Repo Man director Alex Cox calls David Cronenberg a renegade scientist from America's top secret Fort Dietrick laboratories, desperate to tell the world about the latest in genetic viruses, cyborg technology and hyper-toxic venereal diseases. This film has none of those, but it does have mutants -- a theme common to The Brood, Dead Ringers and ExistenZ. Though he'd been making feature films since 1969, it wasn't until this film was released in 1981 that the general public became aware of Cronenberg and his dark philosophy.

Early in Scanners, a man addresses a room of people — it is a conference, of sorts. He is a scanner, and intends to display his ability to the group. A man volunteers, sits beside the speaker, and is soon scanned (the process involves, in the scanner, tightening every muscle, clenching teeth, and glaring evilly). Unbeknownst to the speaker, the volunteer is a renegade scanner, and more powerful. The two become awkwardly tense, convulse a bit, and the speaker’s head explodes — it is a perfect culmination for the building action.

“Scanning” involves telepathy although, exampled here, the process causes harm in the scanned. In other hands this ability may have been depicted in a humorous or respected manner (What Women Want) — it would be a talent, whereas here it is a handicap as well as skill. The conflict arises between two groups of scanners: one set for world domination, the other set to stop them.

Early on, at a mall a man is captured (his scanning sent a woman into convulsions), sedated, and tied to a bed. He awakens in a roomful of people. Immediately their inner monologues and thoughts are heard to him. This room contains people silent to us; to the scanner their thoughts join in an unbearable commotion.

The man is Cameron Vale, and he is enlisted to discover the whereabouts of a man named Darryl Revok. Revok is another scanner who exploited his ability, resulting in violence and murder (the aforementioned speaker is but one victim). In his search Vale finds a deeper truth to the conflict. Vale gains knowledge of the drug ephemeral, used to suppress scanners. The drug was also given to women in the 1940’s during pregnancy. Furthering this coincidence, all the known scanners are roughly the same age.

Strong visuals and action can easily redeem a film with poor acting (and often does); however, here Steven Lack’s performance as Cameron Vale is awful. The man does not act — every single line he has is delivered in a stilted manner, as if he is merely reciting lines to be heard. He inflects no emotion or tone. Lack is so completely inappropriate that it distracts, unfortunately, from what is an otherwise engaging film.

The narrative suffers from convolution (it is trademark science fiction — deliberately paced, with technology infused with philosophy). At the point the film’s narrative — suffering from musings buried in scientific (or invented) jargon — the film becomes an effects showcase, a final duel between scanners. As the presence of Rick Baker in the credits promises, the conflict involves prosthetics and latex mechanisms — here, spurting blood and fire. Because scanning is an imagined behavior, its capabilities are dictated by those creatively responsible for the telling. And because this film is directed by David Cronenberg, the final conflict is expectedly gruesome.

Rumsey Taylor | © 2004 notcoming.com |

Cronenberg on Scanners: 'difficult--the financing was difficult, some of the actors, the antagonism between them--particularly Patrick McGoohan and Jennifer O'Neal. The weather, which was bitterly cold--we were shooting in unheated stages--well, they weren't really stages, they were just leftovers from "Man and His World," y'know, [Montreal's] Expo '67. And, the fact that it was an era where the money was there before the movie was there--quite different from this era, because of the tax write-offs. All the doctors, dentists, and lawyers would realize around October that they needed a tax write-off so around November all this money would show up, but you had to shoot the movie by the end of the year. The money had to be spent for them to get their write-off so, basically, I was going into that movie without a script. It was a very complex movie with a lot of effects and a trying set of circumstances. I was writing things at lunch that we would be shooting after, and, of course, we were as is usual shooting out of sequence.'