By Stephanie Scaife
Although Cronenberg had made a name for himself in the 70’s as the master of low budget gross-out body horror with the release of Shivers (1975), Rabid (1977) and The Brood (1979) it wasn’t until the release of the slightly more accessible sci-fi action flick Scanners (1981) that he really hit the mainstream and garnered a level of box office success.
For those not already in the know, Scanners is about a group of people with telepathic and telekinetic abilities known as “scanners” who are being hunted by a nefarious corporation called ConSec, which under the guise of protecting the public from these scanners is actually trying to harness their abilities for their own evil plans. Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) is a scanner with particularly powerful abilities who is captured by ConSec and pitted against Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside), a rogue scanner who is planning to create his own scanner army to declare war on ConSec.
Scanners isn’t the strongest film in narrative terms, perhaps due to the screenplay not having been finished prior to filming, and Lack’s acting abilities are precisely that – lacking – making it for the best that after this brief dalliance with fame he returned to his original calling as an artist. However, Scanners still has a lot going for it, most famously the exploding head scene, apparently constructed with the use of a watermelon and a sawn-off shotgun, which holds up today and looks absolutely fantastic on Blu-ray. Michael Ironside is an absolute joy to watch as Revok and his final showdown with Vale is really quite something. The score by Howard Shore is some of his finest work in my opinion too. Scanners is very much of its time, and although Cronenberg has made many better films (The Brood, Videodrome, Naked Lunch to name a few) this remains one of his most well loved and best known, making its arrival on Blu-ray a must have for any fan.
Also arriving on Blu-ray are Scanners II: The New Order (1991) and Scanners III: The Takeover (1992) both of which I’d been completely unaware of until the screeners arrived on my doorstep. Released ten years after the original and with no involvement from Cronenberg, both are predictably rubbish. Filmed back to back and directed by Christian Duguay (Screamers, The Art of War) they are stand alone films that bare little relation to the 1981 film and contain none of the original cast or characters.
Although made in 1991 Scanners II: The New Order looks far older than that, not least of all due to the appalling mullet sported by the central character David Kellum (David Hewlett) and the dated production values. The plot is in itself fairly thin on the ground, centring around Kellum, a lowly country boy who after stumbling across a crime scene is caught on CCTV killing an armed robber using his scanner abilities, which brings him to the attention of a shady cop with delusions of grandeur who soon drafts Kellum to aid him in tracking down criminals. The only mildly interesting thing in the film is Raoul Trujillo who takes his scenery chomping to a whole new level as evil scanner Peter Drak. Overall though I found The New Order to be dull and almost entirely forgettable. I don’t know if after ten years the rights fell into the public domain or were available super cheap because there is no other tangible reason why anyone involved with the original would have allowed this film to be made.
As if that wasn’t bad enough Scanners III: The Takeover (also known as Scanner Force) arrived shortly after, and although directed by Duguay it is another stand alone film that doesn’t follow on or use any of the characters from the first sequel. Helena Monet (Liliana Komorowska) is a female scanner who after taking an experimental drug that blocks moral conscience becomes a power hungry mad-woman bent on global domination. In some ways the sheer ridiculousness of The Takeover makes it slightly more watchable than The New Order, stand out scenes such as Helena exploding a pigeon using her scanner abilities because it shits on her and a kung-fu/scanner fight in an Asian marketplace, which are at least faintly amusing.
Cronenberg’s Scanners is a classic, and in the unlikely event that you haven’t seen it then I highly recommend that you rectify that immediately. You can’t do much better than this excellent Blu-ray, which although slim on bonus features comes with a host of new and insightful interviews with the cast and crew. The release of the two sequels seems unnecessary and for completists only; mercifully both discs were vanilla so I didn’t have to sit though any special features.
Scanners, Scanners II and Scanners III are all out now on Region 2 Blu-Ray from Second Sight.