Scanners (1981) [Criterion Collection #712]

This looks less like Cronenberg's popular mid-'70s exploiters (Rabid, Shivers) than one of his early experimental films remade on a higher budget, with a small group of 'scanners' (warrior-telepaths) fighting off a sinister mind-war army that is backed, indirectly, by industry and the state. Part conspiracy thriller, part political tract, it is Cronenberg's most coherent movie to date, drawing a dark (but bland) world in which corporate executives engineer human conception to produce ever more powerful mental samurai. And he punctuates it with spectacular set piece confrontations which really do dramatise the abstract, ingenious premise. As always, there's a nagging feeling that the script is not quite perfectly realised on screen, but Patrick McGoohan's bizarre cameo performance, and the extraordinary moral and sexual ambiguity of the final scanning contest, more than make up for it.

Excerpt from TimeOut London

Scanners is a masterpiece and Cronenberg will never get down from this top. A wild medical experimentation by a doctor causes a genetic mutation. The mutants have a special power. The doctor wants to destroy them, particularly his first son who is the leader of the band, with the help of his second son, the filiation being unknown of the latter. But the band is a lot more organised than a bunch of a-social individuals. The elder son is trying to multiply the scanners by using a network of greedy doctors. The final confrontation is a total success for the elder son. At the end of the film there is no hope : the scanners will conquer and dominate the world. What is interesting in the film is the high level of controled suspense and the very good make-up special effects. There is never a moment of release or absence of tension. It starts at the very beginning and will never end. But here Cronenberg is absolutely dark and pessimistic because there is no escape, no hope, not even the hope that the two brothers would mutually destroy each other. It also shows how greed for money and power is manipulating some people so much that they are ready to do anything to capture that money and that power and retain it. So it is also pessimistic on the side of man's nature. Even women are nearly completely absent and hence there is no hope on that side either. It is a man man's world and nothing can stand in the way of those men and nobody will stand alive in their wake. It is just a brutal reality that will take over the world. That's why the film leaves suspense behind and becomes pure horror.

Amazon

A solid and underrated cult Science Fiction horror thriller from the brilliant David Cronenberg. Sure Stephen Lack's acting is very weak but the other actors like McGoohan and Ironside are just great aside from wooden Lack, i also love the realistic and gruesome make-up and gore effects by Dick Smith and Chris Wallace that still hold up today very realistically without CGI such as the famed exploding head scene everyone remembers. I also like Howard Shore's chilling music score long before his scores to "Silence of the Lambs" or "Lord of the Rings", the film is a metaphor on birth defects and how a drug can mutate a child into something different that they will grow up into even something dangerous. It also does offer a statement on humanity and how another race of being can be accepted or discriminated against sort of like how the "X-Men" movies worked out.

It's definitely not for the squeamish but for those looking for a good thrilling and intelligent Sci-fi horror thriller then this is it.

IMDB Reviewer

Special Features:
- New, restored digital film transfer, supervised by director David Cronenberg

Disc One:
- The Film
- Trailer and radio spots

Disc Two:
- The “Scanners” Way, a new documentary by Michael Lennick on the film’s special effects, featuring interviews with Cronenberg’s collaborators (22:56)
- Mental Saboteur, a new interview with actor Michael Ironside (19:24)
- The Ephemerol Diaries, a 2012 interview with actor and artist Stephen Lack (14:22)
- Excerpt from a 1981 interview with Cronenberg on the CBC’s The Bob McLean Show (11:06)
- New, restored digital transfer of Stereo (1969), Cronenberg’s first feature film (62:52)