Every once in awhile I like to dip my toe into a David Cronenberg film. I have seen quite a few of them at this point, from some of his earliest stuff like “Rabid” to his seminal reworking of “The Fly” starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis. One thing you will always get out of a Cronenberg film is a serious look at how technology and human beings interact. Like science fiction author J.G. Ballard, Cronenberg’s viewpoint towards a synthesis of man and machine is always exceedingly grim, not to mention gory as all get out. The overarching theme in his cinematic examinations seems to be that humans simply do not know enough about the technology they develop, or if they do, their arrogance in the ultimate abilities of mankind never prevents them from charging into potentially damaging experiments. That we are just not far seeing enough to predict the outcome of using new drugs or messing around with human genetics may be a good message to take from a Cronenberg film. “Scanners” should fall into a “Cronenberg 101″ class about these messages. Released in 1981, this film helped bring Cronenberg into the mainstream, as well as spawning a host of cheap sequels and a possible remake due sometime next year. Of course, this movie also provides the rabid horror fan with what is possibly the sickest gore scene in cinematic history.
“Scanners” tells the story of Cameron Vale, a man who has spent most of his life in a perpetual fog. Roaming through the streets of the city as a homeless person, Vale suffers from a plethora of voices constantly yammering away in his head. He cannot hold a job or have a regular life with this problem, so he copes the best way he can by always staying on the run. During one of his excursions in a shopping mall, Vale overhears two women casting aspersions on his grubby appearance. The comments bother Cameron, who promptly causes one of the women to collapse into convulsions merely by mentally concentrating on her. Two thugs in trench coats lurking nearby notice Vale’s little performance and promptly chase him down. When our hero wakes up, he is in the company of one Doctor Paul Ruth, a laconic chap who gives Vale the lowdown on what he is and what he must do. Ruth comes across as distant and slightly sadistic, but Cameron trusts him because the doctor knows how to make the voices in his head stop and is the first person to show a real interest in him.
According to Ruth, Cameron is a scanner, a person with the ability to use a congenital form of telekinesis to manipulate other human beings. Ruth shows Vale that an injection of a drug called ephemerol quiets the voices in his head, which are really the voices of people around him that he picks up because he doesn’t know how to use his scanning abilities. What Cameron doesn’t know is that Ruth works for CONSEC, one of those evil corporations most movies seem to have nowadays, a company developing scanners as a weapon for governments and wealthy individuals. Moreover, Ruth initially fails to tell Vale about the presence of Darryl Revok, a powerful scanner who is building an army of these telekinetics, or how Revok just invaded the CONSEC building and killed six men in an attempt to discover exactly what new tricks the corporation has up its sleeve. Ruth then enlists Cameron to track down Revok and kill him. Along the way, our scanner encounters the beautiful Kim Obrist, uncovers the truth behind ephemerol and how scanners came to exist, and the true identity of Darryl Revok.
Stephen Lack, the actor who plays Cameron Vale, carries out his onscreen duties with all the charisma of an ironing board. Some people claim that this is exactly the way a confused homeless man should act when confronted with such an awesome series of events, but I don’t buy this argument. Lack gives a whole new meaning to the term “wooden” and the movie suffers because of it. Fortunately, Michael Ironsides as Revok, Jennifer O’Neill as Kim Obrist, and Patrick McGoohan as the strangely aloof Doctor Ruth make up for the lead character’s ham handed performance. Of these three actors, Ironsides steals the show as the unbalanced Darryl Revok. Anyone remotely familiar with this actor’s work knows he often plays the lead evil guy in dozens of films, and “Scanners” marks one of his best turns as a baddie. Without Ironsides in the cast, this movie would not be nearly half as good as it is.
The most memorable elements of “Scanners” are both good and bad. The good is the gore, which tops most horror films on the market. The infamous exploding head scene at the beginning of the movie still makes me cringe. In fact, it ranks as one of those rare scenes in a film that actually get worse the more times you see it. The first time you watch the movie, you have no idea that this scanner’s head will burst like a balloon. Subsequent viewings are worse because you know what’s coming and the anticipation fills you with dread. The final showdown between Vale and Revok revolts as well. What doesn’t work in “Scanners” centers on the sudden ability of Cameron to scan a computer system through a public telephone. I simply didn’t buy this suddenly revealed ability, let alone that it would lead to the telephone booth exploding. Unfortunately, another drawback is the lack of substantive extras on the DVD. The picture quality is good, but I would have liked a commentary by Cronenberg to explain the philosophy behind the picture. Still, “Scanners” is a must see for horror and science fiction fans alike.
Scanners marks the emergence of David Cronenberg from low-budget horror auteur to one of the most unique voices in filmmaking of the last thirty or so years. He first came onto the scene directing such low-budget horror films such as Shivers, Rabid and The Brood. These three films were later said to have had that Cronenberg propensity to show the horror of the body-politic at its most basic. Cronenberg pretty much points out of how true horror might not be lurking on the outside, but within the the human body. Cronenberg makes the human body as forever changing and mutating against the individual person’s wants and desire of what was suppose to be the ideal. The horror that we as a people do not and will never have control over our own body was where the true horror lie.
