Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: This is Rob Land and I'm Joe McCormick. And today's
Speaker 1: selection is the nineteen eight one Canadian sci fi horror
Speaker 1: thriller Scanners, directed by David Cronenberg. Film that I first
Speaker 1: became aware of because it was much beloved by my
Speaker 1: dad when I was young. I remember being a little kid, like,
Speaker 1: I think, sort of hearing my dad needle my mom
Speaker 1: by being like, remember Scanners, um, And so long before
Speaker 1: I ever saw it, I knew the one thing that
Speaker 1: everybody knew about this movie, which is that Scanners is
Speaker 1: a movie in which a guy's head explodes, which means
Speaker 1: Scanners is a certain type of film, and that type
Speaker 1: is the film that is apparently widely known for one
Speaker 1: thing that happens in it, for one particularly shocking, horrifying,
Speaker 1: or otherwise uniquely salient scene or moment, whereas the rest
Speaker 1: of the film is much less known. I think this
Speaker 1: might be like the prime example of that. So, like,
Speaker 1: if you mentioned Scanners to most people, I think maybe
Speaker 1: the majority of people will be able to say, like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, and't that the movie where a dude's head
Speaker 1: blows up, but not many people will know anything else
Speaker 1: about it. I was trying to think of other examples
Speaker 1: of this, Uh, like the kind of movie that is
Speaker 1: mostly known for like one moment or scene in isolation,
Speaker 1: and people don't remember that much else. Multiple Ridley Scott
Speaker 1: movies come to mind. Uh. I I am generally very
Speaker 1: intimately familiar with Alien because I've watched a bajillion times,
Speaker 1: but I think that's sort of one of them. It's
Speaker 1: a movie where a monster bursts out of a guy's
Speaker 1: chest at the dinner table, and maybe most people know
Speaker 1: that but don't know anything else. Rachel suggested another Ridley
Speaker 1: Scott move, of the Thelma and Louise. It is the
Speaker 1: movie where a car goes over a cliff. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't think I've seen Thelma and Louise, but I've
Speaker 1: seen that scene, you know, Like that scene has been
Speaker 1: presented to me, Parodies of that scene have been presented,
Speaker 1: and therefore I feel like I know Filmo and Louise,
Speaker 1: even though I do not. A one that came to
Speaker 1: mind for me. A more recent example might be Gamma
Speaker 1: Do Tours The Shape of Water, the movie in which
Speaker 1: a woman and a fishman make love, albeit I think
Speaker 1: tastefully an off screen if I'm remembering correctly, or one
Speaker 1: of those two things. Um, but but that's the film
Speaker 1: where there's a lot more going on there, and then
Speaker 1: I think it's a pretty solid picture. But that was
Speaker 1: the thing that was, you know, showing up in late
Speaker 1: night monologues and so forth. In other ways, I think
Speaker 1: you might look at films like Basic Instinct and Bad
Speaker 1: Lieutenant that can come to mind for for other reasons
Speaker 1: that people would call them out for, Oh, there's this
Speaker 1: one scene where something happens, um and in a backwards
Speaker 1: way to channel another fishman movie. The promotional material for
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties Screamers, which was the US Corman re release
Speaker 1: of an Italian film, Island of the Fishmen, uh tried
Speaker 1: to promote itself as the movie in which a man
Speaker 1: turns inside out, despite no such scene occurring in the
Speaker 1: motion picture. That's a good idea that the I can't
Speaker 1: think of. Another example would be like if Scammer Scammers
Speaker 1: Scanners was known as the movie where Ahead explodes, but
Speaker 1: it didn't actually happen in the movie. Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: that would be really really lame. Whereas in reality, I mean,
Speaker 1: they knew they had a great scene there. I was
Speaker 1: reading that originally that scene was going to happen first,
Speaker 1: but given the cinema and movie going culture of the time,
Speaker 1: they knew It's like, well, people gonna come in late. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess they put anyone who's watching films at the
Speaker 1: theater in. Please tell me. I'm assuming there were fewer trailers,
Speaker 1: because now you've got a solid half hour of trailers.
Speaker 1: But the concern was at the time, well, people are
Speaker 1: gonna come in late, They're gonna miss our key scene.
Speaker 1: We've got to offset it a bit with some other
Speaker 1: introductory and material. I mean, it is a really great scene.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I grew up hearing about this movie in
Speaker 1: the terms previously described. I saw it at some point
Speaker 1: after which I thought it was a cool, creepy thriller.
Speaker 1: I had, you know, modestly positive feelings about it. I
Speaker 1: also thought there were a few elements that didn't work
Speaker 1: so well, and they were some of the same elements
Speaker 1: that have been criticized by critics, especially when the movie
Speaker 1: initially came out, but in the intervening years, I think
Speaker 1: critics who have looked back on Scanners have had a
Speaker 1: more robustly positive appraisal of it, and I found myself
Speaker 1: having having exactly the same reaction. On my most recent rewatch,
Speaker 1: I gained a much more unqualified appreciation for it. I
Speaker 1: think Scanners is just just awesome, and some of the
Speaker 1: criticisms or the things about it I used to criticize,
Speaker 1: I now actually think our strengths. This movie is so
Speaker 1: much more than an exploding head. Oh absolutely, and I
Speaker 1: I was also surprised at how well it held up
Speaker 1: and and how much I enjoyed it. In past viewings,
Speaker 1: I think I had that similar experience where it's like, well,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of great things going on here, but A,
Speaker 1: B and C don't really work for me all that well.
Speaker 1: I think for the most part, my criticisms were somewhat
Speaker 1: dulled in my my recent rewatch of the film. So
Speaker 1: it's gonna be fun to get into all that now.
Speaker 1: You were talking about your your dad being a fan
Speaker 1: of it and talking about the exploding head, and all
Speaker 1: I have to say from my part, before I even
Speaker 1: knew there was an exploding head scene in this movie,
Speaker 1: my earliest memories were of the box art at the
Speaker 1: VHS rental store and the poster for it, which I
Speaker 1: think would have also been on the wall of the
Speaker 1: VHS rent Oalds store, because this alone really freaked me out.
Speaker 1: Chef Kiss, Yeah, this is the one you see. You
Speaker 1: see this in a lot of the current materials for
Speaker 1: the film. This is the one that shows Michael Ironside's
Speaker 1: character and just full rending, like straight limbed scanner mode.
Speaker 1: Uh nearly like a full body representation, just completely scanning out.
Speaker 1: It's just absolutely terrifying. It represents, of some it's supposed
Speaker 1: to represent the way the character looks in the final
Speaker 1: showdown of the picture, which is in and of itself
Speaker 1: a horrifying sequence. I would say more horrifying, maybe less shocking,
Speaker 1: but more horrifying than the headburst scene. This art, I
Speaker 1: had to look it up. This is apparently post art
Speaker 1: by Joe Anne Dailey, who is credited with some other
Speaker 1: really awesome VHS ara poster in box art stuff like
Speaker 1: creep Show, Popcorn, Prison Prisons, one that I never saw,
Speaker 1: but I remember distinctly this weird like skull prison looking
Speaker 1: VHS box art. Oh yeah, she did something truly amazing here.
Speaker 1: So it is representing the scene where like the veins
Speaker 1: are popping out and all that, but there's also just, um,
Speaker 1: there's an aura around Michael Ironside and the way that
Speaker 1: all of the textures of his skin and clothes and
Speaker 1: his hair or like they're like right sing up off
Speaker 1: of him, as if he's literally sublimating, like his body
Speaker 1: is is so hot it's turning into a gas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there's this it's not even like a subtext to
Speaker 1: it because like the post art, some of the poster
Speaker 1: art and the lobby cards I was pulling up for it,
Speaker 1: it has the taglines on it like ten seconds the
Speaker 1: pain begins, fifteen seconds you can't breathe, twenty seconds you explode.
Speaker 1: It's saying, look at this horrible vision of a man.
Speaker 1: This could happen to you. Watch this movie to find
Speaker 1: out why. That's what happens when you combine pop rocks
Speaker 1: and and uh PEPSI right. Yeah. But at the same
Speaker 1: time you have this poster really does capture I think
Speaker 1: that a lot of the shocking imagery of that final
Speaker 1: scanner showdown this vision of psychic power as this thing
Speaker 1: that kind of channels violently through you and will have
Speaker 1: left unchecked, just completely destroy you. In the process. It
Speaker 1: reminds me a bit of them, which of course came
Speaker 1: out a decade later. Toby Hooper is spontaneous combustion that
Speaker 1: we talked about on the show. Yeah, um, yeah, I
Speaker 1: see the similarity. Though I have to say I think
Speaker 1: The Scanners is in a league above spontaneous Combustion. But yes,
Speaker 1: I see what you're talking about. Yeah, but but both
Speaker 1: films do have a similarity and that they're both films
Speaker 1: where psychic powers of different types are dangerous to everyone
Speaker 1: that there. This is this wild, unchecked energy and also
Speaker 1: has potentially disastrous effects for the individual that is experiencing them. Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, Joe, what's your elevator pitch for this film?
Speaker 1: All right? Cameron Vale can hear people's thoughts and it
Speaker 1: makes his life a living hell. He wanders the underground
Speaker 1: malls of Canada as a miserable outcast until he meets
Speaker 1: a mysterious scientist who informs him that he is a
Speaker 1: Scanner and there are others like him. But instead of
Speaker 1: a community of brothers and sisters, Cameron discovers a secret
Speaker 1: war and now the war has discovered him. That's pretty good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that secret war is key to it, Like and that's
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that works so well
Speaker 1: about this film is there are all these different layers
Speaker 1: of intrigue to it as you proceed through the picture. Well,
Speaker 1: I would say, actually, the secret War is um something
Speaker 1: that I really noticed on this viewing of it. It
Speaker 1: really stood out to me as a shared theme between
Speaker 1: Scanners and one of Cronenberg's other big movies, Videodrome, because
Speaker 1: if you think about it, both movies are about a
Speaker 1: naive protagonist who gets inadvertently swept up into an ongoing
Speaker 1: secret conflict between at least two existing factions or forces,
Speaker 1: which I'm not sure why, but that in itself is
Speaker 1: just like a really exciting, almost intoxicating plot dynamic. It's
Speaker 1: specifically the thing about the fact that, like, the conflict
Speaker 1: is ongoing and it's done by these powerful forces, but
Speaker 1: it's like invisible to to all regular people. Uh And
Speaker 1: uh so you know, Videodrome and the cathode ray Mission
Speaker 1: are already out there, they're plotting their campaigns against one another,
Speaker 1: but somehow the war has remained in the shadows, and
Speaker 1: suddenly the main character is made aware of it and
Speaker 1: sucked into it and is being played by one side
Speaker 1: against the other. And in the case of scanners, the
Speaker 1: secret war is between an amoral arms manufacturer or arms
Speaker 1: manufacturing and security firm, and that's consact. And then on
Speaker 1: the other hand you have this murderous front of the
Speaker 1: scanner underground. Yeah, and I love how the players in
Speaker 1: this game and the secret war, if you will, they're
Speaker 1: not nation states, they're not governmental agencies. They're corporations and um,
Speaker 1: social movements and uh and in rogue organizations that again
Speaker 1: are just kind of all in the not even all
Speaker 1: in the underworld, like some of it is in a
Speaker 1: corporate boardroom, you know, that kind of setting. And I guess,
Speaker 1: I guess that does kind of match up with some
Speaker 1: overarching themes that you see in media from the eighties.
