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Scanners

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For other uses, see Scanner (disambiguation).

Scanners
Theatrical release poster
Directed byDavid Cronenberg
Written byDavid Cronenberg
Produced byClaude Héroux
Starring
CinematographyMark Irwin
Edited byRonald Sanders
Music byHoward Shore
Distributed by
Release dates
  • January 14, 1981 (1981-01-14) (United States)
  • January 16, 1981 (1981-01-16) (Canada)
Running time
103 minutes[1]
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish
Box office$14.2 million

Scanners is a 1981 Canadian science-fiction horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring Jennifer O'Neill, Steven Lack, Michael Ironside, and Patrick McGoohan. In the film, "scanners" are people with unusual telepathic and telekinetic powers. ConSec, a purveyor of weaponry and security systems searches out scanners to use them for its own purposes. The film's plot concerns the attempt by Darryl Revok, a renegade scanner, to wage a war against ConSec. Another scanner, Cameron Vale, is dispatched by ConSec to stop Revok.

Plot

Private security firm ConSec plans to showcase potential "scanners", people with exceptional powers of telekinesis, telepathy, and mind control. However, when ConSec's scanner attempts to read the mind of a volunteer from the invited group, the scanner's head explodes. ConSec officials surmise that the volunteer was himself a scanner and initially take him into custody. However, he is able to use his powers to kill the men guarding him and escape.

ConSec security head Braedon Keller advocates shutting down scanner research, but program head Dr. Paul Ruth disagrees, noting that the assassination and escape have shown the weapon's potential they had sought to demonstrate. Ruth attributes the operation to a scanner named Darryl Revok, who Ruth says has his own underground network of scanners in competition with ConSec's program. He argues that ConSec should recruit scanners to their cause to infiltrate and bring down Revok's group.

To this point, scanner Cameron Vale has lived an unhappy life as a social outcast, due to his inability to cope with the unceasing stream of other people's thoughts bombarding his mind and his not even knowing the cause or nature of his condition. After bringing Vale into ConSec, Ruth has administered a drug called ephemerol, which inhibits his scanning ability. Ruth asks for Vale's help, explaining that he is a scanner and that Revok is killing all scanners who refuse to join him.

With Keller working for him as a spy, Revok learns of Ruth's plan and dispatches assassins to follow Vale as he begins his search for Revok by visiting a scanner named Benjamin Pierce. They kill Pierce. Before he dies, Vale reads from his mind a name - Kim Obrist. Vale tracks down Obrist, who has formed a telepathic alliance with a group of other scanners. Vale attends a meeting, but assassins for Revok strike again, with only Vale and Obrist escaping. Scanning an assassin, Vale learns of a drug company, which he then infiltrates. He finds that large quantities of ephemerol are being distributed under a program called "Ripe," run by Revok himself through ConSec. Vale and Obrist return to ConSec, where Ruth suggests Vale scan the computer system to learn more about Ripe. Meanwhile, Keller tries to kill Obrist, but she escapes. Keller kills Ruth while Vale and Obrist flee the building.

Vale accesses the computer network through a telephone and pulls ephemerol shipment information. When Keller discovers this, he orders the computer system destroyed while Vale is plugged into it. The plan backfires and the computer explodes, killing Keller and leaving Vale and Obrist to investigate the shipments. They visit a doctor on the list of recipients, where Obrist suddenly discovers she is being scanned by the unborn baby of a pregnant woman. Vale concludes that Ripe's purpose is to disseminate ephemerol to pregnant women, making their babies scanners. The two are ambushed by Revok's men and abducted.

Revok reveals that ephemerol was a tranquilizer developed by Ruth for pregnant women that had the unintended side effect of causing the unborn children to become scanners. Ruth learned of this from providing the drug to his own wife during her pregnancies. The two resulting children were Revok and Vale, who, as the longest-term scanners are more powerful than any other scanners. By mass distributing ephemerol, Revok plans to create a new generation of scanners, giving him the manpower to execute a plan of global domination over non-scanners, with Revok heading this new empire. Revok asks Vale to join, but Vale refuses and the two have a final scanning showdown against one another: their battle causes the blood vessels in their bodies to begin to burst open - Vale's body ignites and his eyes explode, while Revok's eyes turn white and he shouts in agony.

Soon thereafter, Obrist enters the room to find a charred body on the floor. She hears Vale's voice coming from the corner of the room: in the corner is Revok - his head scar gone and his eyes the same blue as Vale's. He faces Obrist and announces, "We've won", in Vale's voice.

