maybe I was feeling under the weather when I watched it twice again recently. Or maybe Cronenberg just has that effect on his audience.