Speaker 1: You see it in cyberpunk, see it, and uh in
Speaker 1: various other pictures where it's yeah, we're in this this
Speaker 1: this realm, where it's it's corporations against corporation and and
Speaker 1: these other entities. I think Um Cronenberg and and also
Speaker 1: William Gibson are both have both proven themselves of the
Speaker 1: is really good at it also integrating these uh yeah,
Speaker 1: the social movements, artists and other things into these weird
Speaker 1: views of the future and of course of the present. Now, um,
Speaker 1: I mentioned one of the taglines for the picture, actual
Speaker 1: taglines for the picture earlier, but uh, here are just
Speaker 1: a few more. There's of course, their thoughts can kill.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what the picture is about. Also, there
Speaker 1: are four billion people on Earth two d and thirty
Speaker 1: seven or scanners. I like that. That's kind of cherry
Speaker 1: picked from the screenplay that's referring to a part in
Speaker 1: the film. They're kind of bending it a little bit,
Speaker 1: but it gives it that kind of provocative feeling that
Speaker 1: that works well with the tagline. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's actually accurate to the script because I think
Speaker 1: the number is two d and thirty six, and that
Speaker 1: comes from the list of known scanners, the ones that
Speaker 1: are known to concept, but there are other ones that
Speaker 1: are not known to them. Yeah, and and also it's
Speaker 1: not just like this is the percentage of the human
Speaker 1: population that are just going to be scanners. We find
Speaker 1: out why there are scanners in the picture. But the
Speaker 1: one that really stood out to me this time is
Speaker 1: you were about to experience the outer reaches of future shock,
Speaker 1: and that of course that taglines obviously invoking the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy Toffler book Future Shock. Uh, And it's one that
Speaker 1: I hadn't run across before regarding this picture, But it
Speaker 1: really got me thinking about this film in a different
Speaker 1: light because Future Shock just remind everyone, and it was
Speaker 1: this this concept that essentially you were dealing with, or
Speaker 1: would be dealing with, a kind of trauma brought on
Speaker 1: by rapid advances and technology that would outstrip our ability
Speaker 1: to understand them or change with them. Um, So don't
Speaker 1: don't think of it necessarily as some sort of like
Speaker 1: a movie future shock, like a technology is advancing too
Speaker 1: quickly and I my head explode, But more of a
Speaker 1: of a like a cultural malaise even But I wonder
Speaker 1: if if the scanner, that the individual that is a
Speaker 1: scanner in this picture is in some ways kind of
Speaker 1: a physical embodiment of this idea of future Shock. They're
Speaker 1: they're changed, they're potentially dehumanized in the process of this change,
Speaker 1: and they run the risk of being less than themselves
Speaker 1: and more of a conduit in the film by doing nothing,
Speaker 1: one man is almost reduced to a kind of zombie state,
Speaker 1: and other becomes a monster, and two other characters we
Speaker 1: meet are able to channel this change into creation and community,
Speaker 1: but it's like they're all dealing with it in different ways. Yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean I think about one reaction too, if you
Speaker 1: take the concept of future shock seriously, I think one
Speaker 1: of the most common reactions to it actually is a
Speaker 1: kind of disengagement or listlessness that comes from the fact that, like,
Speaker 1: if you can't understand the force is that are driving
Speaker 1: the world, it just kind of makes it feel like
Speaker 1: it's pointless to try to do anything or change anything
Speaker 1: because you don't you don't understand how the machine works,
Speaker 1: so you know, why would you even try to mess
Speaker 1: with it? Um and I I see similar themes running
Speaker 1: around in scanners, like the idea that you your agency
Speaker 1: can be removed when there are forces governing your life
Speaker 1: that you don't understand. Yeah. Absolutely, all right, let's go ahead,
Speaker 1: and here's some trailer audio for this one. In this case,
Speaker 1: we're drawing on the actual radio spot, which is a
Speaker 1: lot of fun because everything is audio. This is the
Speaker 1: audio as it's intended. You are not supposed to glimpse
Speaker 1: and exploding head in this trailer. Ten seconds the pain begins,
Speaker 1: and your flesh and your brain fifteen seconds. You can't breathe,
Speaker 1: It chokes you, it destroys you. Twenty seconds, Yeah, you explode.
Speaker 1: Experience the terrified of Scanners. Their thoughts can kill. RATEDAR
Speaker 1: restricted under seventeen, not admit about parent. I like this
Speaker 1: radio trailer too, because it's again a very sonic experience
Speaker 1: that I think delivers on some of the the just
Speaker 1: the excellent music and sound effects in this picture that
Speaker 1: help bring about this weird, creepy, psychic feeling. The movie
Speaker 1: that only has good music, but I would say the
Speaker 1: sound design is really important in Oh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: moments that feel less like music but more just kind
Speaker 1: of like the pulses and throbbing and drone sounds that
Speaker 1: occur when the scanning session is taking place. Absolutely now,
Speaker 1: before we get into the plot. Just if you're wondering, well,
Speaker 1: where can I watch Scanners? Well, it's widely available. You
Speaker 1: can streain this one, purchase it, rent it very many
Speaker 1: places in eating as part of the Criterion collection. This
Speaker 1: one's uh up. This one's cemented in the collection alongside
Speaker 1: the likes of Fiend Without a Face. That's wonderful. I
Speaker 1: like when a film that was initially regarded by reviewers
Speaker 1: as as trash or as just you know, some scummy
Speaker 1: bit of garbage. It gets the Criterion stamp of approval. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you look back on writings about Cronenberg during this
Speaker 1: time period and a lot of times that he's treated
Speaker 1: with a sense of danger, like this is a dangerous
Speaker 1: weirdo they're letting make films, um and do we dare
Speaker 1: watch it ourselves? And to a large extent, I feel
Speaker 1: like we're past that, Like we've seen the uh, this
Speaker 1: this full career by Cronenberg, a career that's still ongoing,
Speaker 1: and we have a more complete understanding of what his
Speaker 1: sensibilities are and yet many of them are weird. Um.
Speaker 1: But I guess there's less of a feeling of this
Speaker 1: is a dangerous man making dangerous films. And yet in
Speaker 1: Rewatching Scanners, I could definitely feel some of that. It's
Speaker 1: especially in the final showdown between our our main Scanner characters,
Speaker 1: that there was an unhinged, unsafe energy to it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I I love his films by and large, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to maintain that illusion of absolute danger
Speaker 1: after you've seen his scene in Jason X, for one,
Speaker 1: and after you've seen his hair yes, it's it's a
Speaker 1: marvelous head of hair. All right, Well, let's talk about
Speaker 1: him a little more in depth. Yeah, David Cronenberg, the
Speaker 1: director and writer this picture born yree as of this recording,
Speaker 1: very much still alive and still making films, thank goodness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what what can you say? Legendary Canadian master of the weird,
Speaker 1: profit of the New flesh. His first full length film
Speaker 1: was nineteen sixty nine Stereo, and from there he went
Speaker 1: on to direct nineteen seventies Crimes of the Future and
Speaker 1: a whole string of TV projects before returning to the
Speaker 1: weird with nineteen seventy five Shivers, followed by nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: seven's Rabid and also the Norman Nine racing movie Fast Company. Um,
Speaker 1: that's what I was actually tempted to do on the
Speaker 1: show here, because we've been kind of building up to
Speaker 1: actually doing a David Cronenberg film on a podcast series
Speaker 1: about weird films. It seems like it shouldn't have taken
Speaker 1: us two years to get here, but it's we had
Speaker 1: to pick the right one, And for a little bit there,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, well, we almost can't pick a regular
Speaker 1: Cronenberg film. We should just do Fast Company. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of I mean, like, I think we tend
Speaker 1: toward movies that are a little bit like funnier or
Speaker 1: more fun to discuss, And a lot of Cronenberg movies
Speaker 1: are really fascinating, but they're also like really downers. They're
Speaker 1: like really bummers in one way or another. Um, I
Speaker 1: think Scanners is not quite that. So it's on it's
Speaker 1: on the lighter side of even as dark as it is,
Speaker 1: it's on the lighter side of the Cronenberg spectrum. Yeah
Speaker 1: you would. I don't think you would ever describe Scanners
Speaker 1: as fun, but it's but compared to the larger philmography
Speaker 1: of Cronenberg, yeah, it's it's it's on the fun end
Speaker 1: of the spectrum. Anyway. After Fast Company, that's when he
Speaker 1: did a trio of films that kind of, I feel like,
Speaker 1: kind of set the tone for Cronenberg Weirdness, The Brood, Scanners,
Speaker 1: and Video Drome, all three of those between nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: He followed these up with nineteen eighty three Stephen King
Speaker 1: adaptation The Dead Zone. Uh. He did one episode of
Speaker 1: Friday the Thirteenth, the series Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch ninety
Speaker 1: three s M. Butterfly Existence two thousand two Spider, and
Speaker 1: from here he drifted more into I guess serious crime drama,
Speaker 1: violent crime drama for a spell there with two thousand
Speaker 1: five History of Violence in Eastern Promises. Then he did
Speaker 1: a Dangerous Method and uh, and then Cosmopolis. But at
Speaker 1: this point, oh, there's also a map what a map
Speaker 1: of the Stars I think is in there as well. Um,
Speaker 1: but now he's back to his roots. He's returned to
Speaker 1: his roots with two Crimes of the Future, which I'm
Speaker 1: to understand has no actual connection to uh, the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy film c Times of the Future beyond the title.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he's he's he's back working on weird films again.
Speaker 1: I mean not I guess they're all weird films, but
Speaker 1: certainly weird speculative films. And I believe his upcoming picture
Speaker 1: is going to be about Communion with the Dead. Okay,
Speaker 1: which was I've never seen it, but as exist Ends,
Speaker 1: the one that I've heard described as just a remake
Speaker 1: of Video Drone but with video games instead of TV. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's that's a pretty fair statement. Now
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it, probably in twenty years, but I
Speaker 1: remember it having that kind of like, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: creepy new flesh vibe, but with game cartridges and weird
Speaker 1: uh flesh guns and so forth. I just bring that
Speaker 1: up because it's the video games, of which I think
Speaker 1: has got to be like the funniest era of games ever,
Speaker 1: like the Nintendo sixty four PlayStation one kind of era,
Speaker 1: like those early three D games that if you look
Speaker 1: at any game from at here and now, chances are
Speaker 1: it's gonna be hilarious. Yeah, unless you had a Cronenberg
Speaker 1: sixty four. Now that now that was a console. You
Speaker 1: took your cartridge and you uh you just I shouldn't
Speaker 1: explain how it all worked anyway. Scanners is based on
Speaker 1: a couple of different psychic scripts that he apparently had
Speaker 1: going in the late seventies, the Sensitives and Telepathy two thousand.
