Weirdhouse Cinema: Scanners

dad when I was young. I remember being a little kid, like, I think, sort of hearing my dad needle my mom by being like, remember Scanners, um, And so long before I ever saw it, I knew the one thing that everybody knew about this movie, which is that Scanners is a movie in which a guy's head explodes, which means Scanners is a certain type of film, and that type is the film that is apparently widely known for one thing that happens in it, for one particularly shocking, horrifying,

or otherwise uniquely salient scene or moment, whereas the rest of the film is much less known. I think this might be like the prime example of that. So, like, if you mentioned Scanners to most people, I think maybe the majority of people will be able to say, like, oh yeah, and't that the movie where a dude's head blows up, but not many people will know anything else

about it. I was trying to think of other examples of this, Uh, like the kind of movie that is mostly known for like one moment or scene in isolation, and people don't remember that much else. Multiple Ridley Scott movies come to mind. Uh. I I am generally very intimately familiar with Alien because I've watched a bajillion times, but I think that's sort of one of them. It's a movie where a monster bursts out of a guy's chest at the dinner table, and maybe most people know

that but don't know anything else. Rachel suggested another Ridley Scott move, of the Thelma and Louise. It is the movie where a car goes over a cliff. Yeah. Like, I don't think I've seen Thelma and Louise, but I've seen that scene, you know, Like that scene has been presented to me, Parodies of that scene have been presented, and therefore I feel like I know Filmo and Louise, even though I do not. A one that came to

mind for me. A more recent example might be Gamma Do Tours The Shape of Water, the movie in which a woman and a fishman make love, albeit I think tastefully an off screen if I'm remembering correctly, or one of those two things. Um, but but that's the film where there's a lot more going on there, and then I think it's a pretty solid picture. But that was the thing that was, you know, showing up in late

night monologues and so forth. In other ways, I think you might look at films like Basic Instinct and Bad Lieutenant that can come to mind for for other reasons that people would call them out for, Oh, there's this one scene where something happens, um and in a backwards

way to channel another fishman movie. The promotional material for nineteen eighties Screamers, which was the US Corman re release of an Italian film, Island of the Fishmen, uh tried to promote itself as the movie in which a man turns inside out, despite no such scene occurring in the motion picture. That's a good idea that the I can't think of. Another example would be like if Scammer Scammers Scanners was known as the movie where Ahead explodes, but

it didn't actually happen in the movie. Yeah, that would that would be really really lame. Whereas in reality, I mean, they knew they had a great scene there. I was reading that originally that scene was going to happen first, but given the cinema and movie going culture of the time, they knew It's like, well, people gonna come in late. Um, I guess they put anyone who's watching films at the

theater in. Please tell me. I'm assuming there were fewer trailers, because now you've got a solid half hour of trailers. But the concern was at the time, well, people are gonna come in late, They're gonna miss our key scene. We've got to offset it a bit with some other introductory and material. I mean, it is a really great scene. So anyway, I grew up hearing about this movie in the terms previously described. I saw it at some point after which I thought it was a cool, creepy thriller.

I had, you know, modestly positive feelings about it. I also thought there were a few elements that didn't work so well, and they were some of the same elements that have been criticized by critics, especially when the movie initially came out, but in the intervening years, I think critics who have looked back on Scanners have had a more robustly positive appraisal of it, and I found myself having having exactly the same reaction. On my most recent rewatch,

I gained a much more unqualified appreciation for it. I think Scanners is just just awesome, and some of the criticisms or the things about it I used to criticize, I now actually think our strengths. This movie is so much more than an exploding head. Oh absolutely, and I I was also surprised at how well it held up

and and how much I enjoyed it. In past viewings, I think I had that similar experience where it's like, well, there's a lot of great things going on here, but A, B and C don't really work for me all that well. I think for the most part, my criticisms were somewhat dulled in my my recent rewatch of the film. So it's gonna be fun to get into all that now.

You were talking about your your dad being a fan of it and talking about the exploding head, and all I have to say from my part, before I even knew there was an exploding head scene in this movie, my earliest memories were of the box art at the VHS rental store and the poster for it, which I think would have also been on the wall of the VHS rent Oalds store, because this alone really freaked me out. Chef Kiss, Yeah, this is the one you see. You see this in a lot of the current materials for

the film. This is the one that shows Michael Ironside's character and just full rending, like straight limbed scanner mode. Uh nearly like a full body representation, just completely scanning out. It's just absolutely terrifying. It represents, of some it's supposed to represent the way the character looks in the final showdown of the picture, which is in and of itself a horrifying sequence. I would say more horrifying, maybe less shocking,

but more horrifying than the headburst scene. This art, I had to look it up. This is apparently post art by Joe Anne Dailey, who is credited with some other really awesome VHS ara poster in box art stuff like creep Show, Popcorn, Prison Prisons, one that I never saw, but I remember distinctly this weird like skull prison looking VHS box art. Oh yeah, she did something truly amazing here.

So it is representing the scene where like the veins are popping out and all that, but there's also just, um, there's an aura around Michael Ironside and the way that all of the textures of his skin and clothes and his hair or like they're like right sing up off of him, as if he's literally sublimating, like his body

is is so hot it's turning into a gas. Yeah, And there's this it's not even like a subtext to it because like the post art, some of the poster art and the lobby cards I was pulling up for it, it has the taglines on it like ten seconds the pain begins, fifteen seconds you can't breathe, twenty seconds you explode. It's saying, look at this horrible vision of a man. This could happen to you. Watch this movie to find out why. That's what happens when you combine pop rocks

and and uh PEPSI right. Yeah. But at the same time you have this poster really does capture I think that a lot of the shocking imagery of that final scanner showdown this vision of psychic power as this thing that kind of channels violently through you and will have left unchecked, just completely destroy you. In the process. It reminds me a bit of them, which of course came out a decade later. Toby Hooper is spontaneous combustion that we talked about on the show. Yeah, um, yeah, I

see the similarity. Though I have to say I think The Scanners is in a league above spontaneous Combustion. But yes, I see what you're talking about. Yeah, but but both films do have a similarity and that they're both films where psychic powers of different types are dangerous to everyone that there. This is this wild, unchecked energy and also has potentially disastrous effects for the individual that is experiencing them. Yes, all right, Joe, what's your elevator pitch for this film?

All right? Cameron Vale can hear people's thoughts and it makes his life a living hell. He wanders the underground malls of Canada as a miserable outcast until he meets a mysterious scientist who informs him that he is a Scanner and there are others like him. But instead of a community of brothers and sisters, Cameron discovers a secret

war and now the war has discovered him. That's pretty good. Yeah, that secret war is key to it, Like and that's I think one of the things that works so well about this film is there are all these different layers of intrigue to it as you proceed through the picture. Well, I would say, actually, the secret War is um something

that I really noticed on this viewing of it. It really stood out to me as a shared theme between Scanners and one of Cronenberg's other big movies, Videodrome, because if you think about it, both movies are about a naive protagonist who gets inadvertently swept up into an ongoing secret conflict between at least two existing factions or forces, which I'm not sure why, but that in itself is

just like a really exciting, almost intoxicating plot dynamic. It's specifically the thing about the fact that, like, the conflict is ongoing and it's done by these powerful forces, but

it's like invisible to to all regular people. Uh And uh so you know, Videodrome and the cathode ray Mission are already out there, they're plotting their campaigns against one another, but somehow the war has remained in the shadows, and suddenly the main character is made aware of it and sucked into it and is being played by one side against the other. And in the case of scanners, the secret war is between an amoral arms manufacturer or arms

manufacturing and security firm, and that's consact. And then on the other hand you have this murderous front of the scanner underground. Yeah, and I love how the players in this game and the secret war, if you will, they're not nation states, they're not governmental agencies. They're corporations and um, social movements and uh and in rogue organizations that again are just kind of all in the not even all in the underworld, like some of it is in a

corporate boardroom, you know, that kind of setting. And I guess, I guess that does kind of match up with some overarching themes that you see in media from the eighties. You see it in cyberpunk, see it, and uh in various other pictures where it's yeah, we're in this this this realm, where it's it's corporations against corporation and and

these other entities. I think Um Cronenberg and and also William Gibson are both have both proven themselves of the is really good at it also integrating these uh yeah, the social movements, artists and other things into these weird views of the future and of course of the present. Now, um, I mentioned one of the taglines for the picture, actual taglines for the picture earlier, but uh, here are just a few more. There's of course, their thoughts can kill.

