In 1981 Cronenberg hit it big. His new movie,
‘Scanners’ , a sci-fi horror cross breed became the no. 1 on the box office in North America and all of a sudden more and more people started paying attention to the low budget Canadian director. Here we have common exploitative elements of mad scientists building a master race which of course get out of hand, but in Cronenberg’s assured hands this becomes much more and a strident comment on society and the creation of one of the most recognisable scenes in any horror movie, the shocking and incredible head explosion of Victor Del Grande, which happens within the movie’s first twelve minutes.
Many years previously Cronenberg had played with experimentation on psychic beings in his sci-fi short, ‘Stereo’ , and it is this theme that he plays again with in what he calls his most difficult film. ‘Scanners’ did not have a finished script when shooting began, much to the annoyance of one of it’s main stars, Patrick McGoohan star of the cult favourite TV show ‘The Prisoner’, who gives an extraordinary performance as Dr Paul Ruth. In the early to mid 80’s was to become Cronenberg’s most bankable period, his golden age perhaps, with Scanners becoming not only a critical hit but also no. 1 at the box office, then science fiction horror was taken to a new level in ‘Videodrome’ in 1983. Next was ‘The Dead Zone’ , his most mainstream movie and one of the few decent Stephen King adaptations, again in 1983 and then his biggest success to date, the award winning remake of ‘The Fly’ in 1986. It was due to these that Cronenberg became eternally linked as a creator of science gone wrong and the king of body horror.
Social misfit Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) is a scanner, only he does not know it, he has been driven beyond society and feeds off scraps from food court tables. Only he has never been alone, he hears voices in his head, incessantly shouting in there and reaching deafening levels at times when there are more people around. He is also being watched.
Dr. Paul Ruth has been experimenting with drugs to relieve stress in people, he has had some success in past times and his research has also taken on new dimensions. He has been helping what is now known as scanners, trying to place them back into society and hopefully in doing so becoming pillars of the community. These people have such an ability that other areas of CONSEC are looking at this as a possible biological arsenal.
After an attack on CONSEC by a scanner, which publicly challenged and defied them in the aforementioned head-exploding scene. Dr Ruth seeks out Cameron, who is a very special scanner to him. Ruth trains him to use his power, to control the voices and hone his abilities. A scanner can link with another nervous system, can crush bones and melt organs and as we have already witnessed, can blow heads quite literally apart. With the help of a drug, developed by Ruth for CONSEC, called Ephemerol, Cameron can make the voices disappear and he readies himself for Ruth’s mission.
It seems there is a scanner underground. This is a group led by Daryl Revok (chillingly played by Michael Ironside in his career best role), who at one time was one of CONSEC’s guinea pigs and is now creating a powerful army of telepathic soldiers to wage war on humanity. Cameron must infiltrate this group and bring down its foundations.
This is shown for the first time in the UK in a widescreen print, and the print is really great, again the sound options are presented in optional Stereo 2.0 channel, Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS, but these latter two, although they are much louder than the original stereo recording have lots of background hiss and distortion.
For extra content (UK only) we have the excellent American Film Institute's
"The Directors" series (also available on Anchor Bay’s other Cronenberg release,
‘The Brood’ ), profiling his career up to ‘eXistenZ’ and featuring interviews with Cronenberg and many of the actors who have worked with him, including Holly Hunter, Michael Ironside, Peter Weller, Deborah Harry, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Willem Dafoe. This documentary has never been available before in the UK, but for those in the US, it is available on it’s own. Here, it is more than a worthy addition to this package’s content. Trailers for all the
‘Scanners' movies are included as well as some text biogs and film notes and the first part of a featurette called ‘Inside Scan’ which has movie journalist and horror fan Alan Jones talk lovingly of David Cronenberg and the movie.
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