Speaker 1: These were apparently both films he was going to pitch
Speaker 1: to Roger Corman and uh. This whole thing, though, was
Speaker 1: rushed into production to take advantage of Canadian tax subsidies
Speaker 1: at the time, so uh, he was apparently writing scenes
Speaker 1: for Scanners, oftentimes the morning before they would film later
Speaker 1: in the day, so it made for a rather demanding
Speaker 1: production overall, I think there may have also been some
Speaker 1: issues as some conflict between some of the cast members,
Speaker 1: if I'm to understand correctly. Uh So, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's necessarily film that Cronerberg himself looks back on as
Speaker 1: being like, you know, this this great experience. And maybe
Speaker 1: I mean, when if we considering it being a film
Speaker 1: that was that was rushed, maybe you can see some
Speaker 1: of the rush and the resulting picture. But I don't
Speaker 1: know it it's still pretty solid. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I would say that the writing is actually
Speaker 1: quite good. I think, yeah, yeah, there's maybe one speculative
Speaker 1: leap that doesn't work so well, but we'll we'll get
Speaker 1: to them. I know exactly what you're talking about. We'll
Speaker 1: get there. Yeah. But yeah, this film certainly made its mark,
Speaker 1: and not everyone understood it at the time. Um it uh,
Speaker 1: some of the critics didn't get it, but it it
Speaker 1: earned its place in in cinematic history and certainly developed
Speaker 1: a cult following and garnered what four sequels over the years,
Speaker 1: I think two proper Scanner sequels and then also to
Speaker 1: Scanner cop films. Yeah, I think I've seen all the sequels,
Speaker 1: and I don't really remember much about them, except that
Speaker 1: I think we had a really fun time watching a
Speaker 1: uh probably the second Scanner cop movie with like check dubbing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they and they keep uh, they keep threatening to remake Scanners,
Speaker 1: either either as a movie or a TV series, and
Speaker 1: I think it it's never come together for one reason
Speaker 1: or another. I think at one point director said they
Speaker 1: would do it if Cronenberg said it was all right,
Speaker 1: and Cronenberg said nah, And so it didn't happen. Um,
Speaker 1: they didn't give it his blessing. Uh. So, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's it's one of those, like a lot of these things, Like, yes,
Speaker 1: if it had to be remade, I can imagine somebody
Speaker 1: could do it correctly and it went a way that
Speaker 1: would would be a cool and insightful exploration of the
Speaker 1: world that is created in the original picture. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, we don't really need it because the
Speaker 1: film works exceedingly well on its own. Agreed. Now, I
Speaker 1: do want to mention one more thing about Cronenberg before
Speaker 1: we move on from him, which is recurring themes of
Speaker 1: cronenberg movies. Of course, Cronenberg makes a lot of movies
Speaker 1: in the horror genre, and unlike the most common horror
Speaker 1: movie threat of straightforward danger to your life. Right, That's
Speaker 1: what most movie monsters are, bad guys are. They're threatening
Speaker 1: you with physical violence of some kind. The most common
Speaker 1: threat in Cronenberg movies, I would say, is not direct
Speaker 1: threats to your life, but threats to your self identity. Uh.
Speaker 1: He makes movies most often that are about a loss
Speaker 1: of the boundaries of the self, for a change of
Speaker 1: the self into something monstrous, and a lot of these
Speaker 1: have a very uh kind of like squishy tacticle quality
Speaker 1: to them. Like his movies are known for body horror,
Speaker 1: where there's some kind of disgusting change happening to your
Speaker 1: body and you are becoming something alien. In the case
Speaker 1: of Scanners, I would say the broader theme does hold,
Speaker 1: but it's less about the body and more a type
Speaker 1: of mental identity horror, like there are threats to the
Speaker 1: integrity of the mind or the soul. Yeah, Like it's
Speaker 1: it's not just oh my Torso is now all VH player,
Speaker 1: it's that added level of what does it mean that
Speaker 1: I am now a physical receptor for media? That sort
Speaker 1: of thing Like it's it's it's always a more more
Speaker 1: thoughtful and intellectual exercise, but always weird. I do want
Speaker 1: to drive. It's easy with someone like Cronenberg to get
Speaker 1: really you know, you start talking or thinking about it
Speaker 1: too much, and you're like, yeah, man, it's just this
Speaker 1: is a metaphor for the way that we think about
Speaker 1: ourselves and media. Like, yes, all of that is true,
Speaker 1: but also it's just really weird too, Yes, undeniable. I mean.
Speaker 1: The other thing is like, I didn't really mention this
Speaker 1: so much because it's hard to describe exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: But all of Cronenberg's movies that I've seen have in
Speaker 1: common this creepy, uneasy Canadian vibe. There's just something that's
Speaker 1: that's an energy that all of them share, uh, that
Speaker 1: is difficult to put into words. It's sort of a
Speaker 1: type of coldness, a kind of observing of human human
Speaker 1: reaction with a bit of a distance that that makes
Speaker 1: it a little more alien and a little more dangerous
Speaker 1: and a little more removed from mundane reality. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would agree, but it is hard to really nail
Speaker 1: down exactly what it is at times. Alright, getting into
Speaker 1: the cast here, and I have to mention one of
Speaker 1: the things I always love about cronenberg films the character
Speaker 1: names are always really interesting. And our first character here
Speaker 1: is the character Camera and Veil, but the actor who
Speaker 1: plays Camera and Veil our our main protagonist here also
Speaker 1: his His real name also sounds like a Cronenberg movie name,
Speaker 1: Stephen Lack, So I might end up getting mixed up
Speaker 1: and referring to the character as Stephen Lack or to
Speaker 1: the actress Camera and Vail, because they both kind of
Speaker 1: come together for me here, I will deduct no points.
Speaker 1: So Stephen Lack was born Canadian act or active from
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen seventies through around two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: This is probably his biggest role, though they also pops
Speaker 1: up in a small role in Cronenberg's Dead Ringers. He
Speaker 1: also wrote and starred in nineteen seventy seven The Rubber Gun,
Speaker 1: directed by Allan Moyle, and another couple of films of
Speaker 1: note es head on in Perfect Strangers. Perfect Strangers being
Speaker 1: a Larry Cohen erotic thriller, I had no idea there
Speaker 1: was such a thing. If he could put butts in seats,
Speaker 1: then then Larry Cohen probably wrote at least wrote a
Speaker 1: screenplay for it. Perfect So, regarding Stephen Lack and the
Speaker 1: character Cameron Vale, this is one place where I want
Speaker 1: to fully criticize and rebuke my own previous opinion about Scanners.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking in the past that a weak point
Speaker 1: in this movie was the protagonist is sort of a cipher.
Speaker 1: He lacks defining individual characteristics and often seems to be
Speaker 1: operating without a sense of personal agency, you know, like
Speaker 1: you often don't quite know why he's doing what he's doing.
Speaker 1: He's just sort of been launched into an action by
Speaker 1: the people around him, and he just follows through. Now,
Speaker 1: upon reviewing, I still think this assessment of the character
Speaker 1: is true, but I actually don't think it's a shortcoming
Speaker 1: of the movie at all. I think it is literally
Speaker 1: the point of the character. There are multiple scenes exploring
Speaker 1: the effects of telepathy on the development of personality. This
Speaker 1: character is a is a scanner. He's a telepathic character,
Speaker 1: and the movie posits that if a person has the
Speaker 1: ability to read other people's thoughts and they have no
Speaker 1: power to control this ability or turn it off at will,
Speaker 1: it essentially prevents them from developing a personality or from
Speaker 1: having individual thoughts. So in the world of Scanners, the
Speaker 1: sort of lost, wandering, untreated scanner's mind is like living
Speaker 1: in a world where every single person in your vicinity
Speaker 1: is constantly just incessantly screaming at you with a megaphone,
Speaker 1: And in such a world would you ever be able
Speaker 1: to develop a voice of your own. So I think
Speaker 1: the fact that Cameron Veil is sort of like an
Speaker 1: adult with the mind of a newborn, launched on missions
Speaker 1: he doesn't understand following through with them for reasons that
Speaker 1: don't quite seem clear. Uh, you know, is the things
Speaker 1: are going on without his agency and he's just sort
Speaker 1: of like going along with the flow. It makes complete
Speaker 1: sense in my opinion. The arc of the movie is
Speaker 1: the character going from this state of undifferentiated mental cacaphony
Speaker 1: and uh and lack of agentic control over his own
Speaker 1: missions and behavior to the point of having a mind
Speaker 1: and purpose of his own. I completely agree. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a performance that I think in the past I
Speaker 1: saw was a weak point I saw. I think I
Speaker 1: focused too much on the similarities between this performance this
Speaker 1: character and poor performances are poorly defined characters in various
Speaker 1: other be movies. Um, but but yeah, I think it.
Speaker 1: It totally works within the context of the film here. Uh,
Speaker 1: for all the reasons you point out um and the
Speaker 1: and and also I have to to say, like, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of movies that feature what I think
Speaker 1: of his doll men or baby men, where you have
Speaker 1: some sort of reason for a person being like this,
Speaker 1: like maybe they're a clone or they're an alien in
Speaker 1: human form from another world, and sometimes it just plays
Speaker 1: completely stupid on the screen and you just feel like
Speaker 1: you're watching a farce. But Veil doesn't really fall into
Speaker 1: this category, at least for me, Like he's still molded
Speaker 1: by the world. He's not a complete babe in the woods,
Speaker 1: at least in many respects. We see him with help
Speaker 1: become far more functional. Uh so, there there seemed to
Speaker 1: be plenty of things about him that are unmolded, of course,
Speaker 1: and he's never developed a personality. His inner thoughts have
Speaker 1: have just been the deef fault networks and and inner
Speaker 1: thoughts of those around him rather than his own. So
Speaker 1: he is he's almost like this, this robot, but in
Speaker 1: a way that I don't know it just they Cronenberg
Speaker 1: is able to strike the right balance here. And of
Speaker 1: course credit to lack too. No, I know exactly what
Speaker 1: you're saying, Like he's not the he's not the sort
Speaker 1: of pure doll man kind of creature you're talking about.
Speaker 1: This is a character who has faced a lifetime full
Speaker 1: of experience and hardships. So he's not without experience. He's
Speaker 1: had tons of experience, He's had tons of struggle, but
Speaker 1: he just hasn't really had a self throughout all of it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh. And also it's never played out for comic
Speaker 1: relief either. Yeah. Yeah, he's never like, what is love
Speaker 1: doctor or anything like that, ignoring also the fact that
Speaker 1: it's Dr Ruth. But we'll get to talk to Ruth
Speaker 1: in a bit. One more point on Stephen Lack, though,
Speaker 1: I have to say, great eyes on this actor, and
Speaker 1: he has he's just wonderful, um like wide eyes that
Speaker 1: are just brimming with childlike in a sense, but also
Speaker 1: the sense of absorption, that childlike absorption, like everything is
Speaker 1: being taken in by these wide eyes. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: disagree with my former self. Thumbs up to the character
Speaker 1: and thumbs up to the performance by Lack. All Right,
Speaker 1: that was our chief protagonist. Our chief antagonist is Darryl Revack,
Speaker 1: played by the wonderful Michael Ironside. I would argue Michael
Speaker 1: Ironside is in the running for best film Heavies of
Speaker 1: all time. He emits fumes of menace. And it's not
Speaker 1: just his physical presence. I mean he does have a
Speaker 1: great villain or hinchman. Look, he's a great actor, and
Speaker 1: every line reading in this movie is like the tip
Speaker 1: of a box cutter being extended. It's just perfect, superb villainy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an intense performance that absolutely works with his character
Speaker 1: who is again it's this is a Scanner character, much
Speaker 1: like several different Scanner characters, but he has an extreme
Speaker 1: individual uh so you need an extreme performance powering it.
Speaker 1: That's not to say that it's just always cranked up
Speaker 1: to ten. There are also plenty of scenes where it's
Speaker 1: a much more subtle performance. But when when Ironside needs
Speaker 1: to crank it up, he can crank it up like
Speaker 1: few others. I'll suck your mind dry. Ironside was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty Canadian character actor who's played just yeah,
Speaker 1: so many fantastic heavies and authority figures and maniacs over
Speaker 1: the years. His work goes all the way back to
Speaker 1: the mid seventies, but the Scanner seems to have helped
Speaker 1: propel him into larger villain rolls. He followed this one
Speaker 1: up with one Surfacing Night, two is Visiting Hours and
Speaker 1: the fun sci fi romp uh Space Hunter Adventures in
Speaker 1: the Forbidden Zone, in which he plays an evil, snarling
Speaker 1: cyborg opposite Peter Strauss, Molly Ringwald and Ernie Hudson. WHOA, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a fun one we made with that. One's kind
Speaker 1: of on the in my back pocket for some time
Speaker 1: when we're not sure what pictured a view for weird
Speaker 1: else it sounds wonderful. He did a lot of TV
Speaker 1: work smaller pictures after that, but in the mid eighties
Speaker 1: he appeared in Top Gun Uh. He was in Watchers,
Speaker 1: the adaptation of the Dean Koont's novel with the Talking Dog.