That's kind of what the picture is about. Also, there are four billion people on Earth two d and thirty seven or scanners. I like that. That's kind of cherry picked from the screenplay that's referring to a part in the film. They're kind of bending it a little bit, but it gives it that kind of provocative feeling that

that works well with the tagline. Yeah, I don't know if that's actually accurate to the script because I think the number is two d and thirty six, and that comes from the list of known scanners, the ones that are known to concept, but there are other ones that are not known to them. Yeah, and and also it's not just like this is the percentage of the human population that are just going to be scanners. We find

out why there are scanners in the picture. But the one that really stood out to me this time is you were about to experience the outer reaches of future shock, and that of course that taglines obviously invoking the nineteen

seventy Toffler book Future Shock. Uh, And it's one that I hadn't run across before regarding this picture, But it really got me thinking about this film in a different light because Future Shock just remind everyone, and it was this this concept that essentially you were dealing with, or would be dealing with, a kind of trauma brought on by rapid advances and technology that would outstrip our ability

to understand them or change with them. Um, So don't don't think of it necessarily as some sort of like a movie future shock, like a technology is advancing too quickly and I my head explode, But more of a of a like a cultural malaise even But I wonder if if the scanner, that the individual that is a scanner in this picture is in some ways kind of

a physical embodiment of this idea of future Shock. They're they're changed, they're potentially dehumanized in the process of this change, and they run the risk of being less than themselves and more of a conduit in the film by doing nothing, one man is almost reduced to a kind of zombie state, and other becomes a monster, and two other characters we meet are able to channel this change into creation and community,

but it's like they're all dealing with it in different ways. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean I think about one reaction too, if you take the concept of future shock seriously, I think one of the most common reactions to it actually is a kind of disengagement or listlessness that comes from the fact that, like, if you can't understand the force is that are driving the world, it just kind of makes it feel like it's pointless to try to do anything or change anything

because you don't you don't understand how the machine works, so you know, why would you even try to mess with it? Um and I I see similar themes running around in scanners, like the idea that you your agency can be removed when there are forces governing your life that you don't understand. Yeah. Absolutely, all right, let's go ahead, and here's some trailer audio for this one. In this case, we're drawing on the actual radio spot, which is a lot of fun because everything is audio. This is the

audio as it's intended. You are not supposed to glimpse and exploding head in this trailer. Ten seconds the pain begins, and your flesh and your brain fifteen seconds. You can't breathe, It chokes you, it destroys you. Twenty seconds, Yeah, you explode. Experience the terrified of Scanners. Their thoughts can kill. RATEDAR

restricted under seventeen, not admit about parent. I like this radio trailer too, because it's again a very sonic experience that I think delivers on some of the the just the excellent music and sound effects in this picture that

help bring about this weird, creepy, psychic feeling. The movie that only has good music, but I would say the sound design is really important in Oh, I don't know, moments that feel less like music but more just kind of like the pulses and throbbing and drone sounds that occur when the scanning session is taking place. Absolutely now, before we get into the plot. Just if you're wondering, well,

where can I watch Scanners? Well, it's widely available. You can streain this one, purchase it, rent it very many places in eating as part of the Criterion collection. This one's uh up. This one's cemented in the collection alongside the likes of Fiend Without a Face. That's wonderful. I like when a film that was initially regarded by reviewers as as trash or as just you know, some scummy

bit of garbage. It gets the Criterion stamp of approval. Yeah. Yeah, because you look back on writings about Cronenberg during this time period and a lot of times that he's treated with a sense of danger, like this is a dangerous weirdo they're letting make films, um and do we dare watch it ourselves? And to a large extent, I feel like we're past that, Like we've seen the uh, this this full career by Cronenberg, a career that's still ongoing, and we have a more complete understanding of what his

sensibilities are and yet many of them are weird. Um. But I guess there's less of a feeling of this is a dangerous man making dangerous films. And yet in Rewatching Scanners, I could definitely feel some of that. It's especially in the final showdown between our our main Scanner characters,

that there was an unhinged, unsafe energy to it. I mean, I I love his films by and large, but yeah, it's it's hard to maintain that illusion of absolute danger after you've seen his scene in Jason X, for one, and after you've seen his hair yes, it's it's a marvelous head of hair. All right, Well, let's talk about him a little more in depth. Yeah, David Cronenberg, the director and writer this picture born yree as of this recording,

very much still alive and still making films, thank goodness. Yeah, what what can you say? Legendary Canadian master of the weird, profit of the New flesh. His first full length film was nineteen sixty nine Stereo, and from there he went on to direct nineteen seventies Crimes of the Future and a whole string of TV projects before returning to the weird with nineteen seventy five Shivers, followed by nineteen seventy

seven's Rabid and also the Norman Nine racing movie Fast Company. Um, that's what I was actually tempted to do on the show here, because we've been kind of building up to actually doing a David Cronenberg film on a podcast series about weird films. It seems like it shouldn't have taken us two years to get here, but it's we had to pick the right one, And for a little bit there, I was thinking, well, we almost can't pick a regular

Cronenberg film. We should just do Fast Company. Yeah, there's a lot of I mean, like, I think we tend toward movies that are a little bit like funnier or more fun to discuss, And a lot of Cronenberg movies are really fascinating, but they're also like really downers. They're like really bummers in one way or another. Um, I think Scanners is not quite that. So it's on it's on the lighter side of even as dark as it is, it's on the lighter side of the Cronenberg spectrum. Yeah

you would. I don't think you would ever describe Scanners as fun, but it's but compared to the larger philmography of Cronenberg, yeah, it's it's it's on the fun end of the spectrum. Anyway. After Fast Company, that's when he did a trio of films that kind of, I feel like, kind of set the tone for Cronenberg Weirdness, The Brood, Scanners, and Video Drome, all three of those between nineteen eighty three. He followed these up with nineteen eighty three Stephen King

adaptation The Dead Zone. Uh. He did one episode of Friday the Thirteenth, the series Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch ninety three s M. Butterfly Existence two thousand two Spider, and from here he drifted more into I guess serious crime drama, violent crime drama for a spell there with two thousand five History of Violence in Eastern Promises. Then he did a Dangerous Method and uh, and then Cosmopolis. But at this point, oh, there's also a map what a map of the Stars I think is in there as well. Um,

but now he's back to his roots. He's returned to his roots with two Crimes of the Future, which I'm to understand has no actual connection to uh, the nineteen seventy film c Times of the Future beyond the title. But yeah, he's he's he's back working on weird films again. I mean not I guess they're all weird films, but certainly weird speculative films. And I believe his upcoming picture

is going to be about Communion with the Dead. Okay, which was I've never seen it, but as exist Ends, the one that I've heard described as just a remake of Video Drone but with video games instead of TV. Yeah, I think that's that's that's a pretty fair statement. Now I haven't seen it, probably in twenty years, but I remember it having that kind of like, uh, you know, creepy new flesh vibe, but with game cartridges and weird

uh flesh guns and so forth. I just bring that up because it's the video games, of which I think has got to be like the funniest era of games ever, like the Nintendo sixty four PlayStation one kind of era, like those early three D games that if you look at any game from at here and now, chances are it's gonna be hilarious. Yeah, unless you had a Cronenberg sixty four. Now that now that was a console. You took your cartridge and you uh you just I shouldn't

explain how it all worked anyway. Scanners is based on a couple of different psychic scripts that he apparently had going in the late seventies, the Sensitives and Telepathy two thousand. These were apparently both films he was going to pitch

to Roger Corman and uh. This whole thing, though, was rushed into production to take advantage of Canadian tax subsidies at the time, so uh, he was apparently writing scenes for Scanners, oftentimes the morning before they would film later in the day, so it made for a rather demanding production overall, I think there may have also been some issues as some conflict between some of the cast members,

if I'm to understand correctly. Uh So, I don't think it's necessarily film that Cronerberg himself looks back on as being like, you know, this this great experience. And maybe I mean, when if we considering it being a film that was that was rushed, maybe you can see some of the rush and the resulting picture. But I don't know it it's still pretty solid. I don't know. Yeah, I mean I would say that the writing is actually

quite good. I think, yeah, yeah, there's maybe one speculative leap that doesn't work so well, but we'll we'll get to them. I know exactly what you're talking about. We'll get there. Yeah. But yeah, this film certainly made its mark,

and not everyone understood it at the time. Um it uh, some of the critics didn't get it, but it it earned its place in in cinematic history and certainly developed a cult following and garnered what four sequels over the years, I think two proper Scanner sequels and then also to Scanner cop films. Yeah, I think I've seen all the sequels, and I don't really remember much about them, except that I think we had a really fun time watching a

uh probably the second Scanner cop movie with like check dubbing. Yeah, yeah, they and they keep uh, they keep threatening to remake Scanners, either either as a movie or a TV series, and I think it it's never come together for one reason or another. I think at one point director said they would do it if Cronenberg said it was all right, and Cronenberg said nah, And so it didn't happen. Um, they didn't give it his blessing. Uh. So, I don't know.

