Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind.
Speaker 2: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 2: Rob and I are out a few days this week,
Speaker 2: so we are bringing you some episodes from the vault.
Speaker 2: This episode of Weird House Cinema originally aired on January sixth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, and it's our episode on David Cronenberg's Scanners.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is a great one. This is like
Speaker 1: one of the all time great weird movies of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century.
Speaker 2: Let's start scanning right now.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick. And today's selection is the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one Canadian sci fi horror thriller Scanners, directed by
Speaker 2: David Cronenberg, a film that I first became aware of
Speaker 2: because it was much beloved by my dad when I
Speaker 2: was young. I remember being a little kid, like I think,
Speaker 2: sort of hearing my dad needle my mom by being like,
Speaker 2: remember Scanners, And so long before I ever saw it,
Speaker 2: I knew the one thing that everybody knew about this
Speaker 2: movie which is that Scanners is a movie in which
Speaker 2: a guy's head explodes, which means Scanners is a certain
Speaker 2: type of film, and that type is the film that
Speaker 2: is apparently widely known for one thing that happens in it,
Speaker 2: for one particularly shocking, horrifying, or otherwise uniquely salient scene
Speaker 2: or moment, whereas the rest of the film is much
Speaker 2: less known. I think this might be like the prime
Speaker 2: example of that. So, like, if you mentioned Scanners to
Speaker 2: most people, I think maybe the majority of people will
Speaker 2: be able to say, like, oh, yeah, and that the
Speaker 2: movie where a dude's head blows up, but not many
Speaker 2: people will know anything else about it. I was trying
Speaker 2: to think of other examples of this, like the kind
Speaker 2: of movie that is mostly known for like one moment
Speaker 2: or scene in isolation, and people don't remember that much else.
Speaker 2: Multiple Ridley Scott movies come to mind. I am generally
Speaker 2: very intimately familiar with Alien because I've watched a bajillion times,
Speaker 2: but I think that's sort of one of them. It's
Speaker 2: a movie where a monster bursts out of a guy's
Speaker 2: chest at the dinner table, and maybe most people know
Speaker 2: that but don't know anything else. Rachel suggested another Ridley
Speaker 2: Scott movie, Thelma and Louise. It is the movie where
Speaker 2: a car goes over a cliff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think I've seen Thelma and Louise, but
Speaker 1: i've seen that scene, you know, Like that scene has
Speaker 1: been presented to me. Parodies of that scene have been presented,
Speaker 1: and therefore I feel like I know Thelma and Louise even.
Speaker 2: Though I do not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a one that came to mind for me. A
Speaker 1: more recent example might be Gamo de Torres, The Shape
Speaker 1: of Water, the movie in which a woman and a
Speaker 1: fishman make love, albeit I think tastefully an off screen
Speaker 1: if I'm remembering correctly, or one of those two things.
Speaker 1: But that's a film where there's a lot more going
Speaker 1: on there, and I think it's a pretty solid picture.
Speaker 1: But that was the thing that was showing up in
Speaker 1: late night monologues and so forth. In other ways, I
Speaker 1: think you might look at films like Basic Instinct and
Speaker 1: Bad Lieutenant that can come to mind for other reasons
Speaker 1: that people would call them out for, Oh, there's this
Speaker 1: one scene where something happens and in a backwards way
Speaker 1: to channel another fishman movie. The promotional material for nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty Screamers, which was the US Corman re release of
Speaker 1: an Italian film Island of the Fishmen, tried to promote
Speaker 1: itself as the movie in which a man turns inside out,
Speaker 1: despite no such scene occurring in the motion picture.
Speaker 2: That's a good idea. I can't think of another example.
Speaker 2: It'd be like if Scammer Scammers Scanners was known as
Speaker 2: the movie where Ahead explodes, but it didn't actually happen
Speaker 2: in the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would that would be really really lame. Whereas
Speaker 1: in reality, I mean, they knew they had a great
Speaker 1: scene there. I was reading that originally that scene was
Speaker 1: going to happen first, but given the cinema and movie
Speaker 1: going culture of the time, they knew it's local people
Speaker 1: going to come in late. I guess they. But anyone
Speaker 1: who was watching films at the theater in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: please tell me. I'm assuming there were fewer trailers, because
Speaker 1: now you've got a solid half hour of trailers. But
Speaker 1: the concern was at the time, well, people are going
Speaker 1: to come in late, They're going to miss our key scene.
Speaker 1: We've got to offset it a bit with some other
Speaker 1: introductory material.
Speaker 2: I mean, it is a really great scene. So anyway,
Speaker 2: I grew up hearing about this movie in the terms
Speaker 2: previously described. I saw it at some point after which
Speaker 2: I thought it was a cool, creepy thriller. I had,
Speaker 2: you know, modestly positive feelings about it. I also thought
Speaker 2: there were a few elements that didn't work so well,
Speaker 2: and they were some of the same elements that have
Speaker 2: been criticized by critics, especially when the movie initially came out.
Speaker 2: But in the intervening years, I think critics who have
Speaker 2: looked back on Scanners have had a more robustly positive
Speaker 2: appraisal of it, and I found myself having exactly the
Speaker 2: same reaction. On my most recent rewatch, I gained a
Speaker 2: much more unqualified appreciation for it. I think Scanners is
Speaker 2: just just awesome, and some of the criticisms were the
Speaker 2: things about it I used to criticize. I now actually
Speaker 2: think our strengths. This movie is so much more than
Speaker 2: an exploding head.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, And I was also surprised at how well
Speaker 1: it held up and how much I enjoyed it. In
Speaker 1: past viewings. I think I had that similar experience where
Speaker 1: I was like, well, there's a lot of great things
Speaker 1: going on here, but AB and C don't really work
Speaker 1: for me all that well. I think for the most part,
Speaker 1: my criticisms were somewhat dulled in my recent rewatch of
Speaker 1: the film, So it's going to be fun to get
Speaker 1: into all that now. You were talking about your dad
Speaker 1: being a fan of it and talking about the exploding
Speaker 1: head and all I have to say for my part,
Speaker 1: before I even knew there was an exploding head scene
Speaker 1: in this movie, my earliest memories were of the box
Speaker 1: art at the VHS rentals store and the poster for it,
Speaker 1: which I think would have also been on the wall
Speaker 1: of the VHS Renold store, because this alone really freaked
Speaker 1: me out. Chef Kiss, Yeah, this is the one. 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 in just full rending, like straight limbed scanner mode,
Speaker 1: nearly like a full body representation, just completely scanning out.
Speaker 1: It's just absolutely terrifying. It represents some it's supposed to
Speaker 1: represent the way the character looks in the final showdown
Speaker 1: of the picture, which is an in and of itself,
Speaker 1: a horrifying sequence. I would say, more horrifying, maybe less shocking,
Speaker 1: but more horrifying than the head burst scene. This art,
Speaker 1: I had to look it up. This is apparently poster
Speaker 1: art by Joe Anne Daley, who credited with some other
Speaker 1: really awesome VHS era posterrim box art stuff like creep Show, Popcorn, Prison.
Speaker 1: Prison's one that I never saw, but I remember distinctly
Speaker 1: this weird like skull prison looking VHS box art.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, she did something truly amazing here. So it
Speaker 2: is representing the scene where like the veins are popping
Speaker 2: out and all that, But there's also just there's an
Speaker 2: aura around Michael Ironside and the way that all of
Speaker 2: the textures of his skin and clothes and his hair
Speaker 2: or like they're like rising up off of him, as
Speaker 2: if he's literally sublimating, like his body is so hot
Speaker 2: it's turning into a gas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's this it's not even like a subtext
Speaker 1: to it because the poster art, some of the poster
Speaker 1: art and the lobby cards that 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 happened to you watch this movie to find
Speaker 1: out why.
Speaker 2: That's what happens when you combined pop rocks and PEPSI right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. But at the same time, Yeah, this poster
Speaker 1: really does capture I think that a lot of the
Speaker 1: shocking imagery of that final Scanner show down, this vision
Speaker 1: of psychic power as this thing that kind of channels
Speaker 1: violently through you and will, if left unchecked, just completely
Speaker 1: destroy you in the process. Yeah, it reminds me a
Speaker 1: bit of the nineteen ninety film, which of course came
Speaker 1: out a decade later, Toby Hooper's Spontaneous Combustion that we
Speaker 1: talked about on the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I see the similarity, though I have to
Speaker 2: say I think The Scanners is in a league above
Speaker 2: Spontaneous Combustion. But yes, I see what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but both films do have a similarity and that
Speaker 1: they're both films where psychic powers of different types are
Speaker 1: dangerous to everyone that there. This is this wild, unchecked
Speaker 1: energy and also has potentially disastrous effects for the end
Speaker 1: of visual that is experiencing them. Yes, all right, Joe,
Speaker 1: what's your elevator pitch for this film?
Speaker 2: All right, Cameron Vail can hear people's thoughts and it
Speaker 2: makes his life a living hell. He wanders the underground
Speaker 2: malls of Canada as a miserable outcast, until he meets
Speaker 2: a mysterious scientist who informs him that he is a
Speaker 2: Scanner and there are others like him. But instead of
Speaker 2: a community of brothers and sisters, Cameron discovers a secret war,
Speaker 2: and now the war has discovered him.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good. Yeah, that a secret war is key
Speaker 1: to it, and that's I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that works so well about this film is there all
Speaker 1: these different layers of intrigue to it as you proceed
Speaker 1: through the picture.
Speaker 2: Well, I would say, actually, the secret war is something
Speaker 2: that I really noticed on this viewing of it. It
Speaker 2: really stood out to me as a shared theme between
Speaker 2: Scanners and one of Uberg's other big movies, Videodrome, because
Speaker 2: if you think about it, both movies are about a
Speaker 2: naive protagonist who gets inadvertently swept up into an ongoing
Speaker 2: secret conflict between at least two existing factions or forces,
Speaker 2: which I'm not sure why, but that in itself is
Speaker 2: just like a really exciting, almost intoxicating plot dynamic. It's
Speaker 2: specifically the thing about the fact that the conflict is
Speaker 2: ongoing and it's done by these powerful forces, but it's
Speaker 2: like invisible to all regular people. And so you know,
Speaker 2: Videodrome and the cathode ray mission are already out there.
Speaker 2: They're plotting their campaigns against one another. But somehow the
Speaker 2: war has remained in the shadows, and suddenly the main
Speaker 2: character is made aware of it and sucked into it
Speaker 2: and is being played by one side against the other.
Speaker 2: And in the case of Scanners, the secret war is
Speaker 2: between an amoral arms manufacturer or arms manufacturing and security firm.
Speaker 2: That's concept. And then on the other hand, you have
Speaker 2: this murderous front of the Scanner underground.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love how the players in this game
Speaker 1: in the secret warview will they're not nation states, they're
Speaker 1: not governmental agencies. There corporations and social movements and and
Speaker 1: and rogue organizations that again are just kind of all
Speaker 1: in the not even all in the underworld, like some
Speaker 1: of it is in a corporate boardroom, you know, that
Speaker 1: kind of setting. And I guess, I guess that does
Speaker 1: kind of match up with some overarching themes that you
Speaker 1: see in media from the eighties. You see it in cyberpunk,
Speaker 1: you see it in various other pictures where it's yeah,
Speaker 1: we're in this this this realm, where it's it's corporations
Speaker 1: against corporation and and these other entities. I think Cronenberg
Speaker 1: and also William Gibson are both have both proven themselves
Speaker 1: with leears really good at 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.