Speaker 1: He's in The Highlander to the Quickening We can't bring that. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: and he's a richter in ninety nineties total recall Grey's
Speaker 1: heavy role in that and Yeah, he's just continued to
Speaker 1: keep the tap flowing with villain and heavy rolls like
Speaker 1: he's a This is an actor who has worked a
Speaker 1: lot and continues to work a lot. Two d seventy
Speaker 1: one credits on IMDb as of right now, so he's
Speaker 1: done a lot of TV tales in the crypt the
Speaker 1: nineties Outer Limits, Canada's Danger Bay that I watched as
Speaker 1: a kid. Um And uh, there's also a film by
Speaker 1: the name of Neon City from that I have not seen,
Speaker 1: but I know has been recommended to us by by
Speaker 1: viewers rather listeners. You're not viewing this, you're listening to it, alright.
Speaker 1: Another Scanner character in the picture is Kim Obrist. It's
Speaker 1: another nice cronin brick character name played by Jennifer O'Neill Born.
Speaker 1: I'd say another great performance. Jennifer O'Neil is excellent in
Speaker 1: this role. In her character is a very interesting one
Speaker 1: in contraposition to the other sort of powers in the
Speaker 1: movie that this character emerges essentially when Cameron Vale discovers
Speaker 1: a third faction. So you've got the powers of Consect,
Speaker 1: the the Evil Corporation and Revic Scanner Army, and they're
Speaker 1: going at it against each other. And uh, of course
Speaker 1: Revic wants to control scanners as like an army to
Speaker 1: sort of dominate the weaker non scanner human beings. Contact
Speaker 1: wants to control an individual scanner's power to use them
Speaker 1: as a weapon for the highest bidder um. And these
Speaker 1: are portrayed as potential like lone wolf psychic assassins. And
Speaker 1: in contrast to the sort of like individual will to
Speaker 1: power of these other two uh factions going at each other,
Speaker 1: kim Oprist seems to be starting what looks almost like
Speaker 1: a Scanner religion or something where one where the Scanners
Speaker 1: deliberately sort of reject individuality and commune with one another,
Speaker 1: and they host rituals where they fully inhabit one another's minds.
Speaker 1: In these group circle rituals, they even form a sort
Speaker 1: of like like a shared collective consciousness. Uh And there
Speaker 1: there's a haunting scene where they're doing this. They're fully
Speaker 1: mind melding in a circle. They keep talking about like,
Speaker 1: you know, lose yourself. It is power, you know what
Speaker 1: do they say? Like it is terrifying, it is beautiful
Speaker 1: or something. And then Revick's assassin's bust in and start
Speaker 1: shooting them and some of them are killed. And in
Speaker 1: the escape after the scene, Jennifer O'Neil's character turns to
Speaker 1: Cameron and says, now I know what it feels like
Speaker 1: to die. Yeah, it's a great performance and I do
Speaker 1: love as well. How this is as presented as this
Speaker 1: sort of third option in in the the scanner chain
Speaker 1: that's occurring in the world, Like what if it what
Speaker 1: if we didn't approach this as as as a as
Speaker 1: a method of violence, or why what if we didn't
Speaker 1: approach this as like a security threat but an opportunity
Speaker 1: as a way of coming together. But I do think
Speaker 1: that's the case. But also I like that Kim Oberst's
Speaker 1: community is not presented as just purely wholly like good
Speaker 1: and wholesome, Like there's something kind of freaky about there.
Speaker 1: You know, the scene where they're all communing with each other,
Speaker 1: like they they are clearly being entranced by something, some
Speaker 1: other level of consciousness they're achieving by by linking their
Speaker 1: minds together in that way. And while they're not they
Speaker 1: don't have overtly violent intentions that we see in the movie.
Speaker 1: There's a sense of like, we don't know what this
Speaker 1: is becoming. This is just could be some other thing
Speaker 1: that could be great or could be awful. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: potential dangerous opportunity here, And we get a sense of
Speaker 1: that too when they kind of fight back and catch
Speaker 1: the assassin's on fire. Um, like there's a sense or
Speaker 1: at least this and so I got from it was
Speaker 1: that this was not an individual movement, but this was
Speaker 1: maybe like a reflex of the collective consciousness that they
Speaker 1: were summoning between their their collective minds. Yes, and the
Speaker 1: performances is pretty solid too. Yeah. This Jennifer O'Neil Brazilian
Speaker 1: born actor and former model who had quite an acting
Speaker 1: career in the sixties and seventies. Especially. She was in
Speaker 1: Howard Hawke's last film, Real Lobo in nineteen seventy. She
Speaker 1: worked with such directors as Robert Mulligan, Otto, Premater, Blake
Speaker 1: Edwards and j Lee Thompson, and she was the titular
Speaker 1: character and Lucio Fulci's The Psychic from seven Oh. Interesting,
Speaker 1: a little bit of overlap there. Yeah, So I don't
Speaker 1: know if that if they were like, we need a
Speaker 1: psychic for this picture, and they're like, well, I just
Speaker 1: saw this great Italian movie. Well let's get Jennifer O'Neil.
Speaker 1: All Right, we've mentioned the scientists that leads our protagonist
Speaker 1: into um well, gives him a sense of himself back,
Speaker 1: but also them and gives him a spy mission. This
Speaker 1: is Dr Paul Ruth. So yes, the character is Dr
Speaker 1: Ruth played by Pat McGowan who through two thou and
Speaker 1: nine another great performance. I mean again, the cast is
Speaker 1: just great all around. I think uh McGowan always brings
Speaker 1: kind of interesting and unexpected take to his roles. I
Speaker 1: think one great example of this, which is a movie
Speaker 1: that I overall do not like. I am not a
Speaker 1: fan of Mel Gibson's Braveheart, uh for multiple reasons, but
Speaker 1: I have always found McGowan's acting choices as the villain
Speaker 1: in that movie he's played plays King Albert the first
Speaker 1: you know, the Long Shanks. He plays him as this
Speaker 1: absurdly psychotic villain, but in a really irresistible kind of way,
Speaker 1: chewing the scenery but with this odd, bemused, high pitched voice.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And in this picture as the as the
Speaker 1: Dr Paul Ruth, he has this kind of there's the
Speaker 1: kind of shiftiness to him, you know, like we often
Speaker 1: see him looking away or looking down at the floor,
Speaker 1: not making eye contact with the with the characters that
Speaker 1: he he's interacting with. That it creates an interesting energy.
Speaker 1: It's We've seen similar characters of this type and plenty
Speaker 1: of other films, you know, the he's sort of in
Speaker 1: the Mad Scientist Mold. He has also in this kind
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, teacher and savior mode or it
Speaker 1: seems to be for a large portion of the film. Um,
Speaker 1: but but he has a has a different energy. I
Speaker 1: love the moral ambiguity of this character. Like is is
Speaker 1: this character a good guy or a bad guy? I
Speaker 1: mean he's clearly some of both and in and not
Speaker 1: just transitioning from one to the other, like he's he's
Speaker 1: both in an ongoing capacity. Yeah. So McGowan, I don't know.
Speaker 1: He might have been the biggest name in the film
Speaker 1: at the time and and maybe even so in retrospect.
Speaker 1: An American born Irish actor, probably best remembered as the
Speaker 1: Prisoner on the late sixties TV show, but he was
Speaker 1: also in the successful Danger Man from the early sixties.
Speaker 1: He was in seventy nine Escape from Alcatraz, Any Fives, Braveheart,
Speaker 1: Is A Time to Kill, and one of his final
Speaker 1: credits was a voice actor in two thousand and two
Speaker 1: his Treasure Planet. I've never seen Danger Man, but that
Speaker 1: that's a funny name. Yeah, you know, early sixties spy
Speaker 1: TV show. I think I may have watched an episode
Speaker 1: of it back in the day. Do they have gadgets?
Speaker 1: I don't know if this was gadget earro you know,
Speaker 1: this might it might have been too soon, but then
Speaker 1: the prisoner certainly leaves an impression that suitably weird late
Speaker 1: sixties show that some of the other bit players are
Speaker 1: also pretty fun. Robert Silverman plays Benjamin Pierce, a sculptor,
Speaker 1: a scanner sculptor that we meet in the in the
Speaker 1: film three. Kind of a weird Canadian character actor whose
Speaker 1: work lines up with a couple of folks already mentioned,
Speaker 1: especially Cronenberg. He pops up in Rabid the Brood, Friday
Speaker 1: the thirteenth, the series Naked Lunch, Existence and Jason X,
Speaker 1: which of course Cronenberg did not direct, but Cronenberg acts
Speaker 1: in as one of the mad scientists that an actually
Speaker 1: resurrects Jason Vorhees. I think he gets like a spear
Speaker 1: thrown through his torso. Yeah. Um. Robert Silverman is also
Speaker 1: in head On, which we referenced earlier, and he's in
Speaker 1: water World. Oh. I don't remember him in that, but
Speaker 1: he's great in this. He's good in his Cronenberg roles.
Speaker 1: He and I think in both of his Cronenberg movies
Speaker 1: that I've seen, he plays like a character who had
Speaker 1: some kind of bad interaction with the villain that the
Speaker 1: protagonist is seeking out and the and the protagonist has
Speaker 1: to track him down. Yeah. Uh so we also have
Speaker 1: a villain by the name of Braden Keller. This is
Speaker 1: a this is like a Hinchman character played by Laurence Dane,
Speaker 1: who lived ninety seven through two thousand and two. Canadian
Speaker 1: character actor who was in a ton of things including
Speaker 1: Happy Birthday to Me from N eight one, Heavenly Bodies
Speaker 1: from four, Bride of Chucky from Head On, dart Man two,
Speaker 1: and much more. He did a lot of TV work
Speaker 1: in the sixties and seventies, and being a Canadian actor,
Speaker 1: of course he was on uh nineties Outer Limits. He
Speaker 1: also pops up on Danger Bay and a show called
Speaker 1: Seeing Things that I'll describe it just a second. He's
Speaker 1: a he's a good villain. He's h he's sort of
Speaker 1: a suit villain. As opposed to whatever Michael Ironside is.
Speaker 1: I would say, Um, if Michael Ironside's character is the
Speaker 1: Clearance Bodicker of this movie, uh, Lawrence Dane plays the
Speaker 1: Dick Jones of the movie. Yeah. Yeah. Ironside is anti establishment,
Speaker 1: or so it seems, and and Dane is his establishment.
Speaker 1: For sure. There is a character that is just credited
Speaker 1: as first Scanner. Uh. This is the kind of Frank
Speaker 1: oz loooking guy whose head explodes in that famous scene
Speaker 1: from Scanners. This character is played by Louis el Grande
Speaker 1: born ninety three, and I think I've mentioned del Grande
Speaker 1: on the show before due to his various connections, but
Speaker 1: Canadian actor who is mostly known to me that I
Speaker 1: saw him well well before I saw Scanners, because he
Speaker 1: was on a series on CBC titled Seeing Things that
Speaker 1: ran from one through seven, and I think he was
Speaker 1: also one of the creators of the show. But it's
Speaker 1: kind of a lighthearted psychic detective show where he, you know,
Speaker 1: he's always having visions, he's seeing things with his psychic abilities,
Speaker 1: and in doing so he helps to solve the crime
Speaker 1: in the episode of the week I would watch that.
