Scanners
A thought occurred to me as David Cronenberg’s “Scanners” moved toward its conclusion, as I watched it for the first time. If this film were to be remade today, and I know some attempts have been made to do so, it would not take much out of a writer to turn this into an anti-vaccination screed. The thought of that is horrifying to me, and it’s a bit of a spoiler if you haven’t seen the film before, but I could not help but have my mind go there, given the film’s political nature, if it were made now.
Even if you haven’t seen “Scanners,” you’ve no doubt seen the GIF of the amazing exploding head effect that takes place surprisingly early in the film. I did not expect to see that iconic image so early in the film, but it sets the stakes early after Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) is taken into custody by an organization that studies “scanners,” individuals with psychic abilities that are a threat to humanity in their ability to kill people from the inside out. The image comes from a scene where a scanner is sitting in a lecture hall, and wants to demonstrate his abilities to the crowd to show how non-threatening scanners are, and gets more than he bargained for when the test subject he chooses from the crowd (Michael Ironside) is a rogue scanner, and causes his head to burst. Ironside’s Darryl Revok is part of a faction of scanners whom wish to use their powers to take over the world. Vale’s powers are as strong as Revok’s, and one of the scientists most familiar with scanners (Patrick McGoohan’s Dr. Paul Ruth) hopes to use Vale against Revok in an attempt to stop him.
As I wrote that last paragraph out, this could almost be taken as Cronenberg’s dark version of Marvel’s X-Men, except that every mutant has the same ability. There’s an insidious twist in the film that takes it out of the realm of that, but the subtext of a marginalized collection of people, whom are higher on the evolutionary food chain than normal humans, is still vital in making the comparison, and we see some interesting ideas play out from that notion, including the one that inspired by earlier thoughts about a contemporary remake of the film. “Scanners” is a melding of horror and sci-fi as only Cronenberg could do, bringing some elements of both into the fold in a way that plays as a genuine folding of genres into one while he decides to say something about humanity, the way we fear those whom are different from us, and how we use those with strengths we can take advantage of, regardless of what it does to that other person. Both Vale and Revok are used by the people in power on both sides of this film, and seeing what happens to them in the end is a very pointed statement on how minorities can be exploited by powerful people.
I went into “Scanners” thinking it was my first early Cronenberg, and my first horror film of his since “eXistenZ,” but it occurred to me that I had already seen “The Dead Zone” and “The Fly” previously. I’m glad that I finally am able to check “Scanners” off the list, and it’s one I definitely plan on revisiting in the future. It’s time to catch up with his work, however, and see the full picture of why he is one of the most important horror filmmakers of all-time. “Scanners,” and the wonderful production qualities behind it (especially Dick Smith’s amazing makeup effects and Howard Shore’s score), opened the door; I’m primed to go through it with reckless abandon.