It's it's one of those, like a lot of these things, Like, yes, if it had to be remade, I can imagine somebody could do it correctly and it went a way that would would be a cool and insightful exploration of the world that is created in the original picture. But on the other hand, we don't really need it because the film works exceedingly well on its own. Agreed. Now, I do want to mention one more thing about Cronenberg before we move on from him, which is recurring themes of

cronenberg movies. Of course, Cronenberg makes a lot of movies in the horror genre, and unlike the most common horror movie threat of straightforward danger to your life. Right, That's what most movie monsters are, bad guys are. They're threatening you with physical violence of some kind. The most common threat in Cronenberg movies, I would say, is not direct

threats to your life, but threats to your self identity. Uh. He makes movies most often that are about a loss of the boundaries of the self, for a change of the self into something monstrous, and a lot of these have a very uh kind of like squishy tacticle quality to them. Like his movies are known for body horror, where there's some kind of disgusting change happening to your

body and you are becoming something alien. In the case of Scanners, I would say the broader theme does hold, but it's less about the body and more a type of mental identity horror, like there are threats to the integrity of the mind or the soul. Yeah, Like it's it's not just oh my Torso is now all VH player, it's that added level of what does it mean that I am now a physical receptor for media? That sort of thing Like it's it's it's always a more more

thoughtful and intellectual exercise, but always weird. I do want to drive. It's easy with someone like Cronenberg to get really you know, you start talking or thinking about it too much, and you're like, yeah, man, it's just this is a metaphor for the way that we think about ourselves and media. Like, yes, all of that is true, but also it's just really weird too, Yes, undeniable. I mean.

The other thing is like, I didn't really mention this so much because it's hard to describe exactly what it is. But all of Cronenberg's movies that I've seen have in common this creepy, uneasy Canadian vibe. There's just something that's that's an energy that all of them share, uh, that is difficult to put into words. It's sort of a type of coldness, a kind of observing of human human reaction with a bit of a distance that that makes it a little more alien and a little more dangerous

and a little more removed from mundane reality. Yeah, yeah, I would agree, but it is hard to really nail down exactly what it is at times. Alright, getting into the cast here, and I have to mention one of the things I always love about cronenberg films the character

names are always really interesting. And our first character here is the character Camera and Veil, but the actor who plays Camera and Veil our our main protagonist here also his His real name also sounds like a Cronenberg movie name, Stephen Lack, So I might end up getting mixed up and referring to the character as Stephen Lack or to the actress Camera and Vail, because they both kind of come together for me here, I will deduct no points.

So Stephen Lack was born Canadian act or active from the mid nineteen seventies through around two thousand and two. This is probably his biggest role, though they also pops up in a small role in Cronenberg's Dead Ringers. He also wrote and starred in nineteen seventy seven The Rubber Gun, directed by Allan Moyle, and another couple of films of note es head on in Perfect Strangers. Perfect Strangers being a Larry Cohen erotic thriller, I had no idea there

was such a thing. If he could put butts in seats, then then Larry Cohen probably wrote at least wrote a screenplay for it. Perfect So, regarding Stephen Lack and the character Cameron Vale, this is one place where I want to fully criticize and rebuke my own previous opinion about Scanners. I remember thinking in the past that a weak point in this movie was the protagonist is sort of a cipher.

He lacks defining individual characteristics and often seems to be operating without a sense of personal agency, you know, like you often don't quite know why he's doing what he's doing. He's just sort of been launched into an action by the people around him, and he just follows through. Now, upon reviewing, I still think this assessment of the character is true, but I actually don't think it's a shortcoming of the movie at all. I think it is literally

the point of the character. There are multiple scenes exploring the effects of telepathy on the development of personality. This character is a is a scanner. He's a telepathic character, and the movie posits that if a person has the ability to read other people's thoughts and they have no power to control this ability or turn it off at will, it essentially prevents them from developing a personality or from

having individual thoughts. So in the world of Scanners, the sort of lost, wandering, untreated scanner's mind is like living in a world where every single person in your vicinity is constantly just incessantly screaming at you with a megaphone, And in such a world would you ever be able to develop a voice of your own. So I think the fact that Cameron Veil is sort of like an adult with the mind of a newborn, launched on missions he doesn't understand following through with them for reasons that

don't quite seem clear. Uh, you know, is the things are going on without his agency and he's just sort of like going along with the flow. It makes complete sense in my opinion. The arc of the movie is the character going from this state of undifferentiated mental cacaphony and uh and lack of agentic control over his own missions and behavior to the point of having a mind and purpose of his own. I completely agree. Yeah, this is a performance that I think in the past I

saw was a weak point I saw. I think I focused too much on the similarities between this performance this character and poor performances are poorly defined characters in various other be movies. Um, but but yeah, I think it.

It totally works within the context of the film here. Uh, for all the reasons you point out um and the and and also I have to to say, like, there are a lot of movies that feature what I think of his doll men or baby men, where you have some sort of reason for a person being like this, like maybe they're a clone or they're an alien in human form from another world, and sometimes it just plays completely stupid on the screen and you just feel like

you're watching a farce. But Veil doesn't really fall into this category, at least for me, Like he's still molded by the world. He's not a complete babe in the woods, at least in many respects. We see him with help become far more functional. Uh so, there there seemed to be plenty of things about him that are unmolded, of course, and he's never developed a personality. His inner thoughts have have just been the deef fault networks and and inner

thoughts of those around him rather than his own. So he is he's almost like this, this robot, but in a way that I don't know it just they Cronenberg is able to strike the right balance here. And of course credit to lack too. No, I know exactly what you're saying, Like he's not the he's not the sort of pure doll man kind of creature you're talking about. This is a character who has faced a lifetime full

of experience and hardships. So he's not without experience. He's had tons of experience, He's had tons of struggle, but he just hasn't really had a self throughout all of it. Yeah. Yeah, and uh. And also it's never played out for comic relief either. Yeah. Yeah, he's never like, what is love doctor or anything like that, ignoring also the fact that it's Dr Ruth. But we'll get to talk to Ruth

in a bit. One more point on Stephen Lack, though, I have to say, great eyes on this actor, and he has he's just wonderful, um like wide eyes that are just brimming with childlike in a sense, but also the sense of absorption, that childlike absorption, like everything is being taken in by these wide eyes. Yeah, so I disagree with my former self. Thumbs up to the character and thumbs up to the performance by Lack. All Right, that was our chief protagonist. Our chief antagonist is Darryl Revack,

played by the wonderful Michael Ironside. I would argue Michael Ironside is in the running for best film Heavies of all time. He emits fumes of menace. And it's not just his physical presence. I mean he does have a great villain or hinchman. Look, he's a great actor, and every line reading in this movie is like the tip

of a box cutter being extended. It's just perfect, superb villainy. Yeah, it's an intense performance that absolutely works with his character who is again it's this is a Scanner character, much like several different Scanner characters, but he has an extreme individual uh so you need an extreme performance powering it. That's not to say that it's just always cranked up to ten. There are also plenty of scenes where it's

a much more subtle performance. But when when Ironside needs to crank it up, he can crank it up like few others. I'll suck your mind dry. Ironside was born in nineteen fifty Canadian character actor who's played just yeah, so many fantastic heavies and authority figures and maniacs over the years. His work goes all the way back to the mid seventies, but the Scanner seems to have helped

propel him into larger villain rolls. He followed this one up with one Surfacing Night, two is Visiting Hours and the fun sci fi romp uh Space Hunter Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, in which he plays an evil, snarling cyborg opposite Peter Strauss, Molly Ringwald and Ernie Hudson. WHOA, Yeah, it's a fun one we made with that. One's kind of on the in my back pocket for some time when we're not sure what pictured a view for weird

else it sounds wonderful. He did a lot of TV work smaller pictures after that, but in the mid eighties he appeared in Top Gun Uh. He was in Watchers, the adaptation of the Dean Koont's novel with the Talking Dog. He's in The Highlander to the Quickening We can't bring that. Yeah, no, and he's a richter in ninety nineties total recall Grey's heavy role in that and Yeah, he's just continued to keep the tap flowing with villain and heavy rolls like he's a This is an actor who has worked a

lot and continues to work a lot. Two d seventy one credits on IMDb as of right now, so he's done a lot of TV tales in the crypt the nineties Outer Limits, Canada's Danger Bay that I watched as a kid. Um And uh, there's also a film by the name of Neon City from that I have not seen, but I know has been recommended to us by by viewers rather listeners. You're not viewing this, you're listening to it, alright.