Speaker 1: I like his his vibe. He's only got a very
Speaker 1: short scene in the movie, but he's quite memorable in it,
Speaker 1: and not just for what happens to a plaster cast
Speaker 1: of his head. Yeah, he he gets to address the
Speaker 1: audience and yeah, yeah, it's a nice little performance bit,
Speaker 1: partly very memorable. He's done a lot of work over
Speaker 1: the years, especially in Canada. Other credits include Happy Birthday
Speaker 1: to Me of unknown origin from eighty three, the nineties
Speaker 1: Outer Limits, goose Bumps and Lex and a couple of
Speaker 1: behind the scenes credits here. Howard Shore did the score
Speaker 1: for this movie. So score by shore Um. Born nineteen
Speaker 1: forty six. Howard Shore's, of course a Canadian composer and
Speaker 1: conductor who's worked extensively in film. He's probably best known
Speaker 1: for his work on the Lord of the Rings movies
Speaker 1: for Peter Jackson. He won an Oscar for at least
Speaker 1: one of those, and he's also scored all but one
Speaker 1: of Cronenberg's film since nineteen nine. I believe The Dead
Speaker 1: Zone is the the the exception in that list. Uh.
Speaker 1: Not only did he write the score to Cronenberg's The Fly,
Speaker 1: but he also wrote an opera based on the film
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight. But wow, that's something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've I've never seen it, but I remember seeing stills
Speaker 1: from it when this was first making the news, and
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, this looks amazing. This is this
Speaker 1: is the opera for me. Would it be the gooeyst
Speaker 1: opera ever? I don't know. Actually, some classic operas get
Speaker 1: get quite bloody yeah, but you can't have people slipping
Speaker 1: in the slime, so there's only so much you can
Speaker 1: It looks like they had a pretty cool functional brundle
Speaker 1: fly costume for it, because you get into unique challenges
Speaker 1: for a stage performance like that. Anyway, as far as
Speaker 1: Howard Shore's score for Scanners goes, I really liked it.
Speaker 1: I was. I listened to it in isolation prior to
Speaker 1: rewatching the film, and it has It has this kind
Speaker 1: of boisterous main theme that kind of sounds like all
Speaker 1: of the Mountain king Um. But in general it has
Speaker 1: a lot of these sort of creepy, kind of late
Speaker 1: seventies early eighties vibes that I guess are also this
Speaker 1: is probably just Cronenberg energy. As well said you can't
Speaker 1: really divorce Cronenberg's films from Shore's music all that much.
Speaker 1: But outside of the more traditional sounding stretches the score,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like weird electronic warbly bits and
Speaker 1: drone stretches that I absolutely love, uh so, and also
Speaker 1: some like percussive chaotic segments as well. Even a lot
Speaker 1: of the traditional instrumentation sounds unusual, like there are these
Speaker 1: moments of just sort of descending disson and horns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's really good stuff. This is definitely this
Speaker 1: is a score that's worth listening to as an album
Speaker 1: in my opinion. And before we move on, yeah, let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and just hear a sample from the score.
Speaker 1: This is just a taste of main title and public skin.
Speaker 1: And finally, Dick Smith has credits on this film. Special
Speaker 1: makeup effects consultant Dick Smith Live through two thousand and
Speaker 1: fourteen just one of many special effects pros on the
Speaker 1: motion picture that he's often singled out as playing a
Speaker 1: key role in the opening head explosion. Well it's not opening,
Speaker 1: but you know, early head explosion in the film, and
Speaker 1: the final showdown. He's a special effects makeup legend who
Speaker 1: worked on such pictures as The Godfather, The Exorcist, Taxi Driver,
Speaker 1: and Death Becomes Her. He won an Oscar for his
Speaker 1: work Amadeus. Other notable films include Altered States, seventy two
Speaker 1: episodes of the TV horror anthology Monsters, Tales from the
Speaker 1: Dark Side, The Movie Star Man. Oh, and this one
Speaker 1: is pretty fun n sevens The Alligator People. Ah, Well,
Speaker 1: I hear the dogs choke on their barking when they
Speaker 1: see alligator persons in the bog and fog. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: very same. All right, well, let's get into the plot
Speaker 1: for this film. Let's head to the mall. It does
Speaker 1: start in the mall, doesn't it, But it's it can't
Speaker 1: be just any mall. It's a really creepy mall. It
Speaker 1: really is. I don't know if Cronenberg picked it because
Speaker 1: it was an especially creepy looking mall, or if all
Speaker 1: malls in Canada were this creepy at the time. I
Speaker 1: don't know. How would you describe this mall? Oh? I
Speaker 1: mean it's yeah. I I didn't look up where they
Speaker 1: filmed this. It seems like there was some great location
Speaker 1: scouting in this picture. It's kind of a splendid scarlet
Speaker 1: sanctuary of a mall, but at the same time, not
Speaker 1: in a way that feels manufactured. Like there's a scarlet
Speaker 1: sanctuary feel to some of the settings in Dead Ringers,
Speaker 1: for example, there's very much intentional and very much works
Speaker 1: in that movie. This feels like maybe they just found
Speaker 1: this really weird crimson augmented mall environment in Canada and
Speaker 1: it's just, Oh, it's great. It's one of these where
Speaker 1: I was just taking in all the little like I
Speaker 1: wanted to deposit and see what the stores were in
Speaker 1: the background, you know, um part of it being sort
Speaker 1: of the cultural um archaeology of watching anything said in
Speaker 1: a mall from the eighties totally, but also I would
Speaker 1: emphasize that it feels like it's underground. I did not
Speaker 1: detect any hint of natural light whatsoever. And the ceilings
Speaker 1: are aligned with just rows and rows of light bulbs
Speaker 1: projecting down from the ceiling. Yeah, it's it's absolutely splendid.
Speaker 1: And that there's somebody looks like. There's this one scene
Speaker 1: where our protagonist pauses in front of a poster for
Speaker 1: hot Pogos and it shows a like a cartoon of
Speaker 1: a kid holding a corn dog, and I was like,
Speaker 1: what is what's going on? Here? Is our hot corn
Speaker 1: dogs called hot pogos and Canada I just never realized it. Well,
Speaker 1: I looked it up and according to Wikipedia, in Quebec
Speaker 1: and Ontario, a battered hot dog on a stick is
Speaker 1: called a pogo and it's traditionally eaten with ordinary yellow mustard,
Speaker 1: which is a solid choice. I think yellow mustard is
Speaker 1: your best condiment for any corn dog experience, at least
Speaker 1: if you're eating a a real corn dog, and a
Speaker 1: real corn dog, in my opinion, should either be a
Speaker 1: fake hot dog at the center, you know, like a
Speaker 1: soy dog or something, or if you do eat meat,
Speaker 1: it should be a meat hot dog that is on
Speaker 1: the verge of being fake meat, you know, like it's
Speaker 1: so processed that the difference between it and a soy
Speaker 1: dog is just negligible. But either way, mustard. You gotta
Speaker 1: have mustard. Yeah, I gotta get that yellow mustard out
Speaker 1: for your pogo, So Canadian listeners, I was not aware,
Speaker 1: but I like it. It sounds more fun in some
Speaker 1: respects than corn dog Pogo. Might go for the hot
Speaker 1: pogo next time. Well, here is where we meet our protagonist,
Speaker 1: Cameron Vale. He is wandering the food court of this
Speaker 1: subterranean underworld mall, snagging people's leftovers, and he he looks disheveled.
Speaker 1: He's wearing kind of a dirty trench coat. He's being
Speaker 1: presented as a oh, sort of disoriented, um uh, skulking outsider,
Speaker 1: and he's just grabbing people's leftover pogos and stuffing them
Speaker 1: in his mouth. But unfortunately, he catches the attention of
Speaker 1: a couple of ladies at a nearby table and we
Speaker 1: begin to hear them speaking. They're they're saying things like, oh,
Speaker 1: I've never seen anything so disgusting in my entire life.
Speaker 1: We're being stared at. They let creatures like that in here.
Speaker 1: It's just awful. Wait a second, Like, are their lips
Speaker 1: actually moving while they're saying these things? That's not so clear.
Speaker 1: And Cameron Vale here he I guess we don't know
Speaker 1: his name yet, but this this character, he's uh, he's
Speaker 1: bothered by their talking. We see it appearing to cause
Speaker 1: him almost physical pain, and so he turns his attention
Speaker 1: to these these two ladies, and the one of them
Speaker 1: who seemed to be speaking, though maybe her lips weren't moving,
Speaker 1: starts to have something that looks like a migraine, which
Speaker 1: evolves into something that looks like a seizure. Uh, and
Speaker 1: she's collapsing on the floor. People are trying to help her.
Speaker 1: But this interaction gets the attention of a couple of
Speaker 1: tough looking dudes nearby, and they chase Cameron and immobilize
Speaker 1: him with a dart gun. Yeah, there's a fun action
Speaker 1: sequence where he tries to get away from him by
Speaker 1: jumping from one escalator to the next, and it it
Speaker 1: looked looked kind of dangerous. I was like, I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't, don't get caught between them escalator and the ceilings.
Speaker 1: Sort the situation. But he manages to make it over,
Speaker 1: but then succumbs to the tranquilizer dart. Yeah, he collapses
Speaker 1: on the escalator and I had the same reaction. I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh no, don't let like your shirt collar
Speaker 1: get caught in the Yeah. But anyway, Yeah, So he
Speaker 1: he wakes up later strapped to a hospital bed in
Speaker 1: a large room where he is confronted by Dr Paul
Speaker 1: Ruth Patrick McGowan, who gives him kind of a speech.
Speaker 1: He you know, he says, Cameron, why are you such
Speaker 1: a derelict? Uh. They've never met before, but he's introducing
Speaker 1: himself and and he says he can tell him why
Speaker 1: he's a derelict. He says, you're a scanner and that
Speaker 1: has been the source of all your agony. But I
Speaker 1: will show you now that it can be a source
Speaker 1: of great power. And from here dozens of people and
Speaker 1: begin to walk into the room. Dr Ruth just has
Speaker 1: them come in and sit in these rows and rows
Speaker 1: of chairs. And the more people pour into the room,
Speaker 1: the more Cameron is in distress. We hear all of
Speaker 1: their internal monologues at once, as a kind of great
Speaker 1: ocean of voices, and this is this is torture for Cameron,
Speaker 1: you see, He's like writhing in pain at hearing all
Speaker 1: of their voices at once. But eventually Dr Ruth provides
Speaker 1: the cure. He gives Cameron an injection of a drug
Speaker 1: called ephemarole, and it makes the voices stop, and Cameron
Speaker 1: has relief. Almost he has a relief as if for
Speaker 1: the first time in his life. Now next comes the
Speaker 1: most famous scene in the movie, the demonstration. So we
Speaker 1: see that we're at the headquarters of a corporation called CONSAC,
Speaker 1: and there's a demonstration being held for a private audience
Speaker 1: in an auditorium, and we we meet a sort of timid,
Speaker 1: bookish man in a suit and glasses on stage. This
Speaker 1: is Louis del Grande or del Grande. I don't know
Speaker 1: how you pronounced his name. Yeah, I've been saying del Grande,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's just that's because it's such a
Speaker 1: big performance, you know, it's it's a big um uh.
Speaker 1: And so this guy begins by giving a speech. He says,
Speaker 1: I would like to scan all of you in this room,
Speaker 1: one at a time. I must remind you that the
Speaker 1: scanning experience is usually a painful one, sometimes resulting in nosebleeds, earaches,
Speaker 1: stomach cramps, nausea, sometimes other symptoms of a similar nature.
