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When you’re handing out accolades for the for the greatest names in Horror movie history, a few names are going to come up. George A. Romero, Ray Harryhausen, Boris Karloff, John Carpenter - People that, whether through their acting, directing or production have helped to develop the foundations for horror cinema and kept it a thriving genre even into the modern age. Well, ‘thriving’ is a generous term, considering most horror films these days seem to be torture porn or a series of forced memes and incredibly formulaic either way, but it at least makes enough money to sustain itself and a niche demographic. Isn’t that what we all want though, at the end of the day?
As this is an article about a Cronenberg movie, of course I believe David Cronenberg would be a part of this list. Although nowadays Mr. Cronenberg is known as a celebrated director of serious dramas like A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, there was a time when ol’ Dave up there with John Carpenter and David Lynch as one of the weirdest guys in Hollywood. His remake of horror classic The Fly, Videodrome (which I covered in last year’s Marathon), the adaptation of William S. Burroughs's classic novel Naked Lunch, films that chilled audiences by attacking the one thing that everyone has in common: their sense of self. Body horror, as it eventually become known, a subgenre of horror focusing on severe and grotesque physical mutations, variations on which can be seen in Hellraiser, The Thing and From Beyond. Cronenberg may not have have been the progenitor of that specific field, but he certainly helped establish it in the mainstream consciousness and did it well enough that he could build a career on it, and thus have the credibility and the backing to perhaps make the films he wanted to make.
Like eXistenZ.
So what is Scanners about, beyond that one head explosion scene that has become a reaction image standard these days? Well...psychics, I guess? Drugs? Some kind of corporate espionage that turns into some kind of battle for the fate of mankind? Fact is, it’s an incredibly obtuse film. Even more so than Videodrome, which goes completely off the fucking rails in the second half. At least there you have some time to get behind James Woods as a character before you get down to business. Here you start off right in the craziness, and you never really understand much of anything about the characters or care about their motivations. Especially protagonist Cameron Vale, who is maybe the least charismatic lead I’ve ever seen in a film. I mean you have some great actors here, Patrick McGoohan, Michael Ironside, but everything feels so erratic and, to be honest, melodramatic, that I’m still not sure what happened. It’s like trying to recall a dream the next morning, one of those weird dreams you get when you eat pizza before bed.
However, like I mentioned in the Phantasm article, for these types of films to work all they need to have an interesting idea, not necessarily to be a technically ‘good’ film. Scanners is a pretty good idea for a sci-fi film, as much as the X-Men were for a comic book I guess, and my respect for Cronenberg as a filmmaker means I can enjoy the idea while forgiving some of the misgivings about the plot and characterization, unlike my time with Phantasm. It’s a lot like getting a taste of the brown acid; You really have to ride this one out, accept the sounds and images as they come and try to maintain. Thankfully that’s not too difficult, as Scanners is generally entertaining if nonsensical, another point of difference between this and Phantasm. I’m really harping on that movie for whatever reason, not sure why.
If you’re in the mood for a bit of the ol’ ultraviolence with a tangy sci-fi twist this Halloween, then Scanners might just be the film for you. Just try not to think about it too hard.
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