Speaker 1: I mentioned one of the taglines for the picture, actual
Speaker 1: taglines for the picture earlier, but here are just a
Speaker 1: few more. There's, of course, their thoughts can kill. That's
Speaker 1: kind of what the pictures about. Also, there are four
Speaker 1: billion people on Earth two hundred and thirty seven or scanners.
Speaker 1: I like that. That's kind of cherry picked from the screenplay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's referring to a part in the film. They're kind
Speaker 1: of bending it a little bit, but it gives it
Speaker 1: that kind of provocative feeling that that works well with
Speaker 1: a tagline. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's actually accurate to the script,
Speaker 2: because I think the number is two hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: six and that comes from the list of known scanners,
Speaker 2: the ones that are known to consect. But there are
Speaker 2: other ones that are not known to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And also it's not just like this is the
Speaker 1: percentage of the human population that are just going to
Speaker 1: be scanners. We find out why there are scanners in
Speaker 1: the picture. But the one that really stood out to
Speaker 1: me this time is you were about to experience the
Speaker 1: outer reaches of future Shock, and that of course that
Speaker 1: tagline is obviously invoking the nineteen seventy Toffler book Future Shock,
Speaker 1: and it's one that I hadn't run across before regarding
Speaker 1: this picture, But it really got me thinking about this
Speaker 1: film in a different light because Future Shock just remind everyone,
Speaker 1: and it was this concept that essentially you were dealing with,
Speaker 1: or would be dealing with, a kind of trauma brought
Speaker 1: on by rapid advances and technology that would outstrip our
Speaker 1: ability to understand them or change with them. So don't
Speaker 1: think of it necessarily as some sort of like a
Speaker 1: movie future shock like a technology is advancing too quickly,
Speaker 1: and it made my head explode, but more of a
Speaker 1: of a like a cultural malaise even but I wonder
Speaker 1: if the scanner, the individual that is a scanner in
Speaker 1: this picture is in some ways kind of a physical
Speaker 1: embodiment of this idea of future shock. They're changed, they're
Speaker 1: potentially dehumanized in the process of this change, and they
Speaker 1: run the risk of being less than them so and
Speaker 1: 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: another becomes a monster, and two other characters we meet
Speaker 1: are able to channe all this change into creation and community.
Speaker 1: But it's like they're all dealing with it in different ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, I think about one reaction
Speaker 2: to if you take the concept of future shocks seriously,
Speaker 2: I think one of the most common reactions to it
Speaker 2: actually is a kind of disengagement or listlessness that comes
Speaker 2: from the fact that, like, if you can't understand the
Speaker 2: forces that are driving the world, it just kind of
Speaker 2: makes it feel like it's pointless to try to do
Speaker 2: anything or change anything because you don't understand how the
Speaker 2: machine works, so you know, why would you even try
Speaker 2: to mess with it? And I see similar themes running
Speaker 2: around in scanners, like the idea that your agency can
Speaker 2: be removed when there are forces governing your life that
Speaker 2: you don't understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, all right, let's go ahead and hear some
Speaker 1: trailer audio for this one. In this case, we're drawing
Speaker 1: on the actual radio spot, which is a lot of
Speaker 1: fun because everything is audio. This is the audio as
Speaker 1: it's intended. You were not supposed to glimpse an exploding
Speaker 1: head in this trailer.
Speaker 4: Ten seconds the pain begins, and your flesh and your brain.
Speaker 4: Fifteen seconds you can't breathe, It chokes you, it destroys you.
Speaker 4: Twenty seconds you explode. Experience the terrifying power of scanners.
Speaker 4: Their thoughts can kill. Rated R restricted under seventeen might
Speaker 4: admit about parn.
Speaker 1: I like this radio trailer too, because it again a
Speaker 1: very sonic experience that I think delivers on some of
Speaker 1: the just the excellent music and sound effects in this
Speaker 1: picture that help bring about this weird, creepy, psychic feeling.
Speaker 2: The movie not only has good music, but I would
Speaker 2: say the sound design is really important in oh, I
Speaker 2: don't know, moments that feel less like music but more
Speaker 2: just kind of like the pulses and throbbing and drone
Speaker 2: sounds that occur when the scanning session is taking place.
Speaker 1: Absolutely now, before we get into the plot, just if
Speaker 1: you're wondering, well, where can I watch scanners? Well, It's
Speaker 1: widely available. You can strain this one, purchase it, or
Speaker 1: rent it very many places, including as part of the
Speaker 1: Criterion collection. This one's the one's cemented in the collection,
Speaker 1: alongside the likes of Fiend Without a Face.
Speaker 2: Ah, that's wonderful. I like when a film that was
Speaker 2: initially regarded by reviewers as trash or as just you know,
Speaker 2: some scummy bit of garbage it gets the Criterion stamp
Speaker 2: of approval.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, because you look back on writings about Cronenberg
Speaker 1: during this time period and a lot of times that
Speaker 1: he's treated with a sense of danger. This is a
Speaker 1: dangerous weirdo they're letting make films 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 this full career
Speaker 1: by Cronenberg, a career that's still ongoing, and we have
Speaker 1: a more complete understanding of what his sensibilities are and
Speaker 1: yet many of them are weird. But I guess there's
Speaker 1: less of a feeling of this is a dangerous man
Speaker 1: making dangerous films, and yet in Rewatching Scanners, I could
Speaker 1: definitely feel some of that, especially in the final showdown
Speaker 1: between our main Scanner characters. There was an unhinged, unsafe
Speaker 1: energy to it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love his films by and large, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it's hard to maintain that illusion of absolute danger after
Speaker 2: you've seen his scene in Jason X for one, and
Speaker 2: after you've seen his hair.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's a marvelous head of hair. All right, let's
Speaker 1: talk about him a little more in depth. Yeah. David Cronenberg,
Speaker 1: the director and writer the picture, born nineteen forty three
Speaker 1: as of this recording, very much still alive and still
Speaker 1: making films, Thank goodness. Yeah, what can you say? Legendary
Speaker 1: Canadian master of the weird, profit of the New Flesh.
Speaker 1: His first full length film was nineteen sixty nine Stereo,
Speaker 1: and from there he went on to direct nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: Crimes of the Future and a whole string of TV projects,
Speaker 1: before returning to the weird with nineteen seventy five Shivers,
Speaker 1: followed by nineteen seventy seven's Rabid and also the normy
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine racing movie Fast Company. That's one I
Speaker 1: was actually at tempted to do on the show here
Speaker 1: because we've been kind of building up to actually doing
Speaker 1: a David Cronenberg film on a podcast series about weird films.
Speaker 1: It seems like it shouldn't have taken us two years
Speaker 1: to get here, but we had to pick the right one.
Speaker 1: And for a little bit there, I was thinking, well,
Speaker 1: we almost can't pick a regular Cronenberg film. We should
Speaker 1: just do Fast Company.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of I mean, like, I think
Speaker 2: we ten to toward movies that are a little bit
Speaker 2: like funnier or more fun to discuss, and a lot
Speaker 2: of Kronenberg movies are are really fascinating, but they're also
Speaker 2: like really downers. They're like really bummers in one way
Speaker 2: or another. I think Scanners is not quite that. So
Speaker 2: it's on it's on the lighter side of even as
Speaker 2: dark as it is, it's on the lighter side of
Speaker 2: the Kronenberg spectrum.
Speaker 1: Yeah you would. I don't think you would ever described
Speaker 1: Scanners as fun, but compared to the larger filmography of Kronenberg, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's on the fun end of the spectrum. Anyway.
Speaker 1: After Fast Company, that's when he did a trio of
Speaker 1: films that kind of, I feel like, kind of set
Speaker 1: the tone for Cronenberg weirdness, The Brood, Scanners and Videodrome
Speaker 1: all three of those between nineteen seventy nine and nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three. He followed these up with nineteen eighty three
Speaker 1: Stephen King adaptation The Dead Zone. He did one episode
Speaker 1: of Friday the Thirteenth, the series, nineteen eighty eight s
Speaker 1: Dead Ringers, nineteen ninety one's Naked Lunch, ninety threes, m Butterfly,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine's Exhuits Distance, two thousand and two Spider,
Speaker 1: And from here he drifted more into I guess serious
Speaker 1: crime drama, violent crime drama for a spell there with
Speaker 1: two thousand and five's A History of Violence in Eastern Promises.
Speaker 1: Then he did A Dangerous Method and then Cosmopolis. But
Speaker 1: at this point, oh, there's also a what a Map
Speaker 1: of the Stars I think is in there as well.
Speaker 1: But now he's back to his roots. He's returned to
Speaker 1: his roots with twenty twenty two's Crimes of the Future,
Speaker 1: which I'm doing to understand has no actual connection to
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy film Crimes of the Future beyond the title.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he's back working on weird films again. I
Speaker 1: mean not I guess they're all weird films, but certainly
Speaker 1: weird speculative films, and I believe his upcoming picture is
Speaker 1: going to be about Communion with the Dead.
Speaker 2: M okay, which was I've never seen it, but as
Speaker 2: Existends the one that I've heard described as just a
Speaker 2: remake of Videodrome but with video games instead of TV.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a pretty fair statement.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it, probably in twenty years, but I
Speaker 1: remember it having that kind of like, you know, creepy
Speaker 1: New Flesh vibe but with game cartridges and weird flesh
Speaker 1: guns and so forth.
Speaker 2: I just bring that up because it's the video games
Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety nine, which I think has got to
Speaker 2: be like the funniest era of games ever, like the
Speaker 2: Nintendo sixty four PlayStation one kind of era, like those
Speaker 2: early three D games that if you look at any
Speaker 2: game from that era now, chances are it's going to
Speaker 2: be hilarious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, unless you had a Cronenberg sixty four, now that
Speaker 1: that was a console, you took your cartridge and you
Speaker 1: just I shouldn't explain how it all worked anyway. Scanners
Speaker 1: is based on a couple of different psychic scripts that
Speaker 1: he apparently had gone in the late seventies. The Sensitives
Speaker 1: and Telepathy two thousand. These were apparently both films he
Speaker 1: was going to pitch to Roger Corman and this whole thing, though,
Speaker 1: was rushed into production to take advantage of Canadian tax
Speaker 1: subsidies at the time, so 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 issues,
Speaker 1: as some conflict between some of the cast members, if
Speaker 1: I'm to understand correctly. So I don't think it's necessary
Speaker 1: a film that Kronenberg himself looks back on as being like,
Speaker 1: you know, this great experience and maybe, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're considering it being a film that was rushed, maybe
Speaker 1: you can see some of the rush in the resulting picture.
Speaker 1: But I don't know, it's still pretty solid.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Yeah, I mean I would say that
Speaker 2: the writing is actually quite good.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, there's maybe one speculative leap that
Speaker 1: doesn't work so well, but we'll.
