Review of Scanners (1981) by Ricky L — 07 Apr 2010

Vagrant Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) is revealed to be a "Scanner", or a person with incredibly potent mental powers. He is mentored by Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan), who hopes to use him to ferret out rogue Scanner Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside, in his first substantial bad guy role), a psychopath with plans for world domination.

Another truly creepy Cronenberg work in which, George Romero-style, he combines a sense of intelligence - utilizing his recurring theme of biological aberration - with a heavy accent on visceral, blood and guts type horror. He gets an unnerving performance from Ironside as the evil maniac, and is aided not only by the repulsive yet undeniably compelling gore (the exploding head scene is the one most people probably think of in reference to this film, although the final showdown is equally gruesome) but an impressively ominous music score by Howard Shore.

Lack is awfully low-key as the hero, but it does fit the character. He starts out as a lone fringe dweller, and is only slowly adapting to the reality around him. Jennifer O'Neill, however, does little more than look beautiful as a new cohort who ends up assisting him in his mission. Frequent Cronenberg collaborator Robert Silverman is typically amusing in one of his standard eccentric roles.

"Scanners" is effective and entertaining, and one of the better Cronenberg films that I've seen.