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Scanners (1981)
May. 10th, 2023 08:15 amRecently I watched the 1981 movie Scanners. It's something of a cult classic, and it's been on my list of old movies to watch for a while. The movie spans the categories of science fiction and horror flicks. It's written and directed by David Cronenberg, who later directed (and has a screenplay writing credit for) scifi-horror crossover The Fly (1986). Scanners stars Patrick McGoohan, Steven Lack, Michael Ironside, and Jennifer O'Neill.
BTW, yes, this is the movie with the infamous exploding head scene. That one scene, shown in, like, every trailer for the movie, is a large part of its status as a cult classic.
Scientists at one shadowy company are cultivating scanners to use as spies. When their best scanner is killed by another, more powerful scanner they realize that some other shadowy organization is working against them— and plans to take over the world with scanners. They recruit a troubled young man with scanner powers, Cameron Vale (played by Steven Lack), to infiltrate the rival organization and stop it.
The threat here is a combination of scientific research and mystical power. "Evil scientist" was a horror staple of the early 1980s as science was advancing rapidly compared to popular understanding. Basically, everything Boomer adults of the time had learned in high school was being rendered obsolete by the cutting edge of science and technology, and that scared them.
Also very early 1980s in feel is that the perpetrators of the threat are shadowy, quasi-governmental organizations. Today we'd say, Oh, those are DARPA funded labs and private military contractors (PMCs). Back then such affiliations were not well understood and seemed sinister. Plus, the use of such companies as bad guys was a common thing in film for several years after the Nixon Watergate scandal. In fictional stories, companies did evil things with government money while the government pretended not to know.
As the credits rolled I said to myself, "It's like the writers couldn't quite figure out how to complete the story they started, so they all got high on cocaine then wrote whatever came to mind." Remember, this was 1981. Doing coke was totally a thing creatives in New York and LA did. Unfortunately coke-heads are wont to crap out a turd and convince themselves it's art.
The reality of the situation is that "the writers" was just one person, director/writer David Cronenberg. And he noted that he was on a very rushed schedule. For financial reasons they had to start filming before he finished the story. So it seems like there probably was an "Oh, shit" moment where he realized he needed to just write something to finish the story on time. And he was probably snorting coke, too. That's just the times.
BTW, yes, this is the movie with the infamous exploding head scene. That one scene, shown in, like, every trailer for the movie, is a large part of its status as a cult classic.The Premise
The premise of Scanners is that a small number of people, called Scanners, have telepathic power. When they "scan" a person it causes a bit of pain, like a headache and a nosebleed. But they can also use their power to control other people, forcing them to inflict harm on themselves, or cause physical harm directly through the telepathic link.Scientists at one shadowy company are cultivating scanners to use as spies. When their best scanner is killed by another, more powerful scanner they realize that some other shadowy organization is working against them— and plans to take over the world with scanners. They recruit a troubled young man with scanner powers, Cameron Vale (played by Steven Lack), to infiltrate the rival organization and stop it.
What Works: The Mood
Watching Scanners reminded me, this is very much what movies looked like in 1981. It's not just the very-late 1970s fashion nor even the vaguely sinister architecture of new buildings at the time (the community college campus built near my childhood home around the time totally looked like one of those this-is-a-sinister-quasi-governmental-secret-lab places) but it's also the construction of how horror movies were horror.The threat here is a combination of scientific research and mystical power. "Evil scientist" was a horror staple of the early 1980s as science was advancing rapidly compared to popular understanding. Basically, everything Boomer adults of the time had learned in high school was being rendered obsolete by the cutting edge of science and technology, and that scared them.
Also very early 1980s in feel is that the perpetrators of the threat are shadowy, quasi-governmental organizations. Today we'd say, Oh, those are DARPA funded labs and private military contractors (PMCs). Back then such affiliations were not well understood and seemed sinister. Plus, the use of such companies as bad guys was a common thing in film for several years after the Nixon Watergate scandal. In fictional stories, companies did evil things with government money while the government pretended not to know.
What Sucks: The Writing
The writing fell apart in the last third of the film. The plotting was okay through the beginning and the middle— not great, but okay especially for the standards of the time. Then in the third reel I was like, "WTF is this? WTF is that? How could those characters know X and not also know Y? Did the SFX people actually read the script before shooting that scene?"As the credits rolled I said to myself, "It's like the writers couldn't quite figure out how to complete the story they started, so they all got high on cocaine then wrote whatever came to mind." Remember, this was 1981. Doing coke was totally a thing creatives in New York and LA did. Unfortunately coke-heads are wont to crap out a turd and convince themselves it's art.
The reality of the situation is that "the writers" was just one person, director/writer David Cronenberg. And he noted that he was on a very rushed schedule. For financial reasons they had to start filming before he finished the story. So it seems like there probably was an "Oh, shit" moment where he realized he needed to just write something to finish the story on time. And he was probably snorting coke, too. That's just the times.