Speaker 2: Get to them. I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: We'll get there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But yeah, this film certainly made its mark, and
Speaker 1: not everyone understood it at the time. Some of the
Speaker 1: critics didn't get it, but it earned its place in
Speaker 1: cinematic history, certainly developed occult following and garnered what four
Speaker 1: sequels over the years, I think two proper Scanner sequels
Speaker 1: and then also two Scanner Cop films.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I've seen all the sequels, and I
Speaker 2: don't really remember much about them, except that I think
Speaker 2: we had a really fun time watching a probably the
Speaker 2: second Scanner cop movie with like check dubbing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They and they keep, they keep threatening to remake Scanners,
Speaker 1: either either as a movie or a TV series, and
Speaker 1: I think it's never come together for one reason or another.
Speaker 1: I think at one point directors said they would do
Speaker 1: it if Cronenberg said it was all right, and Cronenberg
Speaker 1: said nuh, and so it didn't happen. They didn't give
Speaker 1: it his blessing. So I don't know. It's one of those,
Speaker 1: like a lot of these things, Like, yes, if it
Speaker 1: had to be remade, I could imagine somebody could do
Speaker 1: it correctly and in a way that would would be
Speaker 1: a cool and insightful exploration of the world that is
Speaker 1: created in the original picture. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: we don't really need it because the film works exceedingly
Speaker 1: well on its own.
Speaker 2: Agreed. Now, I do want to mention one more thing
Speaker 2: about Cronenberg before we move on from him, which is
Speaker 2: recurring themes of Cronenberg movies. Of course, Cronenberg makes a
Speaker 2: lot of movies in the horror genre, and unlike the
Speaker 2: most common horror movie threat of straightforward danger to your life, right,
Speaker 2: that's what most movie monsters or bad guys, they're threatening
Speaker 2: you with physical violence of some kind. The most common
Speaker 2: threat in Cronenberg movies, I would say, is not direct
Speaker 2: threats to your life, but threats to your self identity.
Speaker 2: He makes movies most often that are about a loss
Speaker 2: of the boundaries of the self or a change of
Speaker 2: the self into something monstrous, and a lot of these
Speaker 2: have a very kind of like squishy tactile quality to them,
Speaker 2: Like his movies are known for body horror, where there's
Speaker 2: some kind of disgusting change happening to your body and
Speaker 2: you are becoming something alien. In the case of Scanners,
Speaker 2: I would say, the broader theme does hold, but it's
Speaker 2: less about the body and more a type of mental
Speaker 2: identity horror, like there are threats to the integrity of
Speaker 2: the mind or the soul.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it's it's not just uh oh, my Torso
Speaker 1: is now a VHS player, it's that added level of
Speaker 1: what does it mean that I am now a physical
Speaker 1: receptor for media? That sort of thing, like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's always a more more thoughtful and intellectual exercise, but
Speaker 1: always weird. I do want to try some It's easy
Speaker 1: with someone like Cronenberg to get really you know, you
Speaker 1: start talking or thinking about it too much and they're like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: it's just this is a metaphor for the way that
Speaker 1: we think about ourselves and media. Like, yes, all of
Speaker 1: that is true, but also it's just really weird too.
Speaker 2: Yes, undeniable. I mean. The other thing is like I
Speaker 2: didn't really mention this so much because it's hard to
Speaker 2: describe exactly what it is. But all of Cronenberg's movies
Speaker 2: that I've seen have in common this creepy, uneasy Canadian vibe.
Speaker 2: There's just something that's an energy that all of them
Speaker 2: share that is difficult to put into words. It's sort
Speaker 2: of a type of coldness, a kind of observing of
Speaker 2: human human reaction with a bit of a distance that
Speaker 2: makes it a little more alien and a little more
Speaker 2: dangerous and a little more removed from mundane reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I would agree, but it is hard to
Speaker 1: really nail down exactly what it is at times. All Right,
Speaker 1: getting into the cast here, and I have to mention
Speaker 1: one of the things I always love about Cronenberg films.
Speaker 1: The character names are always really interesting. And our first
Speaker 1: character here is the character Cameron Veil, but the actor
Speaker 1: who plays Cameron Veil our main protagonist here. Also his
Speaker 1: real name also sounds like a Cronenberg movie name, Stephen Lack,
Speaker 1: So I might end up getting mixed up and referring
Speaker 1: to the character as Stephen Lack or to the actress
Speaker 1: Cameron Veil, because they both kind of come together.
Speaker 2: For me here, I will deduct no points.
Speaker 1: So Stephen Lack was born nineteen forty six Canadian actor,
Speaker 1: active from the mid nineteen seventies through around two thousand
Speaker 1: and two. This is probably his biggest role, though he
Speaker 1: also pops up in a small role in Cronenberg's Dead Ringers.
Speaker 1: He also wrote and starred in nineteen seventy seven's The
Speaker 1: Rubber Gun, directed by Alan Moyle, and another couple of
Speaker 1: films of note, in nineteen eighty's head On in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four's Perfect Strangers. Perfect Strangers being a Larry Cohen erotic.
Speaker 2: Thriller, I had no idea there was such a thing.
Speaker 1: If it could put butts seats, than Larry Cohen probably
Speaker 1: wrote it at least wrote a screenplay for it.
Speaker 2: Perfect. So, regarding Stephen Lack and the character Cameron Vale,
Speaker 2: this is one place where I want to fully criticize
Speaker 2: and rebuke my own previous opinion about Scanners. I remember
Speaker 2: thinking in the past that a weak point in this
Speaker 2: movie was that the protagonist is sort of a cipher.
Speaker 2: He lacks defining individual characteristics and often seems to be
Speaker 2: operating without a sense of personal agency, you know, like
Speaker 2: you often don't quite know why he's doing what he's doing.
Speaker 2: He's just sort of been launched into an action by
Speaker 2: the people around him, and he just follows through. Now,
Speaker 2: upon reviewing, I still think this assessment of the character
Speaker 2: is true, but I actually don't think it's a shortcoming
Speaker 2: of the movie at all. I think it is literally
Speaker 2: the point of the character. There are multiple scenes exploring
Speaker 2: the effects of telepithy on the development of personality. This
Speaker 2: character is a is a scanner. He's a telepathic character,
Speaker 2: and the movie posits that if a person has the
Speaker 2: ability to read other people's thoughts and they have no
Speaker 2: power to control this ability or turn it off at will,
Speaker 2: it essentially prevents them from developing a personality or from
Speaker 2: having individual thoughts. So in the world of Scanners, the
Speaker 2: sort of lost, wandering, untreated Scanner's mind is like living
Speaker 2: in a world where every single person in your vicinity
Speaker 2: is constantly, just incessantly screaming at you with a megaphone.
Speaker 2: And in such a world would you ever be able
Speaker 2: to develop a voice of your own. So I think
Speaker 2: the fact that Cameron Veil is sort of like an
Speaker 2: adult with the mind of a newborn, launched on missions
Speaker 2: he doesn't understand following through with them for reasons that
Speaker 2: don't quite seem clear. You know, the things are going
Speaker 2: on without his agency, and he's just sort of like
Speaker 2: going along with the flow. It makes complete sense in
Speaker 2: my opinion. The arc of the movie is the character
Speaker 2: going from this state of undifferentiated mental cacophony and lack
Speaker 2: of agentic control over his own missions and behavior to
Speaker 2: the point of having a mind and purpose of his own.
Speaker 1: I completely agree. Yeah, this is a performance that I
Speaker 1: think in the past I saw as a weak point
Speaker 1: I saw. I think I focus too much on the
Speaker 1: similarities between this performance this character and poor performances are
Speaker 1: poorly defined characters in various other B movies. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it totally works within the context of the
Speaker 1: film here for all the reasons you point out. And
Speaker 1: also I have to to say, like, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of movies that feature what I think of is
Speaker 1: doll men or baby men, where you have some sort
Speaker 1: of reason for a person being like this, like maybe
Speaker 1: they're a clone, or they're an alien and human form
Speaker 1: from another world, and sometimes it just plays completely stupid
Speaker 1: on the screen and you just feel like you're watching
Speaker 1: a farce. But Veil doesn't really fall into this category,
Speaker 1: at least for me. Like he's still molded by the world.
Speaker 1: He's not a complete babe in the woods, at least
Speaker 1: in many respects. We see him, with help become far
Speaker 1: more functional, so that there seem to be plenty of
Speaker 1: things about him that are unmolded. Of course, he's never
Speaker 1: developed a personality. His inner thoughts have just been the
Speaker 1: default networks and inner thoughts of those around him rather
Speaker 1: than his own, so he is he's almost like this robot.
Speaker 1: But in a way that I don't know. Cronenberg is
Speaker 1: able to strike the right balance here, and of course
Speaker 1: credit to Lack too.
Speaker 2: No, I know exactly what you're saying, Like he's the
Speaker 2: He's not the sort of pure doll man kind of
Speaker 2: creature you're talking about. This is a character who has
Speaker 2: faced a lifetime full of experience and hardship. So he's
Speaker 2: not without experience. He's had tons of experience, he's had
Speaker 2: tons of struggle, but he just hasn't really had a
Speaker 2: self throughout all of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And also it's never played up 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 doctor Ruth. But we'll get to doctor Ruth.
Speaker 2: In a bit.
Speaker 1: One more point on Stephen Lack, though, I have to say,
Speaker 1: great eyes on this actor. He has these just wonderful
Speaker 1: wide eyes that are just brimming with childlike innocence, but
Speaker 1: also the sense of absorption, that childlike absorption, like everything
Speaker 1: is being taken in by these wide eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so I disagree with my former self. Thumbs
Speaker 2: up to the character and thumbs up to the performance
Speaker 2: by Lack.
Speaker 1: All Right, that was our chief protagonist. Our chief antagonist
Speaker 1: is Darryl Revick, played by the wonderful Michael Ironside.
Speaker 2: I would argue Michael Ironside is in the running for
Speaker 2: best film Heavies of all time. He emits fumes of menace.
Speaker 2: And it's not just his physical presence. I mean he
Speaker 2: does have a great villain or hinchman. Look, he's a
Speaker 2: great actor, and every line reading in this movie is
Speaker 2: like the tip of a box cutter being extended. It's
Speaker 2: just perfect, superb villainy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an intense performance that absolutely works with his character,
Speaker 1: who is again, this is a Scanner character, much like
Speaker 1: several different Scanner characters. But he is an extreme individual,
Speaker 1: so you need an extreme performance powering it. That's not
Speaker 1: to say that it's just always cranked up to ten.
Speaker 1: There are also plenty of scenes where it's a much
Speaker 1: more subtle performance. But when Ironside needs to crank it up,
Speaker 1: he can crank it up.
Speaker 2: Like few others. I'll suck your mind dry.
Speaker 1: Ironside was born in nineteen fifty Canadian character actor who's
Speaker 1: played just so many fantastic heavies and authority figures and
Speaker 1: mania over the years. His work goes all the way
Speaker 1: back to the mid seventies, but the Scanner seems to
Speaker 1: have helped propel him into larger villain roles. He followed
Speaker 1: this one up with nineteen eighty one Surfacing, nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: two's Visiting Hours, and the fun sci fi romp Space
Speaker 1: Hunter Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, in which he plays
Speaker 1: an evil, snarling cyborg opposite Peter Strauss, Molly Ringwald and
Speaker 1: Ernie Hudson.