Speaker 1: But he assures them there is a doctor present. He
Speaker 1: points out the doctor Gatineau, and he asks that no
Speaker 1: one leave the room once the demonstration has begun, and
Speaker 1: he calls for volunteers, and of course there's a long,
Speaker 1: awkward silence because I don't know who knows what scanning is,
Speaker 1: who wants to be scanned. But finally a board looking
Speaker 1: man in one of the back rows raises his hand
Speaker 1: and comes to the stage, and why it is Michael Ironside.
Speaker 1: What do you know? And it's not just Michael Ironside.
Speaker 1: He has an interesting ring shaped scar above the bridge
Speaker 1: of his nose. Yeah, I wonder what that is. Perhaps
Speaker 1: we'll find out later. M So, the scanner doing the
Speaker 1: demonstration asks Michael Ironside to think of something that the
Speaker 1: scanner would have no way of knowing, something that will
Speaker 1: not breach this purity of his organization. Maybe a personal
Speaker 1: detail from his life, and Michael Ironside says, all right,
Speaker 1: I have something in mind. And when you watch the scene,
Speaker 1: knowing what's coming, you can see little sinister flourishes, like
Speaker 1: little smirks and flares of delivery from Michael Ironside as
Speaker 1: as he's getting ready for this thing. They kind of
Speaker 1: go by you the first time. For example, Michael Ironside
Speaker 1: asks the scanner if he has to close his eyes,
Speaker 1: and the scanner assures him that it doesn't matter, and
Speaker 1: scanning begins. Both men start by getting very intense looks
Speaker 1: on their faces, like they're very focused. Uh, maybe perhaps
Speaker 1: both struggling. Maybe perhaps both in a little bit of pain.
Speaker 1: And because we don't know what we're looking at, you
Speaker 1: could just assume this is what it looks like when
Speaker 1: the scanner demonstrator read somebody's mind. But this just escalates
Speaker 1: and things look weirder and weirder. Eventually it really starts
Speaker 1: to seem like something might be wrong, like are they
Speaker 1: supposed to look like they're in this much distress? Uh?
Speaker 1: And there is an awesome, painful droning sound in the
Speaker 1: musical score. I feel like, actually, just in a recent movie,
Speaker 1: I was like, do not include painful noises in the
Speaker 1: score of your movie. I take it back. This, this
Speaker 1: is why you should have it in Scanners. That was
Speaker 1: completely wrong. And then suddenly, without warning, the demonstrator's head explodes,
Speaker 1: and I can see exactly why even people who haven't
Speaker 1: seen the movie or don't remember anything else about the
Speaker 1: movie will remember this scene for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1: It is one of the most shocking, disgusting, unexpected, unbelievable
Speaker 1: moments I can think of in any movie ever. I
Speaker 1: would go so far as to describe this scene as
Speaker 1: an almost awe inspiring act of filmmaking. Like, yes, it
Speaker 1: is gory and gross, and so part of its effect
Speaker 1: is like pure vulgar exploitation of our squeamishness, But it's
Speaker 1: also a masterful exercise in in like building uneasiness and
Speaker 1: the sense of uncertainty and suspense and then relieving that
Speaker 1: tension with a spectacle that is so nasty it leaves
Speaker 1: people absolutely speechless. Yeah, you can even knowing what's coming.
Speaker 1: And again, you don't even have to have seen the
Speaker 1: film because to know what's coming, because the moment of
Speaker 1: the explosion has just been reported. It's become a meme.
Speaker 1: You can find it all over the place. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a gift for Jeff, you know, on various formats
Speaker 1: and on Discord and so forth. But when it when
Speaker 1: it hits in the film, Yeah, there is that feeling
Speaker 1: of release that built up pressure, like literal psychic pressure
Speaker 1: inside uh this character's head. And then the reaction to
Speaker 1: from all the characters that are present is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: Like even uh iron size character Reva is. I don't
Speaker 1: know that you would say he's horrified, but there is
Speaker 1: a sense that he is perhaps a little shocked at
Speaker 1: how how gross the result sor or how powerful um
Speaker 1: his attack was. Like he he kind of looks down
Speaker 1: at the exploded head, going like, oh, yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: I've read stuff about how this special effect was accomplished.
Speaker 1: Like I think they tried it several different ways and
Speaker 1: thought it didn't look right, and they eventually landed on
Speaker 1: the way that ended up in the final movie, which
Speaker 1: involved a shotgun. Yeah, which is not surprising given how
Speaker 1: many shotguns are in this picture. I know, I was
Speaker 1: really this is one of the things on this viewing
Speaker 1: that I was kind of commenting to myself. I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: lots of shotguns in this picture. This picture has a
Speaker 1: thing for shotguns. Uh so, yeah, a shotgun was apparently used,
Speaker 1: A shotgun loaded with salt I believe, Um, I used
Speaker 1: a latex head filled with I believe, dog food leftovers,
Speaker 1: fake blood, rabbit livers, all sorts of gross stuff. And
Speaker 1: I think one of the challenges apparently was they wanted
Speaker 1: it to explode, but they couldn't have it explode with
Speaker 1: spark because they wanted it to feel very organic, um,
Speaker 1: at least in this one instance of of psychic energy,
Speaker 1: and the picture like the ideas that like this is
Speaker 1: not it's not fire, it's not electricity per se. It
Speaker 1: is some sort of almost organic process it's taking place here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's disgusting. But also, I mean, I just want
Speaker 1: to emphasize again how if you haven't seen it before
Speaker 1: and you don't know it's coming. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's possible for anybody, because you know, everybody knows that
Speaker 1: about this movie, But if you didn't actually know what
Speaker 1: was coming going in, it would be so shocking and
Speaker 1: leave you absolutely baffled. And I love that, you know,
Speaker 1: the audience is just as baffled as like the characters
Speaker 1: in the room are. But then there's this moment of
Speaker 1: focus where people start turning to Michael Ironside and it's
Speaker 1: like did he somehow do that? Like did the scanner
Speaker 1: get scanned? And so Michael Ironside's character is apprehended by
Speaker 1: the Concect security guards, the head of secure He instructs
Speaker 1: the staff doctor to give Michael Ironside a shot of ephemarole,
Speaker 1: which that's the same stuff that Dr Ruth gave to
Speaker 1: Cameron Veil to quiet the voices earlier. And we we
Speaker 1: later find out that a femarole is a scan suppressant.
Speaker 1: It is a drug that essentially turns off a person's
Speaker 1: scanner abilities. So they're giving the shot to this guy
Speaker 1: to disable him. But for some reason, the doctor when
Speaker 1: he goes to give the shot to Michael Ironside, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's like he can't quite line it upright. It's something's
Speaker 1: going on in his head, and he accidentally gives the
Speaker 1: shot to himself instead of the Michael Ironside's hand. And
Speaker 1: in this we're seeing the more subtle powers of the
Speaker 1: of the scanner. Here, he's able to easily manipulate and
Speaker 1: puppet those around him into into doing things they don't
Speaker 1: intend to do. Right, So, while the concept cagoons are
Speaker 1: transporting Michael Ironside to another location by car. They get overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: They strangely start wrecking their own cars and turning their
Speaker 1: guns on themselves, while the prisoner just looks on smiling.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh. Well after that, time for a corporate
Speaker 1: leadership meaning and uh and what do you know? The
Speaker 1: scientists who earlier apprehended Cameron Vale this Dr Ruth. He
Speaker 1: is there at the table with the with the CEO
Speaker 1: of Consact. So the big Boss Travillion says, in a
Speaker 1: line that I found so funny I wrote it down.
Speaker 1: He says, last night, we a concect chose to reveal
Speaker 1: to the outside world our work with those telepathic curiosities
Speaker 1: known as scanners. The result six corpses and a substantial
Speaker 1: loss of credibility for our organization. I don't know why
Speaker 1: I keep wanting to compare this to RoboCop, which I
Speaker 1: guess came later. But the RoboCop meeting with the ED
Speaker 1: two oh nine when he's like, it's just a glitch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the clamp character and grim Ones
Speaker 1: too has a has a very similar line where it's like,
Speaker 1: like the grim Ones have been rampaging and he's like, like,
Speaker 1: the people could actually get killed, you know. That's what's
Speaker 1: what's gonna do for the the company, what it's going
Speaker 1: to do for So anyway, in this scene, which I
Speaker 1: thought was a very interesting and well written scene in
Speaker 1: the way it kind of unfurls the scenario of the movie,
Speaker 1: we we learned that the company as a new director
Speaker 1: of internal security, Michael Ironside, made the previous one shoot
Speaker 1: himself in the streets, so they've got a new guy
Speaker 1: named Braden Keller, and Keller recommends that the company discontinue
Speaker 1: its scanner program at once. He says, our company is
Speaker 1: supposed to specialize in weapons and private armies, not fantasies.
Speaker 1: And Dr Ruth replies that, hey, the fact that six
Speaker 1: of their people were killed and the company was embarrassed
Speaker 1: in front of industry heads by a lone assassin using
Speaker 1: only scanning techniques in itself proves that scanners have immense
Speaker 1: potential as weapons, so we got to keep developing them
Speaker 1: as weapons. But Keller replies coming back saying, but hey,
Speaker 1: how many scanners do we have working with us right now?
Speaker 1: Ruth says as of last night, Nune, so apparently they
Speaker 1: had one guy cooperate, and that was Louis del Grande,
Speaker 1: the demonstrator. He was there one scanner on the payroll,
Speaker 1: and Michael Iron's side blew up his head. So they
Speaker 1: have none now. But then Ruth says, Concect Surveillance has
Speaker 1: gradually lost contact with all the names of scanners on
Speaker 1: our list, and I submit, this is not an accident.
Speaker 1: I think we've lost them to a program far in
Speaker 1: advance of ours. Oh and that's a good moment, he says.
Speaker 1: From my study of the situation, I've come to the
Speaker 1: conclusion that there is a scanner underground developed in North America. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Keller, you know he's not buying this. He says,
Speaker 1: that's ridiculous. You can't get two scanners to sit in
Speaker 1: the same room together without going berserk. They can't stand
Speaker 1: being around one another. But nevertheless, Ruth says, nope, they're
Speaker 1: working together, and the underground has a leader. In fact,
Speaker 1: he's probably the man we met the night before, and
Speaker 1: his name is Darryll Revock. So he's got a solution.
Speaker 1: Either we let Daryl Revock just strike get us without retaliation,
Speaker 1: or we infiltrate his organization and decapitate it, and he's
Speaker 1: got just the weapon to use on that, the one
Speaker 1: scanner he just found, Cameron Vail. And so the board approves.
Speaker 1: They're like, all right, well, let's move with that program.
Speaker 1: We don't we don't really need to see a presentation
Speaker 1: on it. We don't need to meet this guy. We
Speaker 1: trust you to do what you do. Dr Ruth. And
Speaker 1: here we reunite with Cameron Vail. Now Ruth is back
Speaker 1: in sort of the gentler mode, less in the like
Speaker 1: we must have weapons and assassin's mode. Now he's talking
Speaker 1: to Cameron again and they discuss how Cameron is not
Speaker 1: used to talking much. This is the scene where they
Speaker 1: establish how with other people's thoughts always filling his head,
Speaker 1: he was never able to develop an identity or a personality,
Speaker 1: and that the injection of a femaroal to inhibit his
Speaker 1: scanning abilities. Since then, he's had a kind of clarity
Speaker 1: in a sense of self that he never had before.