Another Scanner character in the picture is Kim Obrist. It's another nice cronin brick character name played by Jennifer O'Neill Born. I'd say another great performance. Jennifer O'Neil is excellent in this role. In her character is a very interesting one in contraposition to the other sort of powers in the movie that this character emerges essentially when Cameron Vale discovers a third faction. So you've got the powers of Consect, the the Evil Corporation and Revic Scanner Army, and they're

going at it against each other. And uh, of course Revic wants to control scanners as like an army to sort of dominate the weaker non scanner human beings. Contact wants to control an individual scanner's power to use them as a weapon for the highest bidder um. And these

are portrayed as potential like lone wolf psychic assassins. And in contrast to the sort of like individual will to power of these other two uh factions going at each other, kim Oprist seems to be starting what looks almost like a Scanner religion or something where one where the Scanners deliberately sort of reject individuality and commune with one another, and they host rituals where they fully inhabit one another's minds. In these group circle rituals, they even form a sort

of like like a shared collective consciousness. Uh And there there's a haunting scene where they're doing this. They're fully mind melding in a circle. They keep talking about like, you know, lose yourself. It is power, you know what do they say? Like it is terrifying, it is beautiful or something. And then Revick's assassin's bust in and start

shooting them and some of them are killed. And in the escape after the scene, Jennifer O'Neil's character turns to Cameron and says, now I know what it feels like to die. Yeah, it's a great performance and I do

love as well. How this is as presented as this sort of third option in in the the scanner chain that's occurring in the world, Like what if it what if we didn't approach this as as as a as a method of violence, or why what if we didn't approach this as like a security threat but an opportunity as a way of coming together. But I do think

that's the case. But also I like that Kim Oberst's community is not presented as just purely wholly like good and wholesome, Like there's something kind of freaky about there. You know, the scene where they're all communing with each other, like they they are clearly being entranced by something, some other level of consciousness they're achieving by by linking their minds together in that way. And while they're not they don't have overtly violent intentions that we see in the movie.

There's a sense of like, we don't know what this is becoming. This is just could be some other thing that could be great or could be awful. Yeah, there's potential dangerous opportunity here, And we get a sense of that too when they kind of fight back and catch the assassin's on fire. Um, like there's a sense or at least this and so I got from it was that this was not an individual movement, but this was maybe like a reflex of the collective consciousness that they

were summoning between their their collective minds. Yes, and the performances is pretty solid too. Yeah. This Jennifer O'Neil Brazilian born actor and former model who had quite an acting career in the sixties and seventies. Especially. She was in Howard Hawke's last film, Real Lobo in nineteen seventy. She worked with such directors as Robert Mulligan, Otto, Premater, Blake Edwards and j Lee Thompson, and she was the titular character and Lucio Fulci's The Psychic from seven Oh. Interesting,

a little bit of overlap there. Yeah, So I don't know if that if they were like, we need a psychic for this picture, and they're like, well, I just saw this great Italian movie. Well let's get Jennifer O'Neil. All Right, we've mentioned the scientists that leads our protagonist into um well, gives him a sense of himself back, but also them and gives him a spy mission. This is Dr Paul Ruth. So yes, the character is Dr Ruth played by Pat McGowan who through two thou and

nine another great performance. I mean again, the cast is just great all around. I think uh McGowan always brings kind of interesting and unexpected take to his roles. I think one great example of this, which is a movie that I overall do not like. I am not a fan of Mel Gibson's Braveheart, uh for multiple reasons, but I have always found McGowan's acting choices as the villain in that movie he's played plays King Albert the first

you know, the Long Shanks. He plays him as this absurdly psychotic villain, but in a really irresistible kind of way, chewing the scenery but with this odd, bemused, high pitched voice. Yeah yeah. And in this picture as the as the Dr Paul Ruth, he has this kind of there's the kind of shiftiness to him, you know, like we often see him looking away or looking down at the floor, not making eye contact with the with the characters that he he's interacting with. That it creates an interesting energy.

It's We've seen similar characters of this type and plenty of other films, you know, the he's sort of in the Mad Scientist Mold. He has also in this kind of uh, you know, teacher and savior mode or it seems to be for a large portion of the film. Um, but but he has a has a different energy. I love the moral ambiguity of this character. Like is is this character a good guy or a bad guy? I mean he's clearly some of both and in and not just transitioning from one to the other, like he's he's

both in an ongoing capacity. Yeah. So McGowan, I don't know. He might have been the biggest name in the film at the time and and maybe even so in retrospect. An American born Irish actor, probably best remembered as the Prisoner on the late sixties TV show, but he was also in the successful Danger Man from the early sixties. He was in seventy nine Escape from Alcatraz, Any Fives, Braveheart, Is A Time to Kill, and one of his final credits was a voice actor in two thousand and two

his Treasure Planet. I've never seen Danger Man, but that that's a funny name. Yeah, you know, early sixties spy TV show. I think I may have watched an episode of it back in the day. Do they have gadgets? I don't know if this was gadget earro you know, this might it might have been too soon, but then the prisoner certainly leaves an impression that suitably weird late sixties show that some of the other bit players are

also pretty fun. Robert Silverman plays Benjamin Pierce, a sculptor, a scanner sculptor that we meet in the in the film three. Kind of a weird Canadian character actor whose work lines up with a couple of folks already mentioned, especially Cronenberg. He pops up in Rabid the Brood, Friday the thirteenth, the series Naked Lunch, Existence and Jason X, which of course Cronenberg did not direct, but Cronenberg acts in as one of the mad scientists that an actually

resurrects Jason Vorhees. I think he gets like a spear thrown through his torso. Yeah. Um. Robert Silverman is also in head On, which we referenced earlier, and he's in water World. Oh. I don't remember him in that, but he's great in this. He's good in his Cronenberg roles. He and I think in both of his Cronenberg movies that I've seen, he plays like a character who had some kind of bad interaction with the villain that the protagonist is seeking out and the and the protagonist has

to track him down. Yeah. Uh so we also have a villain by the name of Braden Keller. This is a this is like a Hinchman character played by Laurence Dane, who lived ninety seven through two thousand and two. Canadian character actor who was in a ton of things including Happy Birthday to Me from N eight one, Heavenly Bodies from four, Bride of Chucky from Head On, dart Man two, and much more. He did a lot of TV work in the sixties and seventies, and being a Canadian actor,

of course he was on uh nineties Outer Limits. He also pops up on Danger Bay and a show called Seeing Things that I'll describe it just a second. He's a he's a good villain. He's h he's sort of a suit villain. As opposed to whatever Michael Ironside is. I would say, Um, if Michael Ironside's character is the Clearance Bodicker of this movie, uh, Lawrence Dane plays the Dick Jones of the movie. Yeah. Yeah. Ironside is anti establishment, or so it seems, and and Dane is his establishment.

