Scanners

Where Cronenberg’s two previous commercial features dealt with the horror of the contamination of the body by disease passed wilfully between humans, “Scanners” takes up the related theme of the permeable boundaries between the body and technology, one that he would continue to explore in many of his subsequent films. Both sci-fi horror and conspiracy thriller, the film focuses on a group of humans who were born with immense telepathic powers as a result of a drug prescribed to their mothers during pregnancy. While most of the scanners are social outcasts struggling with mental instability, one of them has mastered the lethal power of his gift to control and destroy the minds and bodies of humans, and is recruiting others to form a group of ‘warrior telepaths’ in a bid for world domination. A doctor from the company that originally developed the drug helps a ‘good’ scanner to control his powers and use them repel this evil. Notorious for a now classic horror moment early in the film when the rouge scanner uses his power to literally explode a person’s head, “Scanners” marks a return to the experimentation of Cronenberg’s early work. Performance highlights are Patrick McGoohan’s eccentrically entertaining cameo turn as the benevolent doctor, and Michael Ironside as Revok, the evil scanner. Cast also includes Jennifer O’Neill and Stephen Lack.