Speaker 2: WHOA, yeah, it's a fun one.
Speaker 1: We made.
Speaker 2: That.
Speaker 1: One's kind of on in my back pocket for some
Speaker 1: time when we're not sure what picture to view.
Speaker 2: For weird House. It sounds wonderful.
Speaker 1: He did a lot of TV work smaller pictures after that,
Speaker 1: but in the mid eighties he appeared in Top Gun.
Speaker 1: He was in nineteen eighty eight Watchers, the adaptation of
Speaker 1: the Dean Coot's novel with the Talking Dog.
Speaker 2: He's in Highlander too, The Quickening. We can't forget that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, and he's Richter in nineteen ninety's Total Recall.
Speaker 1: Gray's heavy role in that so good. And yeah, he's
Speaker 1: just continued to keep the tap flowing with villain in
Speaker 1: heavy row like this is an actor who has worked
Speaker 1: a lot and continues to work a lot. Two hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy one credits on IMDb as of right now.
Speaker 1: See he's done a lot of TV tales in the
Speaker 1: crypt the nineties Outer Limits Canada's Danger Bay that I
Speaker 1: watched as a kid, And there's also a film by
Speaker 1: the name of Neon City from nineteen ninety one that
Speaker 1: I have not seen, but I know has been recommended
Speaker 1: to us by viewers rather listeners. You're not viewing those,
Speaker 1: you're listening to it, all right. Another Scanner character in
Speaker 1: the picture is Kim Obrist. It's another nice Cronenberg character
Speaker 1: name played by Jennifer O'Neill born nineteen forty eight.
Speaker 2: I'd say another great performance. Jennifer O'Neil is excellent in
Speaker 2: this role and her character is a very interesting one
Speaker 2: in contraposition to the other sort of powers in the movie.
Speaker 2: This character emerges essentially when Cameron Vale discovers a third faction.
Speaker 2: So you got the powers of Concept, the Evil Corporation
Speaker 2: and reVC Scanner Army, and they're going at it against
Speaker 2: each other, and of course Revic wants to control Scanners
Speaker 2: as like an army to sort of dominate the weaker
Speaker 2: non Scanner human beings consect wants to control an individual
Speaker 2: Scanner's power to use them as a weapon for the
Speaker 2: highest bidder, and these are portrayed as potential like lone
Speaker 2: wolf psychic assassins. And in contrast to the sort of
Speaker 2: like individual will to power of these other two factions
Speaker 2: going at each other, kim Oprist seems to be starting
Speaker 2: what looks almost like a Scanner religion or something where
Speaker 2: one where the Scanners deliberately sort of reject individuality and
Speaker 2: commune with one another, and they host rituals where they
Speaker 2: fully inhabit one another's minds. In these group circle rituals,
Speaker 2: they even form a sort of like a shared collective
Speaker 2: consciousness and they're there's a haunting scene where they're doing this.
Speaker 2: They're fully mind melding in a circle. They keep talking
Speaker 2: about like, you know, lose yourself, it is power, you
Speaker 2: know what do they say? Like it is terrifying, it
Speaker 2: is beautiful or something, And then Revick's assassins bust in
Speaker 2: and start shooting them and some of them are killed
Speaker 2: and in the escape after the scene, Jennifer O'Neil's character
Speaker 2: turns to Cameron and says, now, I know what it
Speaker 2: feels like to die.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great performance, and I do love as
Speaker 1: well how this is is presented. It's this sort of
Speaker 1: third option in the scanner change that's occurring in the world,
Speaker 1: Like what if we didn't approach this as a as
Speaker 1: a method of violence, or what if we didn't approach
Speaker 1: this as like a security threat but an opportunity as
Speaker 1: a way of coming together.
Speaker 2: But I do think that's the case. But also I
Speaker 2: like that Kim Oberst's community is not presented as just
Speaker 2: purely wholly like good and wholesome, Like there's something kind
Speaker 2: of freaky about their you know, the scene where they're
Speaker 2: all communing with each like they are clearly being entranced
Speaker 2: by something, some other level of consciousness they're achieving by
Speaker 2: linking their minds together in that way. And while they're
Speaker 2: not they don't have overtly violent intentions that we see
Speaker 2: in the movie. There's a sense of like, we don't
Speaker 2: know what this is becoming. This could just could be
Speaker 2: some other thing that could be great or could be awful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's potential dangerous opportunity here, and we get a
Speaker 1: sense of that too when they kind of fight back
Speaker 1: and catch the assassin's on fire. Like there's a sense,
Speaker 1: or at least the sense 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 collective minds. Yes, and the performance
Speaker 1: is pretty solid too. Yeah. This Jennifer O'Neil Brazilian born
Speaker 1: actor and former model who had quite an acting career
Speaker 1: in the sixties and seventies. Especially. She was in Howard
Speaker 1: Hawk's last film, Real Lobo in nineteen seventy. She worked
Speaker 1: with such directors as Robert Mulligan, Auto Primager Edwards, and
Speaker 1: Jay Lee Thompson, and she was the titular character in
Speaker 1: Luccio Fulci's The Psychic from nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 2: Oh. Interesting, a little bit of overlap there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I don't know if they were like, we
Speaker 1: need a psychic for this picture, and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: I just saw this great Italian movie. Well let's get
Speaker 1: Jenmfifer O'Neil. All right, we've mentioned the scientist that leads
Speaker 1: our protagonist into well, it gives him a sense of
Speaker 1: himself back, but also then gives him a spy mission.
Speaker 1: This is doctor Paul Ruth. So yes, the character is
Speaker 1: Doctor Ruth played by Patrick McGowan who lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: eight through two thousand and nine.
Speaker 2: Another great performance. I mean again, the cast is just
Speaker 2: great all around. I think McGowan always brings kind of
Speaker 2: interesting and unexpected take to his roles. I think one
Speaker 2: great example of this, which is a movie that I
Speaker 2: overall do not like. I am not a fan of
Speaker 2: Mel Gibson's Brave Heart for multiple reasons, but I have
Speaker 2: always found McGoo win's acting choices as the villain in
Speaker 2: that movie he's played. He plays King Abard the first
Speaker 2: you know, the long shanks, uh. He plays him as
Speaker 2: this absurdly psychotic villain, but in a really irresistible kind
Speaker 2: of way, chewing the scenery but with this odd, bemused,
Speaker 2: high pitched voice.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And in this picture as the as the
Speaker 1: Doctor 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's interacting with. That it creates an interesting energy. It's
Speaker 1: We've seen similar characters of this type and plenty of
Speaker 1: other films, you know, the he's sort of in the
Speaker 1: Mad Scientist mold. He's also in this kind of you know,
Speaker 1: teacher and savior mode, or it seems to be for
Speaker 1: a large portion of the film. But but he has
Speaker 1: a he has a different energy.
Speaker 2: I love the moral ambiguity of this character. Like is
Speaker 2: this character a good guy or a bad guy? I
Speaker 2: mean he's clearly some of both, and not just transitioning
Speaker 2: from one to the other, like he's both in an
Speaker 2: ongoing capacity.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Magowan, I don't know. He might have been
Speaker 1: the biggest name in the film at the time, and
Speaker 1: maybe even so in retrospect. An American born Irish actor,
Speaker 1: probably best remembered as the Prisoner on the late sixties
Speaker 1: TV show, but he was also in a successful Danger
Speaker 1: Man from the early sixties. He was in seventy nine's
Speaker 1: Escape from Alcatraz, ninety five's Brave Heart, ninety six is
Speaker 1: a Time to Kill, and one of his final credits
Speaker 1: was a voice actor in two thousand and two's Treasure Planet.
Speaker 2: I've never seen Danger Man, but that's a funny name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, early sixties spy TV show. I think
Speaker 1: I may have watched an episode of it back in
Speaker 1: the day.
Speaker 2: Do they have gadgets?
Speaker 1: I don't know if this was gadget era. You know,
Speaker 1: this might have been too soon, But then the prisoner
Speaker 1: certainly leaves an impression that suitably weird late sixties show
Speaker 1: that some of the other bit players are also pretty fun.
Speaker 1: Robert Silverman plays Benjamin Pierce, a sculptor, a scanner sculptor
Speaker 1: that we meet in the film Born nineteen forty three.
Speaker 1: Kind of a weird Canadian character actor whose work lines
Speaker 1: up with a couple of folks already mentioned, especially Cronenberg.
Speaker 1: He pops up in Rabid the Brood, Friday the Thirteenth,
Speaker 1: the series Naked Lunch Existence, and Jason X, which of
Speaker 1: course Cronenberg did not direct, but Cronenberg acts in as
Speaker 1: one of the mad scientists that initially resurrects Jason Vorhees.
Speaker 2: I think he gets like a spear thrown through his torso.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Robert Silverman's also in head On, which we referenced earlier,
Speaker 1: and he's in ninety five's water World.
Speaker 2: Oh don't remember him in that, but he's great in this.
Speaker 2: He's good in his Cronenberg roles in I think in
Speaker 2: both of his Cronenberg movies that I've seen. He plays
Speaker 2: like a character who had some kind of bad interaction
Speaker 2: with the villain that the protagonist is seeking out, and
Speaker 2: the protagonist tests to track him down.
Speaker 1: Yeah s, yeah, we also have a villain by the
Speaker 1: name of Braden Keller. This is a This is like
Speaker 1: a Hinchman character played by Lawrence Dane, who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven through two thousand and two. Canadian character actor
Speaker 1: who is in a ton of things including Happy Birthday
Speaker 1: to Me from nineteen eighty one, Heavenly Bodies from nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four, Bride of Chucky from ninety eight, Head On
Speaker 1: dart Man two, and much more. He did a lot
Speaker 1: of TV work in the sixties and seventies, and being
Speaker 1: a Canadian actor, of course, he was on nineties Outer Limits.
Speaker 1: He also pops up on Danger Bay and a show
Speaker 1: called Seeing Things that I'll describe it just a second.
Speaker 2: He's a good villain. He's sort of a suit villain
Speaker 2: as opposed to whatever Michael Ironside is. I would say
Speaker 2: if Michael Ironside's character is the Clearance Bodicker of this movie,
Speaker 2: Lawrence Dane plays the Dick Jones of the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Ironside his anti establishmenter, so it seems, and
Speaker 1: Dane is establishment for sure. There is a character that
Speaker 1: is just credited as First Scanner. This is the kind
Speaker 1: of frank oz looking guy whose head explodes in that
Speaker 1: famous scene from Scanners. This character is played by Louis
Speaker 1: del Grande born nineteen forty three. And I think I've
Speaker 1: mentioned del Grande on the show before due to his
Speaker 1: various connections, but Canadian actor who is mostly known to
Speaker 1: me that I saw him well before I saw Scanners,
Speaker 1: because he was on a series on CBC titled Seeing
Speaker 1: Things that ran from nineteen eighty one through nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: and I think he was also one of the creators
Speaker 1: of the show. But it's kind of a lighthearted psychic
Speaker 1: detective show where he he's always having visions, he's seeing
Speaker 1: things with his psychic abilities, and in doing so, he
Speaker 1: helps to solve the crime in the episode of the week.
