ALL SCI-FI

[Bogmeister]

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This was David Cronenberg's tale of telepathic superhumans who are termed as in the title of this film. As presented here, these superhumans are usually misfits or losers — at least that's how they are regarded by certain establishment types — or simply as freaks.

Indeed, the main character of Vale (Stephen Lack) is shown to be a derelict at the start of the film. The reason for his poor lot in life is that he can't really control his powers very well; other people's thoughts intrude on him and confuse him.

As mentioned in the film, there are 237 of these Scanners in the world — quite a small number. Even the best expert on these mutants, Dr. Ruth (Patrick McGoohan), states that it's uncertain as to why they exist — radiation? Pollutants? Not known.

One of these Scanners, Revok (Michael Ironside in an impressive early role which typecast him mostly as villains), is decidedly hostile in his actions. He's responsible for the famous scene in this film, the one of the guy's head exploding.

That's an extreme example of such power. Mostly the power is confined to controlling other people's minds, though there are bursts of telekinesis and pyrokinesis from the powerful ones.

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Dr. Ruth gets the idea to recruit Vale for a special mission to infiltrate the underground organization of hostile Scanners headed by Revok. Vale, his powers now focused by Ruth's guidance and the mission, turns out to be a powerful Scanner.

He runs across another Scanner, a female (Jennifer O'Neill) who hides in plain sight in the art world. This leads him to an eccentric artist, but he only just begins to question him about Revok when a trio of assassins with shotguns burst in and kill the artist. Vale then manages to knock them all out in one burst of power.

The assassins continue to plague Vale as he becomes acquainted with more Scanners, most of whom are killed off by Revok's killers because they did not join Revok.

The other problem is that the agency which sent Vale and which Dr. Ruth works for also turns out to be corrupt (the villain here is played by Lawrence Dane). There's a revelation — actually a few — near the end in regard to Vale & Revok and it boils down to a final duel between the two.

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This film is bit over-rated, mainly because it treads the same ground already covered in The Fury (7. Cronenberg simply reworked the premise of superhumans and secret dark agencies. There was even a similar exploding human in the earlier film.

The other weakness is the lead played by Lack; he seemed inexperienced and mechanical in the film.

I think viewers were also disappointed in the character arc of Dr. Ruth, having high expectations for McGoohan, then still best-known as The Prisoner. His final scenes have him wandering in a daze and then being unceremoniously removed from the picture.

But most of the characters are weak anyway — we don't get to know much about them and therefore don't care what happens to them. Much of the middle act is on the slow side and meandering.

Still, Cronenberg did well with the constraints imposed on him by Canada and with the low budget. The final scenes, even if they're saddled with a bit too much exposition, and Ironside as the nasty Scanner who does hold our attention, kind of 'make' this film.

BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10

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BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Bud Brewster]

_________ Scanners (1981) ORIGINAL TRAILER


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IMDB has several interesting trivia items for this production.
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~ David Cronenberg once called this the most frustrating film he'd ever made. The film was rushed through production - filming had to begin without a finished script and end within roughly two months so the financing would qualify as a tax write-off, forcing Cronenberg to write and shoot at the same time. Cronenberg also cited difficulty with and antagonism between the leads, particularly Patrick McGoohan and Jennifer O'Neill.

Note from me: Wow, stress like that can make a man's head explode!

~ A very early treatment from 1976, entitled "Telepathy 2000" takes place in the future, begins with the protagonist (who is named Harley Quinn) telepathically raping a woman in a subway, and was set as a spy movie. In this version, a company called Cytodyne Amalgamate was breeding evil Scanners to take over the world and the U.S. Government was employing good Scanners to stop them.

Note from me: Both of those concepts sound like great stories!

~ William S. Burroughs' 1959 novel 'Naked Lunch' contains a chapter concerning "Senders", a hostile organization of telepaths bent on world domination, a clear literary inspiration for this film. Cronenberg would later direct a film version of Naked Lunch (1991).

Note from me: It's always interesting to learn how concepts like this evolve.

~ In an interview with Film Comment, Stephen Lack recalled feeling under-the-gun during one of his first scenes on set. "There we were, the first day of Scanners and they had me get into this 18-wheel truck with four gearshift levers and have me drive into the shot. It was horrifying. I never drove such a thing and I was pretty disoriented," he explained.

"We were set up on a feeder road to the highway, and all the camera crew and staff were there, and some car on the highway slowed down to gawk-and a truck on the highway rammed them from behind. There was a death and sirens, and the whole crew jumped over the storm fence to help out. I was given a slight reprieve of an hour to figure out the gears."

Note from me: Good lord, talk about a "cursed movie", this one is it! And why did the director insist on having a totally inexperienced man trying to drive the 18-wheeler?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

For the exploding head scene, they discussed the best way to do the exploding head. They considered an explosive charge in the meat-filled fake head, but rejected it. They finally settled on a 12ga shotgun to the back of the head. Maybe their SPFX consultant had once worked for the Mob?

They wanted Michael Ironside to sit beside the dummy for the scene, and asked him how much he wanted to do the scene. When he found out how they were going to explode the head, he purposely gave them a price he knew they wouldn't go for.

The scene was filmed on a dock, at night, so they could match the lighting from the set. I assume that the camera crew's back was to the water, so the shot from the shotgun would land in the water, and not pepper the wall of one of the dock warehouses.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

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I finally watched a DVD of this movie from Netflix today. It's an interesting film!

But the plot is a bit too convoluted, so at about the halfway point I had read the Wikipedia summary to help me understand it .

Even with the help of Wikipedia, the story is often puzzling. And I was annoyed by the fact that much of the dialog was post-dubbed, which makes the characters seem disconnected from the scenes in which they appear.

When the characters are talking to each other, we can tell they're not actually in the room where the dialog was recorded — they're in a recording studio, talking into microphones!

Even many of the sound effects were post-dubbed — which is often the case with other movies, but they do it so well we never know it!

And the characters make the usual stupid mistakes we've seen in countless other movies.

Like, when Jennifer O'Neill is threatened by the head bad with a gun inside an interrogation room, and he's just about to shoot her . . . so she uses her scanner abilities to make him drop the gun and fall to the floor.

Then she opens the door, runs away . . . and leaves the murderous villain laying on floor. He gets up seconds later, picks up the gun, presses the security alarm button, and pursues her!

So, what SHOULD Jennifer O'Neill have done?

Damn, that's obvious. She should've picked up the gun, shot the bastard, and run away . . . with the gun in her pocket.

Like . . . duh!

Smart movies like Die Hard don't do dumb stuff like that!

Guys, I'm not saying Scanners isn't enjoyable — I"m just saying it's flawed by certain aspects of the production.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)