For sure. There is a character that is just credited as first Scanner. Uh. This is the kind of Frank oz loooking guy whose head explodes in that famous scene

from Scanners. This character is played by Louis el Grande born ninety three, and I think I've mentioned del Grande on the show before due to his various connections, but Canadian actor who is mostly known to me that I saw him well well before I saw Scanners, because he was on a series on CBC titled Seeing Things that ran from one through seven, and I think he was

also one of the creators of the show. But it's kind of a lighthearted psychic detective show where he, you know, he's always having visions, he's seeing things with his psychic abilities, and in doing so he helps to solve the crime in the episode of the week I would watch that. I like his his vibe. He's only got a very short scene in the movie, but he's quite memorable in it, and not just for what happens to a plaster cast

of his head. Yeah, he he gets to address the audience and yeah, yeah, it's a nice little performance bit, partly very memorable. He's done a lot of work over the years, especially in Canada. Other credits include Happy Birthday to Me of unknown origin from eighty three, the nineties Outer Limits, goose Bumps and Lex and a couple of behind the scenes credits here. Howard Shore did the score for this movie. So score by shore Um. Born nineteen

forty six. Howard Shore's, of course a Canadian composer and conductor who's worked extensively in film. He's probably best known for his work on the Lord of the Rings movies for Peter Jackson. He won an Oscar for at least one of those, and he's also scored all but one of Cronenberg's film since nineteen nine. I believe The Dead Zone is the the the exception in that list. Uh. Not only did he write the score to Cronenberg's The Fly, but he also wrote an opera based on the film

in two thousand and eight. But wow, that's something. Yeah, I've I've never seen it, but I remember seeing stills from it when this was first making the news, and I was like, Oh, this looks amazing. This is this is the opera for me. Would it be the gooeyst

opera ever? I don't know. Actually, some classic operas get get quite bloody yeah, but you can't have people slipping in the slime, so there's only so much you can It looks like they had a pretty cool functional brundle fly costume for it, because you get into unique challenges for a stage performance like that. Anyway, as far as Howard Shore's score for Scanners goes, I really liked it.

I was. I listened to it in isolation prior to rewatching the film, and it has It has this kind of boisterous main theme that kind of sounds like all of the Mountain king Um. But in general it has a lot of these sort of creepy, kind of late seventies early eighties vibes that I guess are also this is probably just Cronenberg energy. As well said you can't really divorce Cronenberg's films from Shore's music all that much.

But outside of the more traditional sounding stretches the score, there's a lot of like weird electronic warbly bits and drone stretches that I absolutely love, uh so, and also some like percussive chaotic segments as well. Even a lot of the traditional instrumentation sounds unusual, like there are these moments of just sort of descending disson and horns. Yeah, so it's it's really good stuff. This is definitely this is a score that's worth listening to as an album

in my opinion. And before we move on, yeah, let's go ahead and just hear a sample from the score. This is just a taste of main title and public skin. And finally, Dick Smith has credits on this film. Special makeup effects consultant Dick Smith Live through two thousand and fourteen just one of many special effects pros on the motion picture that he's often singled out as playing a key role in the opening head explosion. Well it's not opening, but you know, early head explosion in the film, and

the final showdown. He's a special effects makeup legend who worked on such pictures as The Godfather, The Exorcist, Taxi Driver, and Death Becomes Her. He won an Oscar for his work Amadeus. Other notable films include Altered States, seventy two episodes of the TV horror anthology Monsters, Tales from the Dark Side, The Movie Star Man. Oh, and this one is pretty fun n sevens The Alligator People. Ah, Well, I hear the dogs choke on their barking when they

see alligator persons in the bog and fog. Yeah, the very same. All right, well, let's get into the plot for this film. Let's head to the mall. It does start in the mall, doesn't it, But it's it can't be just any mall. It's a really creepy mall. It really is. I don't know if Cronenberg picked it because it was an especially creepy looking mall, or if all malls in Canada were this creepy at the time. I don't know. How would you describe this mall? Oh? I

mean it's yeah. I I didn't look up where they filmed this. It seems like there was some great location scouting in this picture. It's kind of a splendid scarlet sanctuary of a mall, but at the same time, not in a way that feels manufactured. Like there's a scarlet sanctuary feel to some of the settings in Dead Ringers, for example, there's very much intentional and very much works

in that movie. This feels like maybe they just found this really weird crimson augmented mall environment in Canada and it's just, Oh, it's great. It's one of these where I was just taking in all the little like I wanted to deposit and see what the stores were in the background, you know, um part of it being sort of the cultural um archaeology of watching anything said in a mall from the eighties totally, but also I would emphasize that it feels like it's underground. I did not

detect any hint of natural light whatsoever. And the ceilings are aligned with just rows and rows of light bulbs projecting down from the ceiling. Yeah, it's it's absolutely splendid. And that there's somebody looks like. There's this one scene where our protagonist pauses in front of a poster for hot Pogos and it shows a like a cartoon of a kid holding a corn dog, and I was like, what is what's going on? Here? Is our hot corn

dogs called hot pogos and Canada I just never realized it. Well, I looked it up and according to Wikipedia, in Quebec and Ontario, a battered hot dog on a stick is called a pogo and it's traditionally eaten with ordinary yellow mustard,

which is a solid choice. I think yellow mustard is your best condiment for any corn dog experience, at least if you're eating a a real corn dog, and a real corn dog, in my opinion, should either be a fake hot dog at the center, you know, like a soy dog or something, or if you do eat meat, it should be a meat hot dog that is on the verge of being fake meat, you know, like it's so processed that the difference between it and a soy dog is just negligible. But either way, mustard. You gotta

have mustard. Yeah, I gotta get that yellow mustard out for your pogo, So Canadian listeners, I was not aware, but I like it. It sounds more fun in some respects than corn dog Pogo. Might go for the hot pogo next time. Well, here is where we meet our protagonist, Cameron Vale. He is wandering the food court of this subterranean underworld mall, snagging people's leftovers, and he he looks disheveled.

He's wearing kind of a dirty trench coat. He's being presented as a oh, sort of disoriented, um uh, skulking outsider, and he's just grabbing people's leftover pogos and stuffing them in his mouth. But unfortunately, he catches the attention of a couple of ladies at a nearby table and we begin to hear them speaking. They're they're saying things like, oh, I've never seen anything so disgusting in my entire life. We're being stared at. They let creatures like that in here.

It's just awful. Wait a second, Like, are their lips actually moving while they're saying these things? That's not so clear. And Cameron Vale here he I guess we don't know his name yet, but this this character, he's uh, he's

bothered by their talking. We see it appearing to cause him almost physical pain, and so he turns his attention to these these two ladies, and the one of them who seemed to be speaking, though maybe her lips weren't moving, starts to have something that looks like a migraine, which evolves into something that looks like a seizure. Uh, and she's collapsing on the floor. People are trying to help her.

But this interaction gets the attention of a couple of tough looking dudes nearby, and they chase Cameron and immobilize him with a dart gun. Yeah, there's a fun action sequence where he tries to get away from him by jumping from one escalator to the next, and it it looked looked kind of dangerous. I was like, I was like, I don't, don't get caught between them escalator and the ceilings. Sort the situation. But he manages to make it over,

but then succumbs to the tranquilizer dart. Yeah, he collapses on the escalator and I had the same reaction. I was like, Oh no, don't let like your shirt collar get caught in the Yeah. But anyway, Yeah, So he he wakes up later strapped to a hospital bed in a large room where he is confronted by Dr Paul Ruth Patrick McGowan, who gives him kind of a speech. He you know, he says, Cameron, why are you such

a derelict? Uh. They've never met before, but he's introducing himself and and he says he can tell him why he's a derelict. He says, you're a scanner and that has been the source of all your agony. But I will show you now that it can be a source of great power. And from here dozens of people and begin to walk into the room. Dr Ruth just has them come in and sit in these rows and rows of chairs. And the more people pour into the room,

the more Cameron is in distress. We hear all of their internal monologues at once, as a kind of great ocean of voices, and this is this is torture for Cameron, you see, He's like writhing in pain at hearing all of their voices at once. But eventually Dr Ruth provides the cure. He gives Cameron an injection of a drug called ephemarole, and it makes the voices stop, and Cameron has relief. Almost he has a relief as if for the first time in his life. Now next comes the

most famous scene in the movie, the demonstration. So we see that we're at the headquarters of a corporation called CONSAC, and there's a demonstration being held for a private audience in an auditorium, and we we meet a sort of timid, bookish man in a suit and glasses on stage. This is Louis del Grande or del Grande. I don't know how you pronounced his name. Yeah, I've been saying del Grande, but you know, it's just that's because it's such a big performance, you know, it's it's a big um uh.

And so this guy begins by giving a speech. He says, I would like to scan all of you in this room, one at a time. I must remind you that the scanning experience is usually a painful one, sometimes resulting in nosebleeds, earaches, stomach cramps, nausea, sometimes other symptoms of a similar nature.