Speaker 2: I would watch that. I like his vibe. He's only
Speaker 2: got a very short scene in the movie, but he's
Speaker 2: quite memorable in it, and not just for what happens
Speaker 2: to a plaster cast of his head.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he gets to address the audience and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: It's a nice little performance, bit part, but very memorable.
Speaker 1: He's done a lot of work over the years, especially
Speaker 1: in Canada. I do. Credits include Happy Birthday to Me
Speaker 1: of unknown origin from nineteen eighty three, the nineties Outer Limits,
Speaker 1: Goosebumps and Les, and a couple of behind the scenes
Speaker 1: credits here. Howard Shore did the score for this movie.
Speaker 1: So score by Shore born nineteen forty six. Howard Shores,
Speaker 1: of course a Canadian composer and conductor who's worked extensively
Speaker 1: in film. He's probably best known for his work on
Speaker 1: the Lord of the Rings movies for Peter Jackson. He
Speaker 1: won an Oscar for at least one of those, and
Speaker 1: he's also scored all but one of Cronenberg's films since
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine. I believe The Dead Zone is the
Speaker 1: exception in that list. Not only did he write the
Speaker 1: score to Cronenberg's The Fly, but he also wrote an
Speaker 1: opera based on the film in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: But wow, that's something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, 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 the
Speaker 1: opera for me?
Speaker 2: Would it be the gooeyest opera ever. I don't know. Actually,
Speaker 2: some classic operas get quite bloody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you can't have people slipping in the slime,
Speaker 1: so there's only so much you can It looks like
Speaker 1: they had a pretty cool functional brundle fly costume for it,
Speaker 1: because you get into unique challenges for a stage performance
Speaker 1: like that. Anyway, as far as Howard Shore's score for
Speaker 1: Scanners goes, I really liked it. I listened to it
Speaker 1: in isolation prior to rewatching the film, and it has
Speaker 1: this kind of boisterous main theme that kind of sounds
Speaker 1: like Hall of the Mountain King. But in general it
Speaker 1: has a lot of these sort of creepy, kind of
Speaker 1: late seventies early eighties vibes that I guess are also
Speaker 1: this is probably Cronenberg energy as well, since you can't
Speaker 1: really divorce Kroneberg's films from shores music all that much.
Speaker 1: But outside of the more traditional sounding stretches the score,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of weird electronic warbly bits and drone
Speaker 1: stretches that I absolutely love so and also some percussive
Speaker 1: chaotic segments as well.
Speaker 2: Even a lot of the traditional instrumentation sounds unusual, like
Speaker 2: there are these moments of just sort of descending dissonant horns.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so it's really good stuff. This is definitely
Speaker 1: this is a score that's worth listening to as an
Speaker 1: album in my opinion. And before we move on, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and just hear a sample from the score.
Speaker 1: This is just a taste of main title and public scan.
Speaker 1: And finally, Dick Smith has credits on this film. Special
Speaker 1: makeup effects consultant Dick Smith lived nineteen twenty two through
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. Just one of many special effects pros on
Speaker 1: the motion picture, but he's often singled out as playing
Speaker 1: a key role in the opening head explosion, well it's
Speaker 1: not opening, but you know, early head explosion in the film,
Speaker 1: and the final showdown. He's a special effects makeup legend
Speaker 1: who worked on such pictures as The Godfather, The Exorcist,
Speaker 1: Taxi Driver, and Death Becomes Her. He won an Oscar
Speaker 1: for his work on Amadeus. Other notable films include Altered States,
Speaker 1: seventy two episodes of the TV horror anthology Monsters, Tales
Speaker 1: from the Dark Side, The Movie Starman, Oh, and This
Speaker 1: One's Pretty Fun. Nineteen fifty seven's The alligator people.
Speaker 2: Ah, well, I hear the dogs choke on their barking
Speaker 2: when they see alligator persons in the bog and fog.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the very same. All right, well, let's get into
Speaker 1: the plot for this film. Let's head to the mall.
Speaker 2: It does start in a mall, doesn't it. But it
Speaker 2: can't be just any mall. It's a really creepy mall,
Speaker 2: it really is. I don't know if Cronenberg picked it
Speaker 2: because it was an especially creepy looking mall, or if
Speaker 2: all malls in Canada were this creepy at the time.
Speaker 2: I don't know. How would you describe this mall?
Speaker 1: Oh? I mean it's yeah. I didn't look up where
Speaker 1: they filmed this. It seems like there were some great
Speaker 1: locations scouting in this picture. It's kind of a splendid
Speaker 1: scarlet sanctuary of a mall, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: not in a way that feels manufactured, like there's a
Speaker 1: scarlet 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, part of it being sort of
Speaker 1: the cultural archaeology of watching anything set in a mall
Speaker 1: from the eighties.
Speaker 2: Totally, but also I would emphasize that it feels like
Speaker 2: it's underground. I did not detect any hint of natural
Speaker 2: light whatsoever. And the ceilings are lined with just rows
Speaker 2: and rows of light bulbs projecting down from the ceiling.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's absolutely splendid. And there's so many look like,
Speaker 1: there was this one scene where our protagonist pauses in
Speaker 1: front of a poster for hot Pogos and it shows
Speaker 1: like a cartoon of a kid holding a corn dog,
Speaker 1: and I was like, what is what's going on here?
Speaker 1: Is our hot corn dogs called hot pogos in Canada.
Speaker 1: I just never realized it. Well, I looked it up
Speaker 1: and according to Wikipedia, in Quebec and Ontario, a battered
Speaker 1: hot dog on a stick is called a and is
Speaker 1: traditionally eaten with ordinary yellow mustard, which is a solid choice.
Speaker 1: I think yellow mustard is your best condiment for any
Speaker 1: corn dog. Experience, at least if you're eating a real
Speaker 1: corn dog, and a real corn dog, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: should either be a fake hot dog at the center,
Speaker 1: you know, like a soy dog or something, or if
Speaker 1: you do eat meat, it should be a meat hot
Speaker 1: dog that is on the verge of being fake meat,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's so processed that the difference between
Speaker 1: it and a soy dog is just negligible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but either way, mustard. You gotta have mustard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, gotta get that yellow mustard out for your pogo.
Speaker 1: So Canadian listeners, I was not aware, but I like it.
Speaker 1: It sounds more fun in some respects than corn dog pogo.
Speaker 1: I might go for the hot pogo next time.
Speaker 2: Well, here is where we meet our protagonist, Cameron Vail.
Speaker 2: He is wandering the food court of this subterranean underworld
Speaker 2: mal snagging people's leftovers, and he looks shoveled. He's wearing
Speaker 2: kind of a dirty trench coat. He's being presented as
Speaker 2: a sort of disoriented, skulking outsider, and he's just grabbing
Speaker 2: people's leftover POGs and stuffing them in his mouth. But unfortunately,
Speaker 2: he catches the attention of a couple of ladies at
Speaker 2: a nearby table, and we begin to hear them speaking.
Speaker 2: They're they're saying things like, oh, I've never seen anything
Speaker 2: so disgusting in my entire life. We're being stared at.
Speaker 2: They let creatures like that in here. It's just awful.
Speaker 2: But wait a second, like, are their lips actually moving
Speaker 2: while they're saying these things? That's not so clear. And
Speaker 2: Cameron Vale here he I guess we don't know his
Speaker 2: name yet, but this characters he's bothered by their talking.
Speaker 2: We see it appearing to cause him almost physical pain,
Speaker 2: and so he turns his attention to these these two ladies,
Speaker 2: and the one of them who seemed to be speaking,
Speaker 2: though maybe her lips weren't moving, starts to have something
Speaker 2: that looks like a migraine, which evolves into something that
Speaker 2: looks like a seizure, and she's collapsing on the floor.
Speaker 2: People are trying to help her, but this interaction gets
Speaker 2: the attention of a couple of tough looking dudes nearby,
Speaker 2: and they chase Cameron and immobilize him with a dart gun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a fun action sequence where he tries to
Speaker 1: get away from him by jumping from one escalator to
Speaker 1: the next. And it looked looked kind of dangerous. I
Speaker 1: was like, I was like, ah, don't don't get caught
Speaker 1: between them escalator and the ceiling sort of situation. But
Speaker 1: he manages to make it over, but then succumbs to
Speaker 1: the tranquilizer dart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he collapses on the escalator and I had the
Speaker 2: same reaction. I was like, oh, no, don't let your
Speaker 2: shirt collar get caught in the Oh yeah, but anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 2: So he wakes up later strapped to a hospital bed
Speaker 2: in a large room where he is confronted by doctor
Speaker 2: Paul Ruth Patrick McGowan, who gives him kind of a speech.
Speaker 2: He you know, he says, Cameron, why are you such
Speaker 2: a derelict? They've never met before, but he's introducing himself
Speaker 2: and he says he can tell him why he's a derelict.
Speaker 2: He says, you're a scanner and that has been the
Speaker 2: source of all your agony, but I will show you
Speaker 2: now that it can be a source of great power.
Speaker 2: And from here dozens of people begin to walk into
Speaker 2: the room. Doctor Ruth just has them come in and
Speaker 2: sit in these rows and rows of chairs, and the
Speaker 2: more people pour into the room, the more Cameron is
Speaker 2: in distress. We hear all of their internal monologues at once,
Speaker 2: has a kind of great ocean of voices. And this
Speaker 2: is torture for Cameron, you see, he's like writhing in
Speaker 2: pain at hearing all of their voices at once. But
Speaker 2: eventually doctor Ruth provides the cure. He gives Cameron an
Speaker 2: injection of a drug called ephimarole, and it makes the
Speaker 2: voices stop, and Cameron has relief. Almost he has relief,
Speaker 2: as if for the first time in his life. Now
Speaker 2: next comes the most famous scene in the movie, the demonstration.
Speaker 2: So we see that we're at the headquarters of a
Speaker 2: corporation called CONSAC, and there's a demonstration being held for
Speaker 2: a private audience in an auditorium, and we meet a
Speaker 2: sort of timid, bookish man in a suit in glasses
Speaker 2: on stage. This is Louis del Grande or del Grande.
Speaker 2: I don't know how you pronounce his name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been saying del Grande, but you know, it's
Speaker 1: just that's because it's such a big performance, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a con.
Speaker 2: And so this guy begins by giving a speech. He says,
Speaker 2: I would like to scan all of you in this room,
Speaker 2: one at a time, I must remind you that the
Speaker 2: scanning experience is usually a painful one, sometimes resulting in nosebleeds, earaches,
Speaker 2: stomach cramps, nausea, sometimes other symptoms of a similar nature.
Speaker 2: But he assures them there is a doctor present. He
Speaker 2: points out the doctor Gatineau, and he asks that no
Speaker 2: one leave the room once the demonstration has begun, and
Speaker 2: he calls for volunteers, and of course there's a long,
Speaker 2: awkward silence because I don't know who knows what's sanning is,
Speaker 2: who wants to be scanned. But finally, a bored looking
Speaker 2: man in one of the back rows raises his hand
Speaker 2: and comes to the stage and why it is Michael Ironside.
