Scanners
A writer and director whose work repeatedly returns to the interface of advanced science, medial intervention and innovation and the bodily horror of what are sometimes unintended side effects and complications or sometimes deliberately targeted mutations within the test subjects, from viruses (Crimes of the Future) and parasites (Shivers) to transplants (Rabid) and parthenogenesis (The Brood), it was with 1981’s Scanners that David Cronenberg first received wider recognition and distribution.
Cronenberg’s sixth feature and his first to hit number one at the box office, it is the story of homeless derelict Cameron Vale (Patrick Lack), a man who drifts the streets and through shopping malls, stealing food where he can, unaware that he is being watched, that he has been identified as a “scanner,” possessed of powerful psychic abilities desired by the private military company ConSec for their potential as weapons.
The scanner project guided by Doctor Paul Ruth (The Prisoner’s Patrick McGoohan), it is his intention to send Vale into the secret community of scanners to seek out the psychopathic Darryl Revok who is forming his own army capable of telepathy, mind control and telekinesis, though none compare to Revok’s own formidable powers displayed in the iconic opening scene where he innocently takes part in a demonstration and turns the tables on the host, causing his head to explode.
His previous features having already presented various manifestations of the body horror with which the name Cronenberg remains synonymous, Scanners took that in a different direction with effects by renowned makeup artist Dick Smith, known for The Exorcist and Ghost Story, yet while in many ways the violence is more prevalent it is less extreme with the killings gunshot wounds for the most part rather than more intimate violations likely to distress a mainstream audience.
Revok indiscriminate in his killing and arrogant in the application of his powers, it is an early lead role for Michael Ironside who would soon become a familiar genre performer with roles in Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, V: The Final Battle, Total Recall and Starship Troopers, and like McGoohan he is a master of switching between cool understatement and boiling rage who brings intelligence to all his roles, leaving Lack seeming somewhat bland although Cover Up’s Jennifer O’Neill brings both warmth and fear to Kim Obrist.
A fellow scanner also on the run, like the others it is discovered that her mother was administered the experimental drug Ephemerol while pregnant, a sedative which was found to have teratogenic effects on the unborn foetus, activating the genes which control scanning; the most human character in the film, she is a contrast to psychopharmacist Doctor Ruth who discusses those affected as if they were lab rats to be sacrificed.
Many of the scanners having been unable to function in society due to their undiagnosed condition and sensitivities to the presence of others, the board of ConSec regard them as “pathetic social misfits… unstable and unreliable,” with Revok himself having been confined to an asylum in his youth after an attempt to murder his family, the “derangement of the synapses which we call telepathy” visually represented by the disturbing art installation of sculptor Benjamin Pierce who conspicuously avoids his public.
The success of Scanners having prompted two direct sequels and another two spin-offs, none of which Cronenberg was directly involved with, as well as inspiring other filmmakers such as Joe Begos who has stated he considers The Mind’s Eye to be his own version of the story, it was undoubtedly the film which changed Cronenberg’s career, taking him from independent Canadian features to major Hollywood studios where he would produce Videodrome, The Dead Zone and The Fly over the next five years.
Scanners is available on Shudder now
