Scanners (1981)
David Cronenberg's modest, low-budget Canadian horror films had already made ripples in the cinema community......but this one really put him center stage throughout the world.
Blowing a guy's head up in a shower of brains and blood will do that for ya every time.......
Nobody forgot that opening scene in 'Scanners', a thriller about people born with superhuman telepathic-telekinetic powers. (Yes, the very same mutated people that Brian DePalma would also run wild with in 'Carrie' and 'The Fury')
Yes, indeed.....they can rummage through your mind like a forensic search team and when pissed off enough, their mental waves can burst your blood vessels, make you spontaneously combust or simply blow your top......literally, like the first guy in the movie.
All sorts of evil corporations and nefarious characters seek to round up the Scanners for dark purposes. These include a professor whose biochemistry genius helped create them. (Patrick McGoohan) and a bonkers Scanner who wants to assemble his own private scanner army.(Michael Ironside, kicking off his long career playing lethal sneering villains.)
Swept up in the chaos is a powerful superscanner who's been forced to live as a homeless bum (Stephen Lack, whose crazed eyes go wider than the 'Village Of The Damnced' kids) and a fellow clandestine scanner (Jennifer O'Neill).
Cronenberg piles on the graphic violence as Ironside sends his hitmen on a carnage tour to hunt down Lack, but not for the reason you might expect. A surprise twist erupts as Ironside and Lack engage in a scanner Clash of the Titans and we all get our faces fully rubbed in Cronenbergian body horror.
Horror completists and all fans of the director's work shouldn't miss this one, where you can sample all of the influences that would permeate the A-List, top-of-the-line films he graduated to.
Forget your hats.....just hold on to your heads. 3 & 1/2 stars (*** 1/2)
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