Speaker 1: What do you know?
Speaker 2: And it's not just Michael Ironside. He has an interesting
Speaker 2: ring shaped scar above the bridge of his nose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder what that is. Perhaps we'll find out later.
Speaker 2: So the scanner doing the demonstration asks Michael Ironside to
Speaker 2: think of something that the scanner would have no way
Speaker 2: of knowing, something that will not breach the security of
Speaker 2: his organization, maybe a personal detail from his life. And
Speaker 2: Michael Ironside says, all right, I have something in mind,
Speaker 2: And when you watch the scene knowing what's coming. You
Speaker 2: can see little sinister flourishes, like little smirks and flares
Speaker 2: of delivery from Michael Ironside as he's getting ready for
Speaker 2: this thing. They kind of go by you the first time.
Speaker 2: For example, Michael Ironside asks the scanner if he has
Speaker 2: to close his eyes, and sanner assures him that it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter, and scanning begins. Both men start by getting
Speaker 2: very intense looks on their faces, like they're very focused,
Speaker 2: maybe perhaps both struggling, maybe perhaps both in a little
Speaker 2: bit of pain. And because we don't know what we're
Speaker 2: looking at, you could just assume this is what it
Speaker 2: looks like when the scanner demonstrator reads somebody's mind. But
Speaker 2: this just escalates and things look weirder and weirder. Eventually
Speaker 2: it really starts to seem like something might be wrong,
Speaker 2: like are they supposed to look like they're in this
Speaker 2: much distress? And there is an awesome, painful, droning sound
Speaker 2: in the musical score. I feel like, actually, just in
Speaker 2: a recent movie, I was like, do not include painful
Speaker 2: noises in the score of your movie. I take it back,
Speaker 2: this is why you should have it in Scanners. I
Speaker 2: was completely wrong, and then suddenly, without warning, the demonstrator's
Speaker 2: head explodes, And I can see exactly why even people
Speaker 2: who haven't seen the movie or don't remember anything else
Speaker 2: about the movie, will remember this scene for the rest
Speaker 2: of their lives. It is one of the most shocking, disgusting, unexpected,
Speaker 2: unbelievable moments I can think of in any movie. Ever.
Speaker 2: I would go so far as to describe the scene
Speaker 2: as an almost awe inspiring act of filmmaking. Like, yes,
Speaker 2: it is gory and gross, and so part of its
Speaker 2: effect is like pure vulgar exploitation of our squeamishness, but
Speaker 2: it's also a masterful exercise in like building uneasiness and
Speaker 2: this sense of uncertainty and suspense and then relieving that
Speaker 2: tension with a spectacle that is so nasty it leaves
Speaker 2: people absolutely speechless.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can even knowing what's coming. And again you
Speaker 1: don't even have to have seen the film because to
Speaker 1: know what's coming, because the moment of the explosion has
Speaker 1: just been reproduced. It's become a meme. You can find
Speaker 1: it all over the place. It's a gift for of
Speaker 1: you know, on various formats and on discord and so forth.
Speaker 1: But when it hits in the film, Yeah, there is
Speaker 1: that feeling of release that built up pressure and like
Speaker 1: literal psychic pressure inside this character's head, and then the
Speaker 1: reaction to from all the characters that are present is
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. Like even iron size character Reva is I
Speaker 1: don't know that you would say he's horrified, but there
Speaker 1: is a sense that he is perhaps a little shocked
Speaker 1: at how how gross the results were or how powerful
Speaker 1: his attack.
Speaker 2: Was, Like he kind of looks down at the exploded
Speaker 2: head going like, oh, yeah, I know, I've read stuff
Speaker 2: about how this special effect was accomplished, Like I think
Speaker 2: they tried it several different ways and thought it didn't
Speaker 2: look right, and they eventually landed on the way that
Speaker 2: ended up in the final movie, which involved a shotgun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is not surprising given how many shotguns are
Speaker 1: in this picture. I was really, this is one of
Speaker 1: the things I'm this viewing that I was kind of
Speaker 1: commenting to myself. I was like, Wow, lots of shotguns
Speaker 1: in this picture. This picture has a thing for shotguns.
Speaker 1: So yeah, a shotgun was apparently used, a shotgun loaded
Speaker 1: with salt. I believe I used a latex head filled
Speaker 1: with I believe dog food, leftovers, fake blood, rabbit livers,
Speaker 1: all sorts of gross stuff. And I think one of
Speaker 1: the challenges apparently was they wanted it to explode, but
Speaker 1: they couldn't have it explode with sparks. They wanted it
Speaker 1: to feel very organic, at least in this one instance
Speaker 1: of psychic energy, and the picture like the ideas that
Speaker 1: like this is it's not fire, it's not electricity per se.
Speaker 1: It is some sort of almost organic process that's taking
Speaker 1: place here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's disgusting, but also I mean, I just
Speaker 2: want to emphasize again, how if you haven't seen it
Speaker 2: before and you don't know it's coming. I don't know
Speaker 2: if that's possible for anybody, because you know, everybody knows
Speaker 2: that about this movie, But if you didn't actually know
Speaker 2: what was coming going in, it would be so shocking
Speaker 2: and leave you absolutely baffled. And I love that, you know,
Speaker 2: the audience is just as baffled as like the characters
Speaker 2: in the room are. But then there's this moment of
Speaker 2: focus where people start turning to Michael Ironside and it's
Speaker 2: like did he somehow do that? Like did the scanner
Speaker 2: get scanned? And so Michael Ironside's character is apprehended by
Speaker 2: the Consect security guards. The head of security instructs the
Speaker 2: staff doctor to give Michael Ironside a shot of ephemarole, which, hmm,
Speaker 2: that's the same stuff that doctor Ruth gave to Cameron
Speaker 2: Vail to quiet the voices earlier. And we later find
Speaker 2: out that ephemarole is a scan suppressant. It is a
Speaker 2: drug that essentially turns off a person's scanner abilities. So
Speaker 2: they're giving the shot to this guy to disable him.
Speaker 2: But for some reason, the doctor when he goes to
Speaker 2: give the shot to Michael iron Side, Oh, it's like
Speaker 2: he can't quite line it upright. It's something's going on
Speaker 2: in his head, and he accidentally gives the shot to
Speaker 2: himself instead of Michael Ironside's hand.
Speaker 1: And in this we're seeing the more subtle powers of
Speaker 1: the of the scanner. Here, he's able to easily manipulate
Speaker 1: and puppet those around him into doing things they don't
Speaker 1: intend to do.
Speaker 2: Right, So, while the concept Kagoons are transporting Michael Ironside
Speaker 2: to another location by car, they get overwhelmed. They strangely
Speaker 2: start wrecking their own cars and turning their guns on themselves,
Speaker 2: while the prisoner just looks on smiling and well after
Speaker 2: that time for a corporate leadership, meaning and what do
Speaker 2: you know the scientists who earlier apprehended Cameron Vail, this
Speaker 2: doctor Ruth. He is there at the table with the
Speaker 2: with the CEO of Conseack. So the big boss, Trevellian says,
Speaker 2: in a line that I found so funny I wrote
Speaker 2: it down. He says, last night we at Consect chose
Speaker 2: to reveal to the out side world our work with
Speaker 2: those telepathic curiosities known as scanners. The result six corpses
Speaker 2: and a substantial loss of credibility for our organization. I
Speaker 2: don't know why I keep wanting to compare this to RoboCop,
Speaker 2: which I guess came later, but the RoboCop meeting with
Speaker 2: the ED two nine when he's like it's just a glitch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean I think the Clamp character in
Speaker 1: Grim Ones twos as a very similar line where it's like,
Speaker 1: like the grim Ones have been rampaging and he's like,
Speaker 1: like people could actually get killed. You know, that's what's
Speaker 1: going to do for the company, What that's going to
Speaker 1: do for our stock value?
Speaker 2: Well, so, anyway, in this scene which I thought was
Speaker 2: a very interesting and well written scene in the way
Speaker 2: it kind of unfurls the scenario of the movie. We
Speaker 2: learned that the company has a new director of internal security.
Speaker 2: Michael Ironside made the previous one shoot himself in the street,
Speaker 2: so they've got a new guy named Braden Keller, and
Speaker 2: Keller recommends that the company discontinue its scanner program at once.
Speaker 2: He says, our company is supposed to specialized in weapons
Speaker 2: and private armies, not fantasies. And doctor Ruth replies that, hey,
Speaker 2: the fact that six of their people were killed and
Speaker 2: the company was embarrassed in front of industry heads by
Speaker 2: a lone assassin using only scanning techniques in itself proves
Speaker 2: that scanners have immense potential as weapons, so we got
Speaker 2: to keep developing them as weapons. But Keller replies coming
Speaker 2: back saying, but hey, how many scanners do we have
Speaker 2: working with us right now? Ruth says, as of last night, none,
Speaker 2: So apparently they had one guy cooperating, and that was
Speaker 2: Louis del Grande, the demonstrator. He was their one scanner
Speaker 2: on the payroll, and Michael Ironside blew up his head,
Speaker 2: so they have none now. But then Ruth says, Consect
Speaker 2: Surveillance has gradually lost contact with all the names of
Speaker 2: scanners on our list, and I submit, this is not
Speaker 2: an accident. I think we've lost them to a program
Speaker 2: far in advance of ours. Ooh, and that's a good moment,
Speaker 2: he says. From my study of the situation, I've come
Speaker 2: to the conclusion that there is a scanner underground developed
Speaker 2: in North America. And Keller, you know, he's not buying this.
Speaker 2: He says, that's ridiculous. You can't get two scanners to
Speaker 2: sit in the same room together without going berserk. They
Speaker 2: can't stand being around one another. But nevertheless, Ruth says, nope,
Speaker 2: they're working together. And the underground has a leader. In fact,
Speaker 2: he's probably the man we met the night before, and
Speaker 2: his name is Darryl Revick. So he's got a solution.
Speaker 2: Either we let Daryl Revick just strike at us without retaliation,
Speaker 2: or we infiltrate his organization and decapitate it. And he's
Speaker 2: got just the weapon to use on that, the one
Speaker 2: scanner he just found, Cameron Vale.
Speaker 1: And so the board approves. They're like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: let's move with that program. We don't really need to
Speaker 1: see a presentation on it. We don't need to meet
Speaker 1: this guy. We trust you to do what you do,
Speaker 1: doctor Ruth.
Speaker 2: And here we reunite with Cameron Vale. Now Ruth is
Speaker 2: back in sort of the mode less in the like
Speaker 2: we must have weapons and assassin's mode. Now he's talking
Speaker 2: to Cameron again and they discuss how Cameron is not
Speaker 2: used to talking much. This is the scene where they
Speaker 2: establish how with other people's thoughts always filling his head,
Speaker 2: he was never able to develop an identity or a personality,
Speaker 2: and that the injection of a femerol to inhibit his
Speaker 2: scanning abilities. Since then, he's had a kind of clarity
Speaker 2: in the sense of self that he never had before.