Speaker 1: But he's also afraid because for the first time he
Speaker 1: can quote here himself. Yeah, And this is something that
Speaker 1: this whole view of scanning is is so nicely rolled
Speaker 1: out throughout the film. You learn a little bit more
Speaker 1: and more about it and it never feels like a
Speaker 1: like an info dump or anything um because yeah, you
Speaker 1: learn that it's like what's going on with scanning is
Speaker 1: kind of that they describe it as like uh, nervous
Speaker 1: systems interacting with each other. It's this kind of like
Speaker 1: communal um engagement between one mind and body and the other.
Speaker 1: And then it just comes down to like levels of
Speaker 1: awareness and abilities to manipulate or block that shared state.
Speaker 1: So with with Cameron Veil, it's like this this idea
Speaker 1: that you know, it's not just that the thoughts are
Speaker 1: coming in, but there are neural processes that he hasn't
Speaker 1: really had a chance to develop because the neural processes
Speaker 1: of others have been flowing in to take up that
Speaker 1: space in him. Yeah, I think this aspect of the
Speaker 1: movie is so interesting, and I wonder if I almost
Speaker 1: detect in common with Videodrome a subtle media critique, which
Speaker 1: is the idea of okay, so the scanners are unable
Speaker 1: to develop a healthy self identity without either some kind
Speaker 1: of treatment like taking a femmerole the silence the voices,
Speaker 1: or using some other method of getting other people's voices
Speaker 1: out of their heads. So like some scanners seem to
Speaker 1: have been able to cope by like living in total
Speaker 1: isolation and uh and sort of like we we learned
Speaker 1: about one scanner later who does this through creating art
Speaker 1: um and I wonder could this be a commentary on
Speaker 1: NonStop passive consumption of media such as radio or TV,
Speaker 1: which if it fills your head constantly with other voices
Speaker 1: and you're never alone with your own thoughts, could Cronenberg
Speaker 1: be maybe presenting a subtle argument that that sort of
Speaker 1: in a way prevents you from having a personality of
Speaker 1: your own. Yeah, I think that's a that's a he said,
Speaker 1: read on it. I think there's a lot of merit
Speaker 1: to that. So everyone turn off the podcast No, no, no,
Speaker 1: keep listening to the podcasts NonStop at a double speed,
Speaker 1: a triple speed. It's got to be triple You can
Speaker 1: do triple speed if you do a half dose of
Speaker 1: epemarole on top of that. I mean, it's going to
Speaker 1: vary from listener to listener, but that's a general way
Speaker 1: you want to handle it. We also in this part
Speaker 1: of the movie get some some background on Darryl Revok,
Speaker 1: which is Dr Ruth shows Cameron some old footage of
Speaker 1: him in an institution of some kind after he drilled
Speaker 1: a hole in his own skull. That's the scar on
Speaker 1: his forehead. Uh, to to let the pressure out, to
Speaker 1: release the pressure, And I think we get the impression
Speaker 1: that that he means like the voices, and so this
Speaker 1: was Revlick's way of trying to cope with the cacophony. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a nice bit of Trepid Nation sploitation here,
Speaker 1: and and of course this is based on the very
Speaker 1: real history of Trepid Nation. You want to learn more
Speaker 1: about trap Nation, go back into the archives. We did
Speaker 1: an episode of stuff to blow your mind about it
Speaker 1: several years back. But here we get some indoctrination, right
Speaker 1: like Dr Ruth is teaching Cameron that Revck is his
Speaker 1: enemy and that reVC will try to recruit him to
Speaker 1: serve in his crusade to destroy the society that created him.
Speaker 1: And so Ruth wants to encourage Cameron to get to
Speaker 1: Revick first. So how is he going to find Revick? Well,
Speaker 1: from here, I guess maybe we can take a lighter
Speaker 1: skip through the plot because we don't have to go
Speaker 1: seene by seeing on everything. But some of the main
Speaker 1: plot points are He's got a first lead, which is
Speaker 1: another unaffiliated scanner, a guy named Benjamin Pierce, who is
Speaker 1: an artist, a sculptor who apparently has been able to
Speaker 1: keep himself saying by creating art. Yeah, creepy weird art
Speaker 1: with heads and all sorts of cool stuff. It makes
Speaker 1: for a great scene, like when they when he's talking
Speaker 1: to the Cameron Vale, they actually go inside a large head,
Speaker 1: like an enormous human head that has like a little
Speaker 1: like area with pillows in it inside or something, and
Speaker 1: so they're inside the head talking about the voices inside
Speaker 1: their head and it's it's it's it's nice. It works.
Speaker 1: So Veil tracks him down through some trickery and uh
Speaker 1: and some scanning techniques. But then he also, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: when he meets him, he's like, I need to find
Speaker 1: Darryl Revok and and dude wants nothing to do with this.
Speaker 1: Benjamin Pierce is just like, leave me alone. You don't
Speaker 1: want to do that. Go away. But while Veil is
Speaker 1: their assassin's attack, Revlick's guys show up with shotguns and
Speaker 1: it's just shotguns. Wall to Walt. Both types of bad
Speaker 1: guys in this movie have shotguns. The concept guys have
Speaker 1: shotguns Revlick's guys have shotguns. It's like there was a
Speaker 1: sale at the shotgun store. Yeah, a lot of shotguns
Speaker 1: and this picture. But after this attack, Veil survives sort
Speaker 1: of psychically repelling the assassins. But Pierce as he dies
Speaker 1: tells Veil psychically to find somebody named Kim Oberst. And
Speaker 1: this is where here in this section, Veil goes to
Speaker 1: Kim Obersts. Would you call it like a scanner commune
Speaker 1: sort of? Yeah, yeah, kind of a Kanyeane situation going on. Now.
Speaker 1: We already talked a bit about what happens at this place.
Speaker 1: They they seem to be engaging in a kind of
Speaker 1: ritual where they enmesh their minds with one another to
Speaker 1: achieve something previously unknown, beautiful and terrifying. And while they're
Speaker 1: doing that, Revic's assassin's track Veil down and attack yet again.
Speaker 1: There's a big like car chase scene, and only Veil
Speaker 1: and Kim Oberst survive. Yeah, the great sequence where the
Speaker 1: bus is crashed through a record store. I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, but I really enjoyed checking out all these
Speaker 1: various records in the background, some of which were instantly recognizable,
Speaker 1: Like they have multiple copies of a Frank Zappa album.
Speaker 1: Back there you see a Bowie album. But then there
Speaker 1: was other stuff I just had to look up. There's
Speaker 1: this one individual that there's a poster for Herman Brood,
Speaker 1: and I was like, has that made up? Is this
Speaker 1: some sort of a nod to the Brood or something?
Speaker 1: But I know this is a This is a Dutch
Speaker 1: musician that I just wasn't familiar with. It was a
Speaker 1: a pretty big deal in some circles. Um and you know,
Speaker 1: various other little details I had to look up and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, just a just a well crafted sequence and
Speaker 1: and and well constructed set um in in in a
Speaker 1: in a film that you're not going to remember for
Speaker 1: its bus crash. Well anyway, after this whole sequence, Veil
Speaker 1: uncovers a conspiracy. He does some corporate espionage and figures
Speaker 1: out that Michael Ironside is working out of the headquarters
Speaker 1: of a company called BioCarbon Amalgamate. Uh and he he
Speaker 1: sneaks in and he does some computer hacking and determines
Speaker 1: that they are manufacturing large quantities of a femarole and
Speaker 1: shipping them out for some secret purpose. And he wants
Speaker 1: to find out why. But access to that information is restricted. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love the hacking in this because it is very
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very much in line with what you
Speaker 1: also see Ian Ridley Scott's Alien. This is that period
Speaker 1: where computers worked by asking them a question and then
Speaker 1: the computer would tell you. You You would type request access
Speaker 1: and I would say access denied, and then you would
Speaker 1: type request override the access denied. So anyway, Veil and
Speaker 1: Overest want to find out what's going on, so they
Speaker 1: come in to meet Veil's handlers with CONSAC, and then
Speaker 1: there's a big double cross because we find out that
Speaker 1: the head of security at CONSAC, Keller, Uh, he's secretly
Speaker 1: working in cahoots with REVK and he wants to kill them. Uh.
Speaker 1: They escape, but unfortunately Patrick McGowan or fortunately or unfortunately
Speaker 1: again and morally ambiguous character uh he he is killed
Speaker 1: in the process. And here we get into what I
Speaker 1: think many people now regard as the dumbest part of
Speaker 1: the movie. And I would say, if there is anything
Speaker 1: in the movie that doesn't really work well, it is
Speaker 1: what we're about to talk about. It is the sequence
Speaker 1: where Cameron is told by Dr Ruth that he can
Speaker 1: get the computer files by scanning the computer the same
Speaker 1: way he scans a human, because a computer also has
Speaker 1: a nervous system, So he goes to a pay phone
Speaker 1: and scans the computer through the phone line. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like this is a part of the film that
Speaker 1: that even I just can't imagine anyone being on board
Speaker 1: with this at the time, because I just don't feel
Speaker 1: like a computer is a nervous system, and certainly these
Speaker 1: computers are not nervous systems. However, if you were to
Speaker 1: make scanners today and set it in the future, I
Speaker 1: could very well imagine a situation where your computers are
Speaker 1: wet were computers that have some sort of organic neural
Speaker 1: component to them, And in that case, I think you
Speaker 1: could you could make an argument that, well, our psychics
Speaker 1: are able to commune with the computer because there is
Speaker 1: this they have this organic base in common. So if
Speaker 1: the if they were trying to hack not the computer
Speaker 1: system here, but the elevator from the lift, you know,
Speaker 1: that would make more sense. Oh man, yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be good. But yeah, I think this I regard as
Speaker 1: the weakest point in the film. I think the sequence
Speaker 1: goes on a little too long. Um, it's not as
Speaker 1: interesting as the rest of the movie. Is so there's
Speaker 1: like an attack and counter attack through like the computers,
Speaker 1: uh self destruct features and so forth, and then there's
Speaker 1: a big explosion. Yeah, there is that cool. They're doing
Speaker 1: this all by the way, by by calling in from
Speaker 1: a pay phone to to hack it um and and
Speaker 1: when everything blows up there trying to like like shut
Speaker 1: it down and destroy camera and veil, and they don't
Speaker 1: quite destroy them, but they do channel a lot of
Speaker 1: psychic energy through a you know this uh this remote
Speaker 1: phone booth, and so we get the scene with the
Speaker 1: phone receiver melting in his hand and then yea more explosions.
Speaker 1: So there's some good stuff sprinkled in there. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, it goes on a bit long, and of
Speaker 1: course it is rooted in this kind of absurdity that
Speaker 1: feels a little bit out of pace with the rest
Speaker 1: of the picture. I mean, I like an exploding telephone booth.
Speaker 1: That's funny. But yeah, it's a little totally different than
Speaker 1: the rest of the film. Yeah, but the good news
Speaker 1: is that once they get past that, like we're kind
Speaker 1: of back on the the original rails. So if you
Speaker 1: don't like this segment of the picture, uh, you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry too much about it because it's not
Speaker 1: going to ultimately play into the end game as much. Right. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you don't want the final twist of the
Speaker 1: movie revealed, uh, you may take this opportunity to tune out,
Speaker 1: because we we have to to talk about what the
Speaker 1: big reveal is. What was it? What's inside the secret computer? Well,
Speaker 1: it is a list of doctors who are prescribing ephemaral.
