I remember seeing this movie in a theater in the early 1980's. If you watch the movie cold and without foreknowledge, the exploding head scene is completely startling and comes out of the nowhere. Michael Ironside was an unrecognized actor, so expecting anything from his character was a shock. In the scene, he was just the guy who introduced the scanner and asked the scanner to scan him. I did recognize the actor whose head explodes because he was on a CBC TV show called Seeing Things which was shown on PBS at the time. On that, he played a psychic journalist that solved crimes.
Sometimes I actually love being so old ☺️ The exploding head made the entire audience gasp. And (spoiler alert?) the pregnant woman... you could feel the tension rise in the theater. So many great scenes.
David Cronenberg is an excellent director. The master of body horror/sci-fi/surreal films . Scanners is a interesting sci-fi/government conspiracy thriller with some dry moments. Michael Ironsides & Patrick McGoohan were great. Fantastic SFX. Watchable.
Your reviews are so well-researched and insightful. I really appreciate both how much you know about the production challenges and what you think of the quality of the story. I'm trying to imagine this film being made with scenes written basically right before they were shot. What must this have been like for the actors? Meanwhile, that exploding head is as iconic as any scene I can think of in the sci-fi horror genre.
I knew Cronenberg was always crunched for budget and time making films in Canada, but didn't realize Scanners was SO crunched! Though Scanners is fun in it's goofy ways, it's interesting how Cronenberg stuck with this 'mental mayhem' for so much of his future releases. Altered reality in Videodrome, dual lives in History Of Violence, insect intellect in The Fly, etc. But for me, the biggest and best 'psychic connection' film Dave's done is Map To The Stars. How the brother and sister are so connected, either maternally, incestuously, and/or psychically - it's never really fully explained. Yet for all the disconnect going on with everyone around them, it becomes more apparent how connected the brother and sister are - for better or for worse? I think Scanners and Maps To The Stars would make for a great double feature.
Didn't Cronenberg follow up 'Scanners' with 'The Dead Zone' adaptation? 'Scanners' got a good deal of film magazine coverage over on this side of the Atlantic and the Stephen King film really established Cronenberg as an immediately recognisable director. As far as I remember from interviews at the time, Cronenberg cast Lack due to his distinctive eyes.
I enjoyed this review. I appreciate the backstory about paranormal in science fiction and the Canadian film industry at the time. I noticed there seemed to be a lot of Canadian films about that time. At the time I lived within walking distance of a theater that often showed B movies.
I was born in 65 so by the time special makeup effects started to become more complex and imaginative and technologically innovative and just plain gnarly and wicked and amazing, I was 10 and for me it all began with Jaws in 1975 and things just grew from there. The 80's were an incredible time to be a teenager and young adult and those were the true Golden Years of special makeup fx. As for Scanners, and the infamous exploding head scene, I've never watched a making-of about the movie except for maybe a short bit about the fx overall but I don't remember. I'm thinking that Cronenberg must have been ordered by the studio to not make the scene any gorier than it is, otherwise why not show Revok covered in blood and flesh and brains, and show the table and curtains and walls covered in it too? If there is ever a remake, I'd want to see that. Imagine how wicked Ironside would have looked in that scene all bloody and in the next scene where he scans those other guys and makes them kill each other then themselves, still bloody.
Cronenberg is certainly one of Sci/Fi-Horror's most colorful characters! Love the 'Rick & Morty' shtick where they refer to a mutant-overrun Earth as being 'Cronenberged'! I adapted the term myself in describing our current World as Corona-berged!
Scanners was my first and still is my favorite Cronenberg movie! Warts and all. Lack was SUPPOSED to play a character with next to no personality. Guy was a derelict. Never experienced love, caring. Hearing constant voices, couldn't hear his own. How can someone like that develop a personality??
Yup, sitting in the theatre, probably stoned, definitely teen aged and totally unaware of what the movie was about and Wham!! Dudes head just Gallaghered all over the screen!! That stuff leaves a mark on your frontal lobe.....Wasn't 'The Fury' a little like this?
This review blew my mind 😉 But if you have psychic ability you don't need to blow somebody's head up to kill them. A good hard psychokinetic thump on the brain would easily render them unconscious a psychic finger stuck in the heart's valves would kill them pretty quickly. Run that same psychic finger around inside their brain churning it up like a finger through Jello and there ain't going to be much left. Of course this makes for a boring movie. I watched this a long long time ago when it first came out and don't remember much of it.
What you say about a scanner not having to blow up someone’s head is true. But in this movie he was going against another scanner so the victim would mentally fight back, making Revok have to blast his head. It also sets up the final showdown where Revok and his brother also cause massive physical damage to each other.
I hate this movie for making me sit through 90 minutes of Stephen Lack. I love this movie for introducing the treasure that is Michael Ironside to the world.
I came back to this film because of the fetus scanner scene of ONeal. My 10 month old son seemed to explore my mind last night, revealing each of my living parents and deceased grandparents, one at a time. My nose did not bleed.