Speaker 2: But he's also afraid because for the first time he
Speaker 2: can quote hear himself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is something that this whole view of
Speaker 1: scanning is so nicely rolled out throughout the film. You
Speaker 1: learn a little bit more and more about it, and
Speaker 1: it never feels like like an info dump or anything, because, yeah,
Speaker 1: you learn that. It's like, what's going on with scanning
Speaker 1: is kind of they describe it as like nervous systems
Speaker 1: interacting with each other. Is this kind of like communal
Speaker 1: engagement between one mind and body and the other, and
Speaker 1: then it's just comes down to like levels of awareness
Speaker 1: and abilities to manipulate or block that shared state. So
Speaker 1: with with Cameron Vail, it's like this idea that you know,
Speaker 1: it's not just that the thoughts are coming in, but
Speaker 1: there are neural processes that he hasn't really had a
Speaker 1: chance to develop because the neural processes of others have
Speaker 1: been flowing in to take up that space in him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this aspect of the movie is so interesting,
Speaker 2: And I wonder if I almost detect in common with
Speaker 2: Videodrome a subtle media critique, which is the idea of okay,
Speaker 2: So the scanners are unable to develop a healthy self
Speaker 2: identity without either some kind of treatment like taking a
Speaker 2: femarole to silence the voices or using some other method
Speaker 2: of getting other people's voices out of their heads. So
Speaker 2: like some scanners seem to have been able to cope
Speaker 2: by like living in total life isolation and sort of
Speaker 2: like we learn about one scanner later who does this
Speaker 2: through creating art, And I wonder could this be a
Speaker 2: commentary on NonStop passive consumption of media such as radio
Speaker 2: or TV. Which if it fills your head constantly with
Speaker 2: other voices and you're never alone with your own thoughts.
Speaker 2: Could Cronenberg be maybe presenting a subtle argument that that
Speaker 2: sort of in a way prevents you from having a
Speaker 2: personality of your own.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a that's a pretty solid read
Speaker 1: on it. I think there's a lot of merit to that.
Speaker 2: So everyone turn off the podcast.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, keep listening to the podcast NonStop at
Speaker 1: a double.
Speaker 2: Speed, a triple speed.
Speaker 1: It's got to be triple You can do triple speed
Speaker 1: if you do a half dose of ephemerol on top
Speaker 1: of that. I mean, it's going to vary from listener
Speaker 1: to listener, but that's a general way you want to
Speaker 1: handle it.
Speaker 2: Oh. We also in this part of the movie get
Speaker 2: some background on Darryl Revick, which is doctor Ruth shows
Speaker 2: Cameron some old footage of him in an institution of
Speaker 2: some kind after he drilled a hole in his own skull.
Speaker 2: That's the scar on his forehead to let the pressure out,
Speaker 2: to release the pressure, and I think we get the
Speaker 2: impression that he means like the voices, and so this
Speaker 2: was Revick's way of trying to cope with the cacophony.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a nice bit of trepanation' sploitation here,
Speaker 1: And of course this is based on the very real
Speaker 1: history of trepanation. If you want to learn more about Trepanation,
Speaker 1: go back into the archives. We did an episode of
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind about it several years back.
Speaker 2: But here we get some indoctrination, right, Like doctor Ruth
Speaker 2: is teaching Cameron that Revick is his enemy and that
Speaker 2: reVC will try to recruit him to serve in his
Speaker 2: crusade to destroy the society that created him. And so
Speaker 2: Ruth wants to encourage Cameron to get to Revick first.
Speaker 2: So how is he gonna find Revick? Well, from here,
Speaker 2: I guess maybe we can take a lighter skip through
Speaker 2: the plot because we don't have to go scene by
Speaker 2: scene on everything. But some of the main plot points
Speaker 2: are He's got a first lead, which is another unaffiliated scanner,
Speaker 2: a guy named Benjamin Pierce, who is an artist, a
Speaker 2: sculptor who apparently has been able to keep himself sane
Speaker 2: by creating art.
Speaker 1: Yeah, creepy weird art with giant heads and all sorts
Speaker 1: of cool stuff. It makes for a great scene, like
Speaker 1: when he's talking to to Cameron Vale. They actually go
Speaker 1: inside a large head, like an enormous human head that
Speaker 1: has like a little like area with pillows in it
Speaker 1: inside or something. And so they're inside the head talking
Speaker 1: about the voices inside their head and it's it's nice.
Speaker 1: It works.
Speaker 2: So Veil tracks him down through some trickery and and
Speaker 2: some scanning techniques. But then he also, you know, when
Speaker 2: he meets him, he's like, I need to find Darryl Revick,
Speaker 2: and dude wants nothing to do with this. Benjamin Pierce
Speaker 2: is just like, leave me alone. You don't want to
Speaker 2: do that. Go away. But while Vail is there, assassin's attack.
Speaker 2: REVS guys show up with shotguns and it's just shotguns.
Speaker 2: Wall to Walt. Both types of bad guys in this
Speaker 2: movie have shotguns. The concept guys have shotguns. REVS guys
Speaker 2: have shotguns. It's like there was a sale at the
Speaker 2: shotgun store.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, a lot of shotguns in this picture.
Speaker 2: But after this attack, Vail survives sort of psychically repelling
Speaker 2: the assassins. But Pierce as he dies tells Vail psychically
Speaker 2: to find somebody named Kim Oberst. And this is where
Speaker 2: here in this section, Vail goes to kim Obrist's would
Speaker 2: you call it like a scanner commune sort of?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, kind of a commune situation going on.
Speaker 2: Now. We already talked a bit about what happens at
Speaker 2: this place. They seem to be engaging in a kind
Speaker 2: of ritual where they enmesh their minds with one another
Speaker 2: to achieve something previously unknown, beautiful and terrifying. And while
Speaker 2: they're doing that, Revic's assassins track Veil down and attack
Speaker 2: yet again. There's a big car chase scene and only
Speaker 2: Veil and kim Oberist survive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the great sequence where the bus is crashed through
Speaker 1: a record store. I don't know about you, but I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed checking out all these various records in the background,
Speaker 1: some of which were instantly recognizable, like they have multiple
Speaker 1: copies of a Frank Zappa album back there, you see
Speaker 1: a Bowie album. But then there was other stuff I
Speaker 1: just had to look up. There's this one individual that
Speaker 1: there's a poster for Hermann Brood, and I was like,
Speaker 1: has that made up? Is this some sort of a
Speaker 1: nod to the Brood or something? But no, this is
Speaker 1: a Dutch musician that I just wasn't familiar with. It
Speaker 1: was a pretty big deal in some circles, and you know,
Speaker 1: various other little details I had to look up. And yeah,
Speaker 1: just just a well crafted sequence and well constructed set
Speaker 1: in a film that you're not going to remember for
Speaker 1: its bus crash.
Speaker 2: Well, anyway, after this whole sequence, Veil uncovers a conspiracy.
Speaker 2: He does some corporate espionage and figures out that Michael
Speaker 2: Ironside is working out of the headquarters of a company
Speaker 2: called BioCarbon Amalgamate, and he sneaks in and he does
Speaker 2: some computer hacking and determines that they are manufacturing large
Speaker 2: quantities of a femarole and shipping them out for some
Speaker 2: secret purpose, and he wants to find out why, but
Speaker 2: access to that information is restricted.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love the hacking in this because it is
Speaker 1: very I mean, it's very much in line with what
Speaker 1: you also see in Ridley Scott's Alien. This is that
Speaker 1: period where computers worked by asking them a question and
Speaker 1: then the computer would tell you.
Speaker 2: You would type request access and it would say access denied,
Speaker 2: and then you would type request override the access denied.
Speaker 2: So anyway, Vale and Overest want to find out what's
Speaker 2: going on, so they come in to meet Vale's handlers
Speaker 2: with Conseck, and then there's a big double cross because
Speaker 2: we find out that the head of security at Conseck
Speaker 2: Keller he's secretly working in cahoots with Revick and he
Speaker 2: wants to kill them. They escape, but unfortunately Patrick McGowen,
Speaker 2: fortunately or unfortunately again a morally ambiguous character, he is
Speaker 2: killed in the process. And here we get into what
Speaker 2: I think many people now regard as the dumbest part
Speaker 2: of the movie. And I would say, if there is
Speaker 2: anything in the movie that doesn't really work well, it
Speaker 2: is what we're about to talk about. It is the
Speaker 2: sequence where Cameron is told by doctor Ruth that he
Speaker 2: can get the computer files by scanning the computer the
Speaker 2: same way he scans a human, because a computer also
Speaker 2: has a nervous system. So he goes to a payphone
Speaker 2: and scans the computer through the phone line.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I feel like this is a part of the
Speaker 1: film that that even I just can't imagine anyone being
Speaker 1: one hundred percent on board with this at the time,
Speaker 1: because they just don't feel like a computer is a
Speaker 1: nervous system, and certainly these computers are not nervous systems. However,
Speaker 1: if you were to make scanners today and set it
Speaker 1: in the future. I could very well imagine a situation
Speaker 1: where your computers are wetwear computers that have some sort
Speaker 1: of organic neural component to them. And in that case,
Speaker 1: I think you could you could make an argument that, well,
Speaker 1: our psychics are able to commune with the computer because
Speaker 1: there is this they have this organic base in common.
Speaker 1: So if the if they were trying to hack not
Speaker 1: the computer system here, but the elevator from the lift,
Speaker 1: you know, that would make more sense.
Speaker 2: Oh man, yeah, that would be good. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: think this I've regarded as the weakest point in the film.
Speaker 2: I think the sequence was on a little too long.
Speaker 2: It's not as interesting as the rest of the movie is.
Speaker 2: So there's like an attack and counter attack through like
Speaker 2: the computer's self destruct features and so forth, and then
Speaker 2: there's a big explosion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there is that. Cool. They're doing this all by
Speaker 1: the way, by by calling in from a payphone to
Speaker 1: hack it, and when everything blows up, they're trying to
Speaker 1: like like shut it down and destroy Cameron Veil, and
Speaker 1: they don't quite destroy him, but they do channel a
Speaker 1: lot of psychic energy through a you know this this
Speaker 1: remote phone booth and so we get the scene with
Speaker 1: the phone receiver melting in his hand, and then yeah,
Speaker 1: more explosions. So there's some good stuff sprinkled in there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you're right, it goes on a bit long,
Speaker 1: and of course is rooted in this kind of absurdity
Speaker 1: that feels a little bit out of pace with the
Speaker 1: rest of the picture.
Speaker 2: I mean, I like it an exploding telephone booth. That's funny,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it's a little tonally different than the rest
Speaker 2: of the film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the good news is that once they get
Speaker 1: past that, like, we're kind of back on the original rails.