Cast

Production

Scene of the explosion of a ConSec scanner's head

The story is structured as a futuristic thriller, involving industrial espionage and intrigue, car chases, conspiracies, and shoot-outs (including a gruesome scanner duel between Vale and Revok at the end). It was the nearest thing to a conventional science fiction thriller Cronenberg had made up to that point, lacking the sexual content of Shivers, Rabid, or The Brood; it was also his most profitable film until The Fly six years later.[citation needed]

Because of the oddities of Canada's film financing structures at the time, it was necessary to begin shooting with only two weeks' pre-production work, before the screenplay had been completed, with Cronenberg writing the script between 4 and 7 a.m. each day throughout shooting. Since the production design team had no time to build sets, in some instances the crew had to drive around looking for things to shoot. As a result, Cronenberg has said, Scanners was a nightmare to make.[citation needed]

Make-up artist Dick Smith (The Exorcist, Amadeus) provided prosthetics for the climactic scanner duel and the iconic exploding head effect.[2][3]

Release

Scanners was released in the United States on January 14, 1981, by Embassy Pictures, and grossed $14,225,876 at the box office.[4]

Reviews

Scanners maintains a 80% on Rotten Tomatoes,[5] with positive reviews from Chicago Reader, the Austin Chronicle, and TV Guide. Film professor Charles Derry, in his overview of the horror genre Dark Dreams, was far more positive, citing Scanners as "an especially important masterwork" and calling it the Psycho of its day.[6]

Film critic Roger Ebert gave Scanners two out of four stars and wrote, "Scanners is so lockstep that we are basically reduced to watching the special effects, which are good but curiously abstract, because we don't much care about the people they're happening around".[7] In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "Had Mr. Cronenberg settled simply for horror, as John Carpenter did in his classic Halloween (though not in his not-so-classic The Fog), Scanners might have been a Grand Guignol treat. Instead he insists on turning the film into a mystery, and mystery demands eventual explanations that, when they come in Scanners, underline the movie's essential foolishness".[8]

Awards and honors

Although Scanners was not nominated for any major awards, it did receive some recognition. The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films gave the film its Saturn Award in 1981 for "Best International Film", and, in addition, the "Best Make-Up" award went to Dick Smith in a tie with Altered States. The film had also been nominated for "Best Special Effects."

Scanners also won "Best International Fantasy Film" from Fantasporto in 1983, and was nominated for eight Genie Awards in 1982, but did not win any.[9][10]

Soundtrack

Mondo released the Howard Shore score for Scanners, alongside The Brood, on vinyl; it features cover art by Sam Wolfe Conelly.[11]

Legacy

Scanners spawned sequels and a series of spin-offs; a remake was announced in 2007, but as of 2014 has not gone into production.[12] None of these projects has involved Cronenberg as director.

Sequels

Spin-offs

Remake

In February 2007, Darren Lynn Bousman (director of Saw II, Saw III, and Saw IV) was announced as director of a remake of the film, to be released by The Weinstein Company and Dimension Films. David S. Goyer was assigned to script the film. The film was planned for an October 17, 2008, release, but the date came and went without further announcements, and all the parties involved have since moved on to other projects.[12] In an interview with Bousman in 2013, he recalled that he would not make the film without Cronenberg's blessing, which was not granted.

Television series

In July 2011, it was announced that Dimension was planning to adapt the franchise as a television series.[13]

References

  1. ^ "SCANNERS (X)". British Board of Film Classification. February 10, 1981. Retrieved October 19, 2014.
  2. ^ Vincent Canby "Scanners" New York Times (14 January 1981); "Scanners" Variety (1 January 1981); "Scanners" Cinemafantastique
  3. ^ Kinnear, Simon (August 15, 2011). 50 Best Movie Special Effects. TotalFilm.com archive Retrieved January 24, 2012
  4. ^ "Scanners". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved January 8, 2009.
  5. ^ http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1018315-scanners/
  6. ^ Derry, Charles (1987), "More Dark Dreams: Some Notes on the Recent Horror Film", in Waller, Gregory (ed.), American Horrors: Essays on the Modern American Horror Film, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, p. 173, ISBN 0-252-01448-0
  7. ^ Ebert, Roger (January 1, 1981). "Scanners". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved January 8, 2009.
  8. ^ Canby, Vincent (January 14, 1981). "Scanners". The New York Times. Retrieved January 8, 2009.
  9. ^ IMDB Awards
  10. ^ Allmovie Awards
  11. ^ Mondo Selling ‘Scanners/The Brood’ OST On Vinyl Tomorrow
  12. ^ a b Fleming, Michael (February 27, 2007). "'Scanners' moves to new dimension". Variety. Retrieved December 8, 2015.
  13. ^ Andreeva, Nellie. "Dimension To Develop 'Scanners' TV Series". Deadline.

Further reading

  • "Scanners: Retro Classic Film No. 17" by Jonathan Hatfull, SciFiNow No. 77, pages 122 - 125. Discussion of the first film's story, actors, director, etc., and its production. Four pages, 10 photos including opening exploding head scene and final scene, large format British magazine; issue appeared on newsstands in the U.S. in March 2013.
  • "Heads you lose: Scanners", Total Film, No. 213, December 2013, pages 140 - 141. Illustrated discussion (color photos and drawings) of the exploding head scene with comments by writer-director David Cronenberg, producer Pierre David, and actor Stephen Lack.
  • "Explosions of Grandeur" by Michael Doyle, Rue Morgue Issue 146, July 2014, pages 30 – 32. Comments by Cronenberg and Lack on the difficulties of the production: unfinished script, motorist tragedy, and special effects of opening and closing scenes. Three pages, eight color photos, including behind-the-scenes.
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