But he assures them there is a doctor present. He points out the doctor Gatineau, and he asks that no one leave the room once the demonstration has begun, and he calls for volunteers, and of course there's a long, awkward silence because I don't know who knows what scanning is, who wants to be scanned. But finally a board looking man in one of the back rows raises his hand and comes to the stage, and why it is Michael Ironside. What do you know? And it's not just Michael Ironside.

He has an interesting ring shaped scar above the bridge of his nose. Yeah, I wonder what that is. Perhaps we'll find out later. M So, the scanner doing the demonstration asks Michael Ironside to think of something that the scanner would have no way of knowing, something that will not breach this purity of his organization. Maybe a personal detail from his life, and Michael Ironside says, all right,

I have something in mind. And when you watch the scene, knowing what's coming, you can see little sinister flourishes, like little smirks and flares of delivery from Michael Ironside as as he's getting ready for this thing. They kind of go by you the first time. For example, Michael Ironside asks the scanner if he has to close his eyes, and the scanner assures him that it doesn't matter, and scanning begins. Both men start by getting very intense looks

on their faces, like they're very focused. Uh, maybe perhaps both struggling. Maybe perhaps both in a little bit of pain. And because we don't know what we're looking at, you could just assume this is what it looks like when the scanner demonstrator read somebody's mind. But this just escalates and things look weirder and weirder. Eventually it really starts to seem like something might be wrong, like are they supposed to look like they're in this much distress? Uh?

And there is an awesome, painful droning sound in the musical score. I feel like, actually, just in a recent movie, I was like, do not include painful noises in the score of your movie. I take it back. This, this is why you should have it in Scanners. That was

completely wrong. And then suddenly, without warning, the demonstrator's head explodes, and I can see exactly why even people who haven't seen the movie or don't remember anything else about the movie will remember this scene for the rest of their lives. It is one of the most shocking, disgusting, unexpected, unbelievable moments I can think of in any movie ever. I would go so far as to describe this scene as

an almost awe inspiring act of filmmaking. Like, yes, it is gory and gross, and so part of its effect is like pure vulgar exploitation of our squeamishness, But it's also a masterful exercise in in like building uneasiness and the sense of uncertainty and suspense and then relieving that tension with a spectacle that is so nasty it leaves people absolutely speechless. Yeah, you can even knowing what's coming.

And again, you don't even have to have seen the film because to know what's coming, because the moment of the explosion has just been reported. It's become a meme. You can find it all over the place. It's a it's a gift for Jeff, you know, on various formats and on Discord and so forth. But when it when it hits in the film, Yeah, there is that feeling of release that built up pressure, like literal psychic pressure

inside uh this character's head. And then the reaction to from all the characters that are present is pretty amazing. Like even uh iron size character Reva is. I don't know that you would say he's horrified, but there is a sense that he is perhaps a little shocked at how how gross the result sor or how powerful um his attack was. Like he he kind of looks down at the exploded head, going like, oh, yeah, I know, I've read stuff about how this special effect was accomplished.

Like I think they tried it several different ways and thought it didn't look right, and they eventually landed on the way that ended up in the final movie, which involved a shotgun. Yeah, which is not surprising given how many shotguns are in this picture. I know, I was really this is one of the things on this viewing that I was kind of commenting to myself. I was like, Wow, lots of shotguns in this picture. This picture has a

thing for shotguns. Uh so, yeah, a shotgun was apparently used, A shotgun loaded with salt I believe, Um, I used a latex head filled with I believe, dog food leftovers, fake blood, rabbit livers, all sorts of gross stuff. And I think one of the challenges apparently was they wanted it to explode, but they couldn't have it explode with spark because they wanted it to feel very organic, um, at least in this one instance of of psychic energy, and the picture like the ideas that like this is

not it's not fire, it's not electricity per se. It is some sort of almost organic process it's taking place here. Yeah, so it's disgusting. But also, I mean, I just want to emphasize again how if you haven't seen it before and you don't know it's coming. I don't know if that's possible for anybody, because you know, everybody knows that about this movie, But if you didn't actually know what was coming going in, it would be so shocking and

leave you absolutely baffled. And I love that, you know, the audience is just as baffled as like the characters in the room are. But then there's this moment of focus where people start turning to Michael Ironside and it's like did he somehow do that? Like did the scanner

get scanned? And so Michael Ironside's character is apprehended by the Concect security guards, the head of secure He instructs the staff doctor to give Michael Ironside a shot of ephemarole, which that's the same stuff that Dr Ruth gave to Cameron Veil to quiet the voices earlier. And we we later find out that a femarole is a scan suppressant. It is a drug that essentially turns off a person's scanner abilities. So they're giving the shot to this guy

to disable him. But for some reason, the doctor when he goes to give the shot to Michael Ironside, Oh, it's like he can't quite line it upright. It's something's going on in his head, and he accidentally gives the shot to himself instead of the Michael Ironside's hand. And in this we're seeing the more subtle powers of the of the scanner. Here, he's able to easily manipulate and puppet those around him into into doing things they don't intend to do. Right, So, while the concept cagoons are

transporting Michael Ironside to another location by car. They get overwhelmed. They strangely start wrecking their own cars and turning their guns on themselves, while the prisoner just looks on smiling. Uh and uh. Well after that, time for a corporate leadership meaning and uh and what do you know? The scientists who earlier apprehended Cameron Vale this Dr Ruth. He is there at the table with the with the CEO

of Consact. So the big Boss Travillion says, in a line that I found so funny I wrote it down. He says, last night, we a concect chose to reveal to the outside world our work with those telepathic curiosities known as scanners. The result six corpses and a substantial loss of credibility for our organization. I don't know why I keep wanting to compare this to RoboCop, which I guess came later. But the RoboCop meeting with the ED

two oh nine when he's like, it's just a glitch. Yeah, I mean, I think the clamp character and grim Ones too has a has a very similar line where it's like, like the grim Ones have been rampaging and he's like, like,

the people could actually get killed, you know. That's what's what's gonna do for the the company, what it's going to do for So anyway, in this scene, which I thought was a very interesting and well written scene in the way it kind of unfurls the scenario of the movie, we we learned that the company as a new director of internal security, Michael Ironside, made the previous one shoot himself in the streets, so they've got a new guy

named Braden Keller, and Keller recommends that the company discontinue its scanner program at once. He says, our company is supposed to specialize in weapons and private armies, not fantasies. And Dr Ruth replies that, hey, the fact that six of their people were killed and the company was embarrassed in front of industry heads by a lone assassin using only scanning techniques in itself proves that scanners have immense potential as weapons, so we got to keep developing them

as weapons. But Keller replies coming back saying, but hey, how many scanners do we have working with us right now? Ruth says as of last night, Nune, so apparently they had one guy cooperate, and that was Louis del Grande, the demonstrator. He was there one scanner on the payroll, and Michael Iron's side blew up his head. So they have none now. But then Ruth says, Concect Surveillance has gradually lost contact with all the names of scanners on our list, and I submit, this is not an accident.

I think we've lost them to a program far in advance of ours. Oh and that's a good moment, he says. From my study of the situation, I've come to the conclusion that there is a scanner underground developed in North America. Uh. And Keller, you know he's not buying this. He says, that's ridiculous. You can't get two scanners to sit in the same room together without going berserk. They can't stand being around one another. But nevertheless, Ruth says, nope, they're

working together, and the underground has a leader. In fact, he's probably the man we met the night before, and his name is Darryll Revock. So he's got a solution. Either we let Daryl Revock just strike get us without retaliation, or we infiltrate his organization and decapitate it, and he's got just the weapon to use on that, the one scanner he just found, Cameron Vail. And so the board approves. They're like, all right, well, let's move with that program.

We don't we don't really need to see a presentation on it. We don't need to meet this guy. We trust you to do what you do. Dr Ruth. And here we reunite with Cameron Vail. Now Ruth is back in sort of the gentler mode, less in the like we must have weapons and assassin's mode. Now he's talking to Cameron again and they discuss how Cameron is not

used to talking much. This is the scene where they establish how with other people's thoughts always filling his head, he was never able to develop an identity or a personality, and that the injection of a femaroal to inhibit his scanning abilities. Since then, he's had a kind of clarity in a sense of self that he never had before. But he's also afraid because for the first time he can quote here himself. Yeah, And this is something that this whole view of scanning is is so nicely rolled

out throughout the film. You learn a little bit more and more about it and it never feels like a like an info dump or anything um because yeah, you learn that it's like what's going on with scanning is kind of that they describe it as like uh, nervous systems interacting with each other. It's this kind of like communal um engagement between one mind and body and the other. And then it just comes down to like levels of awareness and abilities to manipulate or block that shared state.