Speaker 1: So if you don't like this segment of the picture,
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry too much about it because
Speaker 1: it's not going to ultimately play into the end game
Speaker 1: as much.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, so if you don't want the final twist
Speaker 2: of the movie revealed, you may take this opportunity to
Speaker 2: tune out, because we have to talk about what the
Speaker 2: big reveal is. What was it? What's inside the secret computer? Well,
Speaker 2: it is a list of doctors who are prescribing ephemerole
Speaker 2: or they're prescribing it. What do they have scanner patients
Speaker 2: who want to make the voices stop no. In fact,
Speaker 2: they're prescribing Ephemeral to pregnant women as a just regular
Speaker 2: pregnant women as a tranquilizer, and we discover in fact
Speaker 2: that this is linked to the origin of the first
Speaker 2: batch of scanners. So Ephemerole the drug was developed by
Speaker 2: doctor ruth by Patrick McGowan as a tranquilizer to be
Speaker 2: used during pregnancy, but it had the unintended side effect
Speaker 2: of causing children to be born with telepathic powers to
Speaker 2: be born as scanners, and after they discovered this, it
Speaker 2: was discontinued. But there are all these scanners out there
Speaker 2: now and Revic and his co conspirators are sending out
Speaker 2: more of this drug to be prescribed because he wants
Speaker 2: to make a new generation of scanners and eventually recruit
Speaker 2: them for his army.
Speaker 1: It's a fiendish plot, but one that works like it's
Speaker 1: not like Revuk has hey for him a rational plan,
Speaker 1: like he wants to make more people that are touched
Speaker 1: by the same ability so that they can become the
Speaker 1: new status quo that they can take over and they
Speaker 1: can rebel against the normal people that have made things
Speaker 1: so difficult for them.
Speaker 2: But reVC captures Veil and Obrist and then it comes
Speaker 2: to the final showdown, which is another I'd say, you know,
Speaker 2: if there's a standout secondary scene in the movie, people
Speaker 2: remember after the demonstration with the exploding head, it's probably
Speaker 2: this last scene the showdown.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, can they top the exploding head? Well, they
Speaker 1: don't try to top it. They do something different that
Speaker 1: is even more horrifying in my opinion, when we also
Speaker 1: get the reveal that that Revuc and Veil are brothers,
Speaker 1: or at least that's what Revik says. Who knows if
Speaker 1: we can trust him, but he says that they are
Speaker 1: both doctor Ruth's sons, that they're the oldest of the
Speaker 1: Scanners and therefore the most powerful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and somehow doctor Ruth did something to make them
Speaker 2: like more powerful than all the other Scanners, which is
Speaker 2: why they have these special abilities. Yeah, they can overpower
Speaker 2: even the other Scanners.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they got the extra ifim are all in their
Speaker 1: milk when they're babies or something. So yeah, we basically
Speaker 1: we get the scene which you might expect or if
Speaker 1: you've never seen it before, where Revk is saying, join me, brother,
Speaker 1: you know, join 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 Vaildo says, says, Nope, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to do that, and hits Revick in the head
Speaker 1: with a paperweight and at that point it's on. It's
Speaker 1: a scanner battle to the death with one psychic mind
Speaker 1: attempting to dominate the other. And who, I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, Joe, but this, this entire sequence, the sequence
Speaker 1: that I've seen before, mind, you just really creep me
Speaker 1: out this time. And I mean it. And I've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff in films. You know, I'm a
Speaker 1: kid who grew up watching The Bad Guy's Melt in
Speaker 1: slow motion on The Raiders VHS.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's gross, and it's it's hard to watch, but
Speaker 2: it's also pretty astounding.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's And I was really trying to break down,
Speaker 1: like why is this so disturbing and why does it
Speaker 1: work so well? And I think they're basically like three factors.
Speaker 1: So first of all, that the obvious our protagonist and
Speaker 1: antagonists here are both like literally destroying each other's bodies
Speaker 1: with their psychic powers here, and perhaps to destroying their
Speaker 1: own bodies as part of it as they channel these
Speaker 1: destructive powers. So like you know, faces, pulsating, stuff bursting.
Speaker 1: It's just really it's hard to watch, especially your hero
Speaker 1: go through this level of physical trauma.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Secondly, the effects are just really good. These are just
Speaker 1: really solid practical effects. Like when Veil ends up gouging
Speaker 1: out parts of his own face that have just been
Speaker 1: bulging and pulsating and popping. Is just really black. It's
Speaker 1: just really gross.
Speaker 2: It's awful. I think part of the effect of why
Speaker 2: this scene is so bad because there are other scenes where,
Speaker 2: like the hero of the movie gets injured, even you know,
Speaker 2: traumatic injuries, that aren't as awful as this. And I
Speaker 2: think it's because the injury appears to be some sort
Speaker 2: of deep, systemic malfunction of the body rather than just
Speaker 2: like getting like cuts or impacts or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is not our hero getting shot in the
Speaker 1: shoulder or anything. This is like gouging parts of his
Speaker 1: face out and then eventually his eyeballs explode. That level
Speaker 1: of trauma. And I think the third factor is that
Speaker 1: the body horror that we see in this scene. It's
Speaker 1: this weird mix of traumatic injury and mutation without ever
Speaker 1: actually crossing the line into a clear sense of movie mutation.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like their bodies don't seem to becoming
Speaker 1: completely other, but the weird energies flowing through them are
Speaker 1: kind of horrifically exposing a hidden anatomy and it's just
Speaker 1: dreadful to behold. Yeah, Like when you see veins like
Speaker 1: pulsating in their arms and across their face, You're like,
Speaker 1: that doesn't match up to what I know is underneath
Speaker 1: the face or the arm, But I'm totally believing that
Speaker 1: what is being revealed there is real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's the secret war being revealed. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: this time it's like underneath the skin.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they're pulsating and exploding, eventually erupting into fire.
Speaker 1: We get this kind of religious aura to it. His
Speaker 1: veil has twin flames and both of his palms and
Speaker 1: then yeah, exploding, And then we get the ending here
Speaker 1: where Oberis comes in. She finds Veil's just husk of
Speaker 1: a body. He's just completely immolated, and then she hears
Speaker 1: his voice from over in the corner. There's Veil's coat.
Speaker 1: He has this big kind of cool jacket. It's not
Speaker 1: a jacket, it's a full fledged coat that he's wearing
Speaker 1: in most of the film, and there's a character in
Speaker 1: the corner with that coat over them. They pull the
Speaker 1: coat back and it looks like Revic, but it's not
Speaker 1: Revec's voice. It's not Reveck's mind in there, like clearly
Speaker 1: in this battle of wills, this battle of minds veil
Speaker 1: one and it's now his mind that occupies a Revck's body.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he pulled a fast one on him. We're led
Speaker 2: to believe that, like he let reVC destroy his body,
Speaker 2: but somehow traded places with his consciousness.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And so we get this wonderful Cronenbergy ending
Speaker 1: where the end is the beginning. Our heroes have won
Speaker 1: because they embraced extreme change and extreme weirdness and perhaps
Speaker 1: kind of embraced a kind of posthuman identity.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: So computer scanning subplot aside, I think Scanners holds up great.
Speaker 2: This is it's excellent. It's gross in the parts that
Speaker 2: are supposed to be gross. It's shocking in the parts
Speaker 2: that are supposed to be shocking. It's also, i think,
Speaker 2: actually much smarter and more thoughtful and more interesting than
Speaker 2: a lot of initial reviewers.
Speaker 1: Gave it credit for Yeah, and weirder than you might
Speaker 1: remember it. I found it weirder than I remembered it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I should also say that, in rewatching the film, I
Speaker 1: was struck by the amount of care it seems to
Speaker 1: give this granted fantastic and sci fi horror vision of neurodiversity. So,
Speaker 1: to be clear, horror movies are not a great place
Speaker 1: to look for nuanced or insightful views of things like
Speaker 1: mental illness. But there's there's probably a lot to dissect
Speaker 1: here concerning the way the Scanner characters present these different
Speaker 1: ideas of neuro divergent again fantasy neurodivergent people in the
Speaker 1: given world.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Like the way the struggles of the different
Speaker 2: Scanner characters have manifested in like different outcomes in their lives,
Speaker 2: and we see the coping strategies they've come up with,
Speaker 2: And yeah, I think that's that is interesting, Like that
Speaker 2: that Veil never really had a coping strategy until he
Speaker 2: got a medication, that like one guy had a coping
Speaker 2: strategy through through art, that Kim OBErs did through community.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like like he has that kind of heartbreaking moment
Speaker 1: with the artist with Pierce where 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 says
Speaker 1: what seems rather honestly, He's like, but I don't I
Speaker 1: don't have anything like that. I don't I don't have
Speaker 1: this thing that you have to help me combat this problem.
Speaker 1: And that's why I need you to take me to Revck.
Speaker 1: And I don't know. Was that kind of resonated with me.
Speaker 1: It was a nice small moment in this film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, all right that Scanner's the nineteen eighty one classic.
Speaker 1: I don't think we'll be covering Scanner's two Scanners three
Speaker 1: or the Scanner cop movies. I don't know, never say never,
Speaker 1: but I feel like we covered the best one here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the sequels kind of they keep all
Speaker 2: the gross stuff and the heads exploding, but they do
Speaker 2: not retain the level of thoughtfulness of the original.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Mostly, I think I remember at one point, this
Speaker 1: was years and years back, we were talking about scanner
Speaker 1: face and what actors make the best scanner face. So
Speaker 1: I don't remember our findings, but I think we generally
Speaker 1: agreed that Michael Ironside is hired to beat.
Speaker 2: I think Scanner Coop has Richard Lynch in it, and
Speaker 2: I believe Richard Lynch had a pretty good scanner face.
Speaker 1: I bet he had a good one. Yeah. And of
Speaker 1: course David Hewlett is in the initial sequel, and I
Speaker 1: haven't seen him in that where I don't remember seeing
Speaker 1: him in that, but I've seen Hewlett and other things
Speaker 1: that he's quite good in. So I was really impressed
Speaker 1: with a role that he has in the Gila de
Speaker 1: Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities. He plays this grave robber who's
Speaker 1: desperate to get enough gold fillings out of teeth to
Speaker 1: pay off bookies, and so he's trying to rob graves
Speaker 1: and a haunted cemetery and incounting all sorts of horror
Speaker 1: and 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: of people who saw these films when they originally came
Speaker 1: out or you have memories of the first time you
Speaker 1: saw it. I would love to hear from anyone who
Speaker 1: did not know that head was going to blow up?
Speaker 1: What did you think when you watch this film for
Speaker 1: the first time. A reminder that we're primarily a science
Speaker 1: podcast with core episodes and Tuesdays and Thursdays and the
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your my podcast feed. But here on
Speaker 1: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns and we just
Speaker 1: talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. I
Speaker 1: blog about these episodes at immutamusic dot com. But also
Speaker 1: you can go to letterbox dot com. It's l E
Speaker 1: T T E R b oox D and you'll find
Speaker 1: our user name on there is weird House. We have
Speaker 1: a list of all the films we've covered. This is
Speaker 1: the ninety ninth film that we've covered on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: The next film we cover will be the one hundredth film.
Speaker 1: Who knows what we'll pick for that?
Speaker 2: Ooh, that's putting a lot of pressure on Ralbye. We
Speaker 2: gotta make a good choice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or you just let that pressure dissipate by exploding
Speaker 1: through the head. I don't know. Wait, maybe we just
Speaker 1: pick something like normal, and it'll become special to us
Speaker 1: because it was one hundredth picture.
Speaker 2: There you go, huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 2: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind dot com.
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