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In 1981, Cronenberg moves from the purely physical horror to one where the technology man was forever trying to create and achieve perfection would turn on the biological aspect of the human condition. This new form of techno-organic mutation was as terrifying as it was seductive in its potential to those afflicted with it. Cronenberg begins this phase in his filmmaking voice with his excellent, underappreciated and cult-classic Scanners.
The premise for Scanners had alot in common with Stephen King’s novel Firestarter in the fact that in dealt with an omnipresent and powerful organization: the CIA’s shadowy branch that dealt with experimental weapons programs for Firestarter and the ultra-powerful CONSEC multinational corporation in Scanners. These two organizations experiment on random select individuals using experimental drug treatments under the guise of helpful medications. What results from these experiments are more than what was truly expected by their handlers. In Scanners the result comes from mental abilities never seen or documented in the past. CONSEC’s experiments have yielded a unique group of individuals, 237 of them, to manifest powers of the mind that make them living weapons of mass destruction. Instead of becoming a new wonder-weapon for CONSEC to sell to their government contacts, these 237 become unstable in personality, some going as far as to develop a God-complex. Others are driven insane by these new abilities and retreat away from the rest of humanity in order to achieve a semblance of mental peace.
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These two different reactions from the 237 are keenly represented by two of the main character’s in Cronenberg’s film. There’s Cameron Vale (played by Stephen Lack who had an eerie resemblance to the same named character of Stephen in Dawn of the Dead) who we first see as a vagrant who seems to be suffering from some sort of mental problem. This is farther from the truth as Dr. Paul Ruth (father of the CONSEC drug effemerol that causes the mutation and played with eccentric flair by Patrick McGoohan) soon discover that Vale’s mental problems is due to him possessing preternatural mental abilities of the highest order. Ruth’s guilt over what his experiments have done and created leads him to use Vale to counter the growing underground of those 237 who have seen their newfound abilities as a stepping stone to supplanting the normal status quo with their own in a plan of global domination that would make fans of X-Men very proud.
Leader of this underground groups of scanners (as the 237 were called) is one Darryl Revok. A scanner whose abilities rival those of Vale’s but whose mental instability for wanting to dominate the normals of the world makes him the most dangerous individual on the face of the planet. Genre veteran Michael Ironside steals the film from everyone else. His grand and classic introduction early in the film has gone down in filmmaking history as one of the most shocking scenes put on film. Ironside’s performance as the scanner with the God-complex was truly megalomaniacal and it was easy to root against him, but hard to take one’s eyes from the screen when he was on. Revok truly made for one of film history’s classic villains.
In the middle of Vale and Revok’s war for control lies Kim Obrist (played by the beautiful Jennifer O’Neill) who tries to lead those who just want to be left alone from being used by both Revok and CONSEC. O’Neill’s performance was the most grounded in reality, as much as a film about people with mental powers could be, and tries to keep the film from getting too fantastic.
This I think was what made Scanners such a great film. As ludicrous a premise as the film had to base its sotry on, there was always a sense of realism to keep everything form becoming too much like a comic book. The story paints a story that could happen in reality since similar things have occurred in the past such as the LSD testing on US military personnel during the 50’s and 60’s. Cronenberg plays on such fears of outside factors introduced by scientists looking to forever improve on what nature took eons to evolve. It’s this hubris about man’s attempt to dominate his own body which interests Cronenberg and what would happen if he did succeed in doing something nature and humanity wasn’t ready for.
Scanners marked Cronenberg’s interest in examining the effect of man’s quest for better and better technology, whether mechanical or biological, on humanity’s physical and mental existence. What he brongs forth, first with Scanners then later on with Videodrome and The Fly, was something both horrific and seductive. Who wouldn’t want to have such abilities as Vale and Revok had at their command. But by the end of Scanners the film posits the question of how much of one’s humanity must be sacrificed for such huge leaps on the evolutionary ladder. Will the resulting amalgamation of nature and technology still leave something human or just something that pretends to look like one.
Some have called Scanners a horror movie and some have called it a sci-fi thriller. It’s both those and more. It’s really hard to pin down just exactly which genre Scanners falls under since Cronenberg never tried to stay within one particular one. The film works as a thriller, as a science-fiction story, a horror flick and a philosophical exercise in examining the human condition. Cronenberg’s skill was clearly evident in keeping all these differing themes and genres from becoming out-of-place and bringing the finished product from becoming too flawed. Cronenberg’s first foray into this new phase of his filmmaking career ushered in what some have called Cronenberg at his most daring and pure. I wouldn’t argue with such an argument. Scanners is a film of great quality that would forever be used as an example of Cronenberg’s genius as a filmmaker.