Speaker 1: Are they're prescribing it? What do they have scanner patients
Speaker 1: who want to make the voices stop? No, In fact,
Speaker 1: they're prescribing a femarole to pregnant women as a just
Speaker 1: regular pregnant women as a tranquilizer. And we discover in
Speaker 1: fact that this is linked to the origin of the
Speaker 1: first batch of scanners. So if femarole the drug was
Speaker 1: developed by Dr ruth By Patrick McGowan as a tranquilizer
Speaker 1: to be used during pregnancy, but it had the unintended
Speaker 1: side effect of causing children to be born with telepathic powers,
Speaker 1: to be born as scanners, and after they discovered this,
Speaker 1: it was discontinued. But they're all these scanners out there
Speaker 1: now and Revick and his co conspirators are sending out
Speaker 1: more of this drug to be prescribed because he wants
Speaker 1: to make a new generation of scanners and eventually recruit
Speaker 1: them for his army. Mm hmm. It's a fiendish plot,
Speaker 1: but one that works, like it's not like Rebvock has
Speaker 1: hey for him a rational plan, like he wants to
Speaker 1: make more people that are touched by the same ability
Speaker 1: uh so that they can become the new status quote
Speaker 1: that they can take over and they can rebel against
Speaker 1: the uh the normal people that have made things so
Speaker 1: difficult for them. But Revck captures Veil and Oberst, and
Speaker 1: then it comes to the final showdown, which is another
Speaker 1: I'd say, you know, if there's a standout secondary scene
Speaker 1: in the movie, people remember after the demonstration with the
Speaker 1: exploding head, it's probably this last scene, the showdown. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like can they top the exploding head? Well, they don't
Speaker 1: try to top it. They do something different that is
Speaker 1: even more horrifying in my opinion, when we also get
Speaker 1: the reveal that that Revock and Veil our brothers, or
Speaker 1: at least that's what Revck says. Who knows if we
Speaker 1: can trust him, but he says that they're both Dr
Speaker 1: Ruth's sons. That they're the oldest of the Scanners and
Speaker 1: therefore the most powerful. Yeah, and somehow Dr Ruth did
Speaker 1: something to make them like more powerful than all the
Speaker 1: other Scanners, which is why they have these special abilities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they can overpower even the other Scanners. Yeah, they got
Speaker 1: like extra if him are all in their their milk
Speaker 1: when their babies or something. So yeah, we basically we
Speaker 1: get the scene which you know might expect or if
Speaker 1: you've never seen it before, where Rebick is saying, join me, brother, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, joining me on the dark side will rise up.
Speaker 1: We'll rule over the new Scanner babies together and take
Speaker 1: over the world. Cameron Valego says says, Nope, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to do that, and hits Revick in the head
Speaker 1: with a paper weight, and at that point it's on.
Speaker 1: It's a Scanner battle to the death with one psychic
Speaker 1: mind attempting to dominate the other. And Oh, I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, Joe, but this, this entire sequence, the
Speaker 1: sequence that I've seen before. Mind, you just really creep
Speaker 1: me out this time. And I mean it. And I've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of stuff in films, you know. I'm
Speaker 1: a kid who grew up watching The Bad guy's melt
Speaker 1: in slow motion on the Raid is VHS. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: gross and it's it's hard to watch, but it's also
Speaker 1: pretty astounding. Yeah, it's And I was really trying to
Speaker 1: break down like why is this so disturbing and why
Speaker 1: does it work so well? And I think they're basically
Speaker 1: like three factors. So first of all, uh that the
Speaker 1: obvious our protagonists and antagonists here are both like literally
Speaker 1: destroying each other's bodies with their psychic powers here, and
Speaker 1: perhaps destroying their own bodies as part of it as
Speaker 1: they channel these destructive powers. So like you know, faces pulsating,
Speaker 1: stuff bursting, Um, it's just really it's it's hard to watch,
Speaker 1: especially your hero go through this level of physical trauma. Yeah. Secondly,
Speaker 1: the effects are just really good. These are just really
Speaker 1: solid practical effects. Like when Veil ends up gouging out
Speaker 1: parts of his own face that have just been bulging
Speaker 1: and pulsating and popping, is just really just it's just
Speaker 1: really roasts. It's awful. I think part of the effect
Speaker 1: of why this scene is so bad because there are
Speaker 1: other scenes where, like the hero of the movie gets injured,
Speaker 1: even you know, traumatic injuries that aren't as awful as this,
Speaker 1: And I think it's because the injury appears to be
Speaker 1: some sort of deep systemic malfunction of the body rather
Speaker 1: than just like getting like cuts or or impacts or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is not our hero getting shot in the shoulder
Speaker 1: or anything. This is like gouging parts of his face
Speaker 1: out and then eventually his eyeballs explode. That that level
Speaker 1: of of trauma. And I think that the third factor
Speaker 1: is that the body horror that we see in this scene.
Speaker 1: It's this weird mix of traumatic injury and mutation without
Speaker 1: ever actually crossing the line into a clear sense of
Speaker 1: movie mutation. You know, It's like their bodies don't seem
Speaker 1: to becoming completely other, but the weird energies flowing through
Speaker 1: them are kind of horrifically exposing a hidden anatomy, and
Speaker 1: it's just dreadful to hold. Like, like when you see
Speaker 1: veins like pulsating in their arms and across their face,
Speaker 1: You're like, that doesn't match up to what I know
Speaker 1: is underneath the face or the arm. But I'm totally
Speaker 1: believing that that what is being revealed there is real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's the secret war being revealed. Yeah, but at
Speaker 1: this time it's like underneath the skin. So yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're pulsating and exploding, eventually erupting into fire. We get
Speaker 1: this kind of religious um aura to it. His veil
Speaker 1: has twin flames and both of his palms and then yeah, exploding,
Speaker 1: And then we get the the ending here where Oberus
Speaker 1: comes in. She finds Veils just husk of a body.
Speaker 1: He's just completely immolated, and then she hears his voice
Speaker 1: from over in the corner. There's veils code. He has
Speaker 1: this big kind of cool jacket. BIG's not a jacket,
Speaker 1: it's a full fledged coat that he's wearing and most
Speaker 1: of the film and there's a character in the corner
Speaker 1: with that coat over them. They pull the code back
Speaker 1: and it looks like Revic, but it's not Revick's voice.
Speaker 1: It's not Revick's mind in there, like clearly in this
Speaker 1: battle of wills, this battle of minds vey'l one, and
Speaker 1: it's now his mind that occupies a Revock's body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he like pulled a fast one on him. We're led
Speaker 1: to believe that, like he let Revok destroy his body,
Speaker 1: but somehow traded places with his consciousness. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so we get this wonderful Cronenbergie ending where the end
Speaker 1: is the beginning. Our heroes have won because they embraced
Speaker 1: extreme change and extreme weirdness and uh and perhaps kind
Speaker 1: of embraced a kind of post human identity. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like the way out of this problem is through
Speaker 1: it and you know, becoming this different being so computer
Speaker 1: scanning subplot aside, I think Scanners holds up great. This
Speaker 1: is uh, it's excellent. It's it's gross in the parts
Speaker 1: that are supposed to be gross, it's shocking and the
Speaker 1: parts that are supposed to be shocking. It's also think
Speaker 1: actually much smarter and more thoughtful and more interesting than
Speaker 1: a lot of initial reviewers gave it credit for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and weirder than you might remember it. I found it
Speaker 1: weirder than I remembered it. Yeah. I should also say that,
Speaker 1: in rewatching the film, I was struck by the amount
Speaker 1: of care it seems to to give this granted fantastic
Speaker 1: and sci fi horror vision of neurodiversity. So, to be clear,
Speaker 1: horror movies are not a great place to look for
Speaker 1: nuanced or insightful views of things like mental illness. But
Speaker 1: there's there's probably a lot to dissect here. Concerning the
Speaker 1: way the Scanner characters present these different ideas of neuro
Speaker 1: divergent again fantasy neuro divergent people in the given world.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like the way the struggles of the different
Speaker 1: Scanner characters have manifested and like different outcomes in their lives,
Speaker 1: and we see the coping strategies they've come up with,
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah, I think that's that is interesting, Like
Speaker 1: that that Vale never really had a coping strategy until
Speaker 1: he got a medication, that like one guy had a
Speaker 1: coping strategy through through art that Kim Obrist did through community. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like like he has that kind of heartbreaking moment with
Speaker 1: the artist with Pierce where uh he said, like Pierce
Speaker 1: is describing how the art keeps him sane and he
Speaker 1: and granted, he's you know, doing his spy game kind
Speaker 1: of thing here, so he's being deceitful, but he he
Speaker 1: says what seems rather honestly, He's like, but I don't
Speaker 1: I don't have anything like that. I don't I don't
Speaker 1: have this thing that you have to help me combat
Speaker 1: this problem. And that's why I need you to take
Speaker 1: me to Revock. And uh, I don't know that that
Speaker 1: that was that kind of resonated with me. Really, that
Speaker 1: was a nice small moment in this film. Yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: all right, that's Scanners, Uh, the nineteen eighty one classic. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't think we'll be covering Scanners too, Scanners three
Speaker 1: or the Scanner Cop movies. I don't know, never say never,
Speaker 1: but I feel like we we covered the best one here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the sequels kind of they keep all the
Speaker 1: gross stuff and the heads exploding, but they do not
Speaker 1: retain the uh, the level of thoughtfulness of the original. Yeah. Mostly,
Speaker 1: I think I remember at one point, this was years
Speaker 1: and years back, we were talking about scanner face and
Speaker 1: what actors make the best scanner face. So I don't
Speaker 1: remember our findings, but I think we generally agreed that
Speaker 1: Michael Ironside is hired to beat. I think Scanner Cop
Speaker 1: has Richard Lynch in it, and I believe Richard Lynch
Speaker 1: had a had a pretty good scanner face. I bet
Speaker 1: he had a good one. Yeah. Um, And where David
Speaker 1: Hewlett is in the initial sequel and I haven't seen
Speaker 1: him in that, or I don't remember seeing him in that,
Speaker 1: but I've seen Hewlett and other things that he's quite good,
Speaker 1: and so I was really impressed with a role that
Speaker 1: he has in gerald Do Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities. He
Speaker 1: plays this grave robber who's who's desperate to get enough
Speaker 1: gold fillings out of teeth to pay off bookies, and
Speaker 1: so he's trying to rob graves and a haunted cemetery
Speaker 1: and counting all sorts of horror and it's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's a wonderful performance. All right, Well, we're gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and shut the book on Scanners here, but
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone out there if you
Speaker 1: have memories or impressions of Scanners, if you saw it
Speaker 1: in the theater. We always love to hear those stories
Speaker 1: that people who saw these these films when they reginally
Speaker 1: came out, or you have memories of the first time
Speaker 1: you saw it. Um, I would love to hear from
Speaker 1: anyone who did not know that head was going to
Speaker 1: blow up? What did you think when you watch this
Speaker 1: film for the first time. A reminder that we're primarily
Speaker 1: a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays
Speaker 1: and the stuff to Blow your mind podcast feed, but
Speaker 1: here on Friday's we set aside most serious concerns and
Speaker 1: we just talk about a weird film on a Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema. I blog about these episodes at some meta
Speaker 1: music dot com. But also you can go to letterbox
Speaker 1: dot com. It's l E T T E R B
Speaker 1: O x D and you'll find our user name on
Speaker 1: there is weird House. We have a list of all
Speaker 1: the films we've covered. This is the ninety nine film
Speaker 1: that we've covered on Weird How Cinema. The next film
Speaker 1: we cover will be the one film. Who knows what
Speaker 1: we'll pick for that. Oh, that's putting a lot of
Speaker 1: pressure on Rolbi. We gotta make a good choice, yeah,
Speaker 1: or you just let that pressure dissipate by exploding through
Speaker 1: the head. I don't know. Wait, maybe we just pick
Speaker 1: something like normal and it will become special to us
Speaker 1: because it was the hundred picture. There you go, huge
Speaker 1: thanks to our audio producer J J. Pauseway. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of
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