Scanners, 40 Years Later

“body horror needn’t be restricted to the human body”

Few scenes are as iconic in the oeuvre of director David Cronenberg as one in the early minutes of his 1981 film about telekinetic espionage, Scanners, in which a demonstration of telepathy culminates in the graphic explosion of the demonstrator’s head. Even if you haven’t seen the film, you’re likely familiar with the scene: A researcher at a firm called ConSec asks for volunteers to be “scanned;” reluctantly, a stranger steps forward. The researcher reminds the room that there is a doctor present, should anything go wrong. After briefly instructing the volunteer, the scanner begins attempting to read his mind, but it soon becomes obvious that the volunteer is fighting back. He too, is a scanner, and a powerful one. The presentation doesn’t go as planned. Famously, the shot was meant to open the film, but test audiences couldn’t get past the effect, so Cronenberg moved it 10 or so minutes into the picture. Even now, 40 years since its release, the special effects are remarkably impressive, even if the film surrounding it isn’t quite the masterpiece I remember.

What makes Scanners such a memorable film—aside from the early cranial combustion—lies almost entirely on Michael Ironside’s unforgettable portrayal of villain Darryl Revok. Ironside has had a long, varied career, but Revok is far and away his most entertaining role (aside, perhaps, from his battle-hardened, bug-killing Lieutenant Rasczak in Starship Troopers). Whereas most of the scanners in the film show off their ability as if they were in varying stages of constipation, Ironside is able to maintain a commendable level of confidence throughout his mental battles. It’s as if Revok never truly feels challenged, taking a certain amount of glee in taking down his opponents as viewers watch the struggle from beginning to end. His brow raises as he sizes up his rival, a knowing smirk comes across his face as he begins his concentration in earnest, until, when wits finally do collide, his lips curl, his face contorts, and all of these emotions cycle again with increasing intensity. This kind of visual performance stands in stark contrast to protagonist Cameron Vale, played by who I assume to be a cardboard cut-out of Stephen Lack, whose “scanning” is identified only by widening eyes followed by even wider eyes.

Image sourced IMDB

It’s not just the telepathy where Ironside eclipses his co-stars, however. In every scene he’s in, Revok is electric. With a cold, calculated delivery to his lines, and a full-bodied commitment to his goal, the character is truly menacing. It’s a presence that fills the room and one that Lack simply can’t match. Lack, who starts off the film as a vagrant who is sought after as a potential scanner, never really gets to see his character grow. When he finally shakes off his standoffishness, it’s immediately replaced by a slimy smugness that does anything but project heroism. This inconsistency is in no small part due to Cronenberg infamously beginning shooting without a finished script. Worried that he would lose the grant money financing the film, Cronenberg was forced to rush production, resulting in his writing scenes in the morning before they were scheduled to be shot. Nevertheless, the lack of development makes it fairly difficult to root for Vale, and so it’s a saving grace that Revok is such a charismatic villain.

Scanners also laid the foundation for what would become a staple of Cronenberg’s repertoire—a bizarre, surrealistic quality to his films that extend beyond the grotesque. While his earlier films like Shivers and Rabid don’t shy away from either physically or emotionally traumatic imagery, it’s the work of Benjamin Pierce (Robert A. Silverman) in Scanners, that first give us a glimpse of the feverish inner workings of the director’s mind. Pierce is a fellow scanner and sculptor that, plot-wise, does little more than serve as one of several steps to get Vale and Revok closer together. He’s able to escape the sometimes debilitating voices in his head that Vale endures by channeling them into his art, which presents as twisted, tortured forms that, though disturbing, take a cleaner, more refined approach than the earlier films, due to their unpainted, plaster construction. The figures would feel more at home in Van Eyck’s The Last Judgment than in the climax of The Brood. Pierce’s art and its organic, fluid shapes, stands in stark contrast to the rest of the film, which is composed almost entirely of boxy, industrial sets and locations. It’s a contrast that has followed Cronenberg throughout his career—the uncanny combination of the organic and inorganic: an insectoid typewriter, a breathing television, a skin-like video game console. For Cronenberg, body horror needn’t be restricted to the human body. Through Benjamin Pierce, we get to see the budding delineation between the real and the unreal as the director sees it, most apparent in Pierce’s use of a giant human head as a lounge, a sort of sanctuary from the “normal” world. 

Pierce’s scene highlights one of the key underpinnings of Scanners, but one that goes relatively unnoticed amidst the spectacle of the psychic battles and corporate espionage—how scanners are able to navigate their abnormality and harness it, turning a disability into an ability. Pierce’s art helps to quell the voices in his head and though he still must remain reclusive, he is able to retain a modicum of normalcy. For a commune led by a scanner named Kim Obrist (Jennifer O’Neill), this normalcy is attained through transcendental meditation. For Vale however, through ConSec and its lead doctor, Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan), the only viable solution is a drug, ephemerol, which coincidentally, is the very drug that caused the scanners’ abilities in the first place. Scanners slyly positions its focus, ConSec, as the strictly anti-creative solution to the secondary plot, using addiction and control as a mitigative measure, versus the more holistic approach taken by the independent groups of scanners, which embrace rather than suppress their abilities. 

The consequences of unchecked corporatism is another theme that continually crops up in Cronenberg’s filmography, and I think that Scanners is where it first reaches its fully realized form. Not only does ConSec’s interest in scanners directly contradict the interests of scanners themselves, but the war between ConSec and Revok systematically snuffs out any scanner that doesn’t subscribe to their visions. 

Scanners is an imperfect film—it can feel slow at times, and at others rushed, the lead role is horribly miscast, and the plot at times might not make sense—but it still holds an important place in Cronenberg’s career, and it’s also just outrageously fun to watch. It’s an exciting, unique film that transcends its shortcomings to become an infinitely watchable thriller, for 40 years and counting.

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Article Written by Ande Thomas

Ande loves the intersection of sci-fi and horror, where our understanding of the natural world clashes with our fear of the new and unknown. He writes about monsters and foreign horror and can also be found over on Letterboxd.