Scanners

(1981)***
The central premise of Scanners is that there among us is a subset of telepathic humans who are capable of controlling/destroying others with their thoughts. Darryl Revok is the leader of an underground movement of scanners who seeks out others with this ability and murders those who refuse to join his growing army of telepaths. Darryl’s goal, why world domination, of course! Fortunately for humanity Doctor Paul Ruth has spent a lifetime researching scanners while working for a corporation that creates military defense projects. Doctor Ruth (tee-hee) is well aware of Darryl’s evil army and he has no intention of allowing him to take over the world. With me so far?

"I'm like 30 years old"
Enter ‘teenager’ Cameron Vail, a homeless kid who suffers from the scanner affliction. Because he does not understand it, he is unable to control it and therefore prone to being bombarded with everyone’s thoughts all the time, the ultimate migraine. Doctor Ruth essentially kidnaps Cameron before Darryl can get his sinister mitts on him and teaches him how to control his powers, for good of course. Once harnessing his telekinetic ability, Cameron is ready for the ultimate battle with the evil Darryl. Will Darryl save the world?

I realized recently that I had never seen Scanners. It’s certainly possible that I watched it with Octo when we were in our teens but I have no recollection of it – back then we gobbled up horror movies like Pacman on a power pellet high in the early stages of the game. That photo above of the exploding head is the Scanners money shot, which has always been the draw of the film for me and the subject of much schoolyard lore since we were too young to see this in the theater when it first came out. Unfortunately it occurs at the very beginning of the story and it’s the first and last time a head explodes in the story, what a gyp. All my life I’ve always believed that Scanners was about exploding heads, but sadly no. As described above the plot is a bit convoluted, although not as convoluted as a typical Cronenberg flick. All the 80s-era Cronenberg touches are here including stark, bleak sets and a simple synth soundtrack. There is an unwarranted gravitas to the story that makes the viewer believe they are watching something important, rather than a story about telekinesis and exploding heads, one exploding head, what a gyp. Don’t me wrong; this is actually a pretty good film, just misleading in its ad campaign. Rather than the gory movie promised in the posters, Scanners is more cerebral and brooding with really only two moments of action at the beginning and end of the film.