By Simon Thompson
The work of Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg is like that of a great musician in the mould of David Bowie or Prince, in the sense that he’s continuously re-invented what we think of as a David Cronenberg movie since starting his career in the 1970s. While Cronenberg’s later works such as a History Of Violence, Crash, and Eastern Promises are all fantastic, it’s his body horror era from the late 1970s, beginning with his debut Stereo and ending with Naked Lunch, that stands as my favourite era of his work. Although I consider Videodrome to be his absolute masterpiece of this era, Scanners stands in a completely respectable joint runner-up spot alongside his remake of The Fly.
The plot of Scanners takes place in a reality almost identical to our own except for one detail, which is that out of the earth’s 4 billion population there are 237 people with deadly telepathic abilities, known as scanners. When an unscrupulous corporate scientist named Dr Paul Ruth (played by Patrick McGoohan, aka Number Six from The Prisoner) finds scanner Cameron Vale ( Stephen Lack), he pushes him on a collision course with another scanner, Revok ( Michael Ironside). Dr Ruth wants Revok taken out of the picture, because he is leading a group of rebel scanners in a personal vendetta against the corporation that Ruth works for.
What makes Scanners work is that Cronenberg’s script is a beautiful balance between a serious, intellectual, science fiction drama, which explores the ideas of free will, nature vs nurture, corporatism, and the military industrial complex, but also realises the need to placate the visceral human desire to watch people’s heads exploding on a cinema screen.
Shot cheaply on location in both Toronto and Quebec, the cinematography in Scanners is sparse and minimalistic. Cronenberg contrasts the greys of the exterior locations and harsh lights of the interiors with a pretty, warm, almost 1950s EC comic book style colour scheme, which makes watching the movie feel like you’ve discovered a lost Wally Wood illustration.
The acting is excellent across the board. Patrick McGoohan, of course, provides weight and gravitas in his role as Dr Ruth making him a chillingly believable monster rather than a one dimensional caricature; Stephen Lack plays it subtle and understated as Cameron Vale conveying the strange sense of powerlessness which Vale has in his own life despite his immense gifts; and, finally, Michael Ironside steals the whole show as Revok, a character so compelling and layered that you’re never sure what he is going to do next, or how you even feel about him to begin with.
Overall, in an era where science fiction was about making everything cute and child friendly, Cronenberg’s Scanners (alongside The Thing and Blade Runner) showed that brooding, gut-wrenchingly intense and intelligent science fiction wasn’t going to go away quietly. Although treated to pretty mediocre box office and less than stellar reviews upon its release in 1981, Scanners has since gone on to be re-evaluated as a cult classic, influencing generations of filmmakers and other artists-a testament to its power to shock and intrigue decades after its initial release.
Scanners is available now on Blu-Ray and 4K from Second Sight Films.
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