So with with Cameron Veil, it's like this this idea that you know, it's not just that the thoughts are coming in, but there are neural processes that he hasn't really had a chance to develop because the neural processes of others have been flowing in to take up that

space in him. Yeah, I think this aspect of the movie is so interesting, and I wonder if I almost detect in common with Videodrome a subtle media critique, which is the idea of okay, so the scanners are unable to develop a healthy self identity without either some kind of treatment like taking a femmerole the silence the voices, or using some other method of getting other people's voices

out of their heads. So like some scanners seem to have been able to cope by like living in total isolation and uh and sort of like we we learned about one scanner later who does this through creating art um and I wonder could this be a commentary on NonStop passive consumption of media such as radio or TV, which if it fills your head constantly with other voices and you're never alone with your own thoughts, could Cronenberg be maybe presenting a subtle argument that that sort of

in a way prevents you from having a personality of your own. Yeah, I think that's a that's a he said, read on it. I think there's a lot of merit to that. So everyone turn off the podcast No, no, no, keep listening to the podcasts NonStop at a double speed, a triple speed. It's got to be triple You can do triple speed if you do a half dose of epemarole on top of that. I mean, it's going to vary from listener to listener, but that's a general way

you want to handle it. We also in this part of the movie get some some background on Darryl Revok, which is Dr Ruth shows Cameron some old footage of him in an institution of some kind after he drilled a hole in his own skull. That's the scar on his forehead. Uh, to to let the pressure out, to release the pressure, And I think we get the impression that that he means like the voices, and so this

was Revlick's way of trying to cope with the cacophony. Yeah, this is a nice bit of Trepid Nation sploitation here, and and of course this is based on the very real history of Trepid Nation. You want to learn more about trap Nation, go back into the archives. We did an episode of stuff to blow your mind about it

several years back. But here we get some indoctrination, right like Dr Ruth is teaching Cameron that Revck is his enemy and that reVC will try to recruit him to serve in his crusade to destroy the society that created him. And so Ruth wants to encourage Cameron to get to Revick first. So how is he going to find Revick? Well, from here, I guess maybe we can take a lighter skip through the plot because we don't have to go

seene by seeing on everything. But some of the main plot points are He's got a first lead, which is another unaffiliated scanner, a guy named Benjamin Pierce, who is an artist, a sculptor who apparently has been able to keep himself saying by creating art. Yeah, creepy weird art

with heads and all sorts of cool stuff. It makes for a great scene, like when they when he's talking to the Cameron Vale, they actually go inside a large head, like an enormous human head that has like a little like area with pillows in it inside or something, and so they're inside the head talking about the voices inside their head and it's it's it's it's nice. It works. So Veil tracks him down through some trickery and uh

and some scanning techniques. But then he also, uh, you know, when he meets him, he's like, I need to find Darryl Revok and and dude wants nothing to do with this. Benjamin Pierce is just like, leave me alone. You don't want to do that. Go away. But while Veil is their assassin's attack, Revlick's guys show up with shotguns and it's just shotguns. Wall to Walt. Both types of bad guys in this movie have shotguns. The concept guys have shotguns Revlick's guys have shotguns. It's like there was a

sale at the shotgun store. Yeah, a lot of shotguns and this picture. But after this attack, Veil survives sort of psychically repelling the assassins. But Pierce as he dies tells Veil psychically to find somebody named Kim Oberst. And this is where here in this section, Veil goes to Kim Obersts. Would you call it like a scanner commune sort of? Yeah, yeah, kind of a Kanyeane situation going on. Now. We already talked a bit about what happens at this place.

They they seem to be engaging in a kind of ritual where they enmesh their minds with one another to achieve something previously unknown, beautiful and terrifying. And while they're doing that, Revic's assassin's track Veil down and attack yet again. There's a big like car chase scene, and only Veil and Kim Oberst survive. Yeah, the great sequence where the

bus is crashed through a record store. I don't know about you, but I really enjoyed checking out all these various records in the background, some of which were instantly recognizable, Like they have multiple copies of a Frank Zappa album. Back there you see a Bowie album. But then there was other stuff I just had to look up. There's this one individual that there's a poster for Herman Brood, and I was like, has that made up? Is this some sort of a nod to the Brood or something?

But I know this is a This is a Dutch musician that I just wasn't familiar with. It was a a pretty big deal in some circles. Um and you know, various other little details I had to look up and uh yeah, just a just a well crafted sequence and and and well constructed set um in in in a in a film that you're not going to remember for its bus crash. Well anyway, after this whole sequence, Veil

uncovers a conspiracy. He does some corporate espionage and figures out that Michael Ironside is working out of the headquarters of a company called BioCarbon Amalgamate. Uh and he he sneaks in and he does some computer hacking and determines that they are manufacturing large quantities of a femarole and shipping them out for some secret purpose. And he wants to find out why. But access to that information is restricted. Yeah.

I love the hacking in this because it is very I mean, it's very much in line with what you also see Ian Ridley Scott's Alien. This is that period where computers worked by asking them a question and then the computer would tell you. You You would type request access and I would say access denied, and then you would

type request override the access denied. So anyway, Veil and Overest want to find out what's going on, so they come in to meet Veil's handlers with CONSAC, and then there's a big double cross because we find out that the head of security at CONSAC, Keller, Uh, he's secretly working in cahoots with REVK and he wants to kill them. Uh. They escape, but unfortunately Patrick McGowan or fortunately or unfortunately again and morally ambiguous character uh he he is killed

in the process. And here we get into what I think many people now regard as the dumbest part of the movie. And I would say, if there is anything in the movie that doesn't really work well, it is what we're about to talk about. It is the sequence where Cameron is told by Dr Ruth that he can get the computer files by scanning the computer the same way he scans a human, because a computer also has a nervous system, So he goes to a pay phone

and scans the computer through the phone line. Yeah, I feel like this is a part of the film that that even I just can't imagine anyone being on board with this at the time, because I just don't feel like a computer is a nervous system, and certainly these

computers are not nervous systems. However, if you were to make scanners today and set it in the future, I could very well imagine a situation where your computers are wet were computers that have some sort of organic neural component to them, And in that case, I think you could you could make an argument that, well, our psychics are able to commune with the computer because there is

this they have this organic base in common. So if the if they were trying to hack not the computer system here, but the elevator from the lift, you know, that would make more sense. Oh man, yeah, that would be good. But yeah, I think this I regard as the weakest point in the film. I think the sequence goes on a little too long. Um, it's not as

interesting as the rest of the movie. Is so there's like an attack and counter attack through like the computers, uh self destruct features and so forth, and then there's

a big explosion. Yeah, there is that cool. They're doing this all by the way, by by calling in from a pay phone to to hack it um and and when everything blows up there trying to like like shut it down and destroy camera and veil, and they don't quite destroy them, but they do channel a lot of psychic energy through a you know this uh this remote phone booth, and so we get the scene with the phone receiver melting in his hand and then yea more explosions.

So there's some good stuff sprinkled in there. But yeah, you're right, it goes on a bit long, and of course it is rooted in this kind of absurdity that feels a little bit out of pace with the rest of the picture. I mean, I like an exploding telephone booth. That's funny. But yeah, it's a little totally different than the rest of the film. Yeah, but the good news is that once they get past that, like we're kind

of back on the the original rails. So if you don't like this segment of the picture, uh, you don't have to worry too much about it because it's not going to ultimately play into the end game as much. Right. Okay, So if you don't want the final twist of the movie revealed, uh, you may take this opportunity to tune out, because we we have to to talk about what the big reveal is. What was it? What's inside the secret computer? Well, it is a list of doctors who are prescribing ephemaral.

Are they're prescribing it? What do they have scanner patients who want to make the voices stop? No, In fact, they're prescribing a femarole to pregnant women as a just regular pregnant women as a tranquilizer. And we discover in fact that this is linked to the origin of the

first batch of scanners. So if femarole the drug was developed by Dr ruth By Patrick McGowan as a tranquilizer to be used during pregnancy, but it had the unintended side effect of causing children to be born with telepathic powers, to be born as scanners, and after they discovered this,

it was discontinued. But they're all these scanners out there now and Revick and his co conspirators are sending out more of this drug to be prescribed because he wants to make a new generation of scanners and eventually recruit

them for his army. Mm hmm. It's a fiendish plot, but one that works, like it's not like Rebvock has hey for him a rational plan, like he wants to make more people that are touched by the same ability uh so that they can become the new status quote that they can take over and they can rebel against the uh the normal people that have made things so

difficult for them. But Revck captures Veil and Oberst, and then it comes to the final showdown, which is another I'd say, you know, if there's a standout secondary scene in the movie, people remember after the demonstration with the exploding head, it's probably this last scene, the showdown. Yeah, like can they top the exploding head? Well, they don't

try to top it. They do something different that is even more horrifying in my opinion, when we also get the reveal that that Revock and Veil our brothers, or at least that's what Revck says. Who knows if we can trust him, but he says that they're both Dr Ruth's sons. That they're the oldest of the Scanners and therefore the most powerful. Yeah, and somehow Dr Ruth did something to make them like more powerful than all the other Scanners, which is why they have these special abilities. Yeah,

they can overpower even the other Scanners. Yeah, they got like extra if him are all in their their milk when their babies or something. So yeah, we basically we get the scene which you know might expect or if you've never seen it before, where Rebick is saying, join me, brother, uh, you know, joining me on the dark side will rise up. We'll rule over the new Scanner babies together and take

over the world. Cameron Valego says says, Nope, I'm not going to do that, and hits Revick in the head with a paper weight, and at that point it's on. It's a Scanner battle to the death with one psychic mind attempting to dominate the other. And Oh, I don't know about you, Joe, but this, this entire sequence, the sequence that I've seen before. Mind, you just really creep me out this time. And I mean it. And I've

seen a lot of stuff in films, you know. I'm a kid who grew up watching The Bad guy's melt in slow motion on the Raid is VHS. Yeah, it's gross and it's it's hard to watch, but it's also pretty astounding. Yeah, it's And I was really trying to break down like why is this so disturbing and why does it work so well? And I think they're basically

like three factors. So first of all, uh that the obvious our protagonists and antagonists here are both like literally destroying each other's bodies with their psychic powers here, and perhaps destroying their own bodies as part of it as they channel these destructive powers. So like you know, faces pulsating, stuff bursting, Um, it's just really it's it's hard to watch, especially your hero go through this level of physical trauma. Yeah. Secondly,

the effects are just really good. These are just really solid practical effects. Like when Veil ends up gouging out parts of his own face that have just been bulging and pulsating and popping, is just really just it's just

really roasts. It's awful. I think part of the effect of why this scene is so bad because there are other scenes where, like the hero of the movie gets injured, even you know, traumatic injuries that aren't as awful as this, And I think it's because the injury appears to be some sort of deep systemic malfunction of the body rather than just like getting like cuts or or impacts or something. Yeah, this is not our hero getting shot in the shoulder

or anything. This is like gouging parts of his face out and then eventually his eyeballs explode. That that level of of trauma. And I think that the third factor is that the body horror that we see in this scene. It's this weird mix of traumatic injury and mutation without ever actually crossing the line into a clear sense of

movie mutation. You know, It's like their bodies don't seem to becoming completely other, but the weird energies flowing through them are kind of horrifically exposing a hidden anatomy, and it's just dreadful to hold. Like, like when you see veins like pulsating in their arms and across their face, You're like, that doesn't match up to what I know is underneath the face or the arm. But I'm totally believing that that what is being revealed there is real. Yeah,

well it's the secret war being revealed. Yeah, but at this time it's like underneath the skin. So yeah, they're they're pulsating and exploding, eventually erupting into fire. We get this kind of religious um aura to it. His veil has twin flames and both of his palms and then yeah, exploding, And then we get the the ending here where Oberus comes in. She finds Veils just husk of a body. He's just completely immolated, and then she hears his voice

from over in the corner. There's veils code. He has this big kind of cool jacket. BIG's not a jacket, it's a full fledged coat that he's wearing and most of the film and there's a character in the corner with that coat over them. They pull the code back and it looks like Revic, but it's not Revick's voice. It's not Revick's mind in there, like clearly in this battle of wills, this battle of minds vey'l one, and it's now his mind that occupies a Revock's body. Yeah,

he like pulled a fast one on him. We're led to believe that, like he let Revok destroy his body, but somehow traded places with his consciousness. Yeah. Yeah, And so we get this wonderful Cronenbergie ending where the end is the beginning. Our heroes have won because they embraced extreme change and extreme weirdness and uh and perhaps kind

of embraced a kind of post human identity. You know, it's like the way out of this problem is through it and you know, becoming this different being so computer scanning subplot aside, I think Scanners holds up great. This is uh, it's excellent. It's it's gross in the parts that are supposed to be gross, it's shocking and the parts that are supposed to be shocking. It's also think actually much smarter and more thoughtful and more interesting than

a lot of initial reviewers gave it credit for. Yeah, and weirder than you might remember it. I found it weirder than I remembered it. Yeah. I should also say that, in rewatching the film, I was struck by the amount of care it seems to to give this granted fantastic and sci fi horror vision of neurodiversity. So, to be clear, horror movies are not a great place to look for nuanced or insightful views of things like mental illness. But

there's there's probably a lot to dissect here. Concerning the way the Scanner characters present these different ideas of neuro divergent again fantasy neuro divergent people in the given world.

Oh yeah, like the way the struggles of the different Scanner characters have manifested and like different outcomes in their lives, and we see the coping strategies they've come up with, and uh, yeah, I think that's that is interesting, Like that that Vale never really had a coping strategy until he got a medication, that like one guy had a

coping strategy through through art that Kim Obrist did through community. Yeah, Like like he has that kind of heartbreaking moment with the artist with Pierce where uh he said, like Pierce is describing how the art keeps him sane and he and granted, he's you know, doing his spy game kind of thing here, so he's being deceitful, but he he says what seems rather honestly, He's like, but I don't I don't have anything like that. I don't I don't have this thing that you have to help me combat

this problem. And that's why I need you to take me to Revock. And uh, I don't know that that that was that kind of resonated with me. Really, that was a nice small moment in this film. Yeah, I agree, all right, that's Scanners, Uh, the nineteen eighty one classic. Um. I don't think we'll be covering Scanners too, Scanners three or the Scanner Cop movies. I don't know, never say never, but I feel like we we covered the best one here. Yeah.

I think the sequels kind of they keep all the gross stuff and the heads exploding, but they do not retain the uh, the level of thoughtfulness of the original. Yeah. Mostly, I think I remember at one point, this was years and years back, we were talking about scanner face and what actors make the best scanner face. So I don't remember our findings, but I think we generally agreed that Michael Ironside is hired to beat. I think Scanner Cop has Richard Lynch in it, and I believe Richard Lynch

had a had a pretty good scanner face. I bet he had a good one. Yeah. Um, And where David Hewlett is in the initial sequel and I haven't seen him in that, or I don't remember seeing him in that, but I've seen Hewlett and other things that he's quite good, and so I was really impressed with a role that

he has in gerald Do Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities. He plays this grave robber who's who's desperate to get enough gold fillings out of teeth to pay off bookies, and so he's trying to rob graves and a haunted cemetery and counting all sorts of horror and it's a it's a it's a wonderful performance. All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and shut the book on Scanners here, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there if you have memories or impressions of Scanners, if you saw it

in the theater. We always love to hear those stories that people who saw these these films when they reginally came out, or you have memories of the first time you saw it. Um, I would love to hear from anyone who did not know that head was going to blow up? What did you think when you watch this

film for the first time. A reminder that we're primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the stuff to Blow your mind podcast feed, but here on Friday's we set aside most serious concerns and we just talk about a weird film on a Weird House Cinema. I blog about these episodes at some meta music dot com. But also you can go to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T E R B O x D and you'll find our user name on there is weird House. We have a list of all

the films we've covered. This is the ninety nine film that we've covered on Weird How Cinema. The next film we cover will be the one film. Who knows what we'll pick for that. Oh, that's putting a lot of pressure on Rolbi. We gotta make a good choice, yeah, or you just let that pressure dissipate by exploding through the head. I don't know. Wait, maybe we just pick something like normal and it will become special to us because it was the hundred picture. There you go, huge

thanks to our audio producer J J. Pauseway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.