Seriously why do I keep going with this? It’s not like the spin-off is any better than the sequels. What’s the point of these directors making these films if they keep deluding from the original film? Sure the Friday the 13th sequels were basically pushed out of the vaginas of filmmakers almost yearly but at least they were kinda consistent. Well except for Friday the 13th Part 5. While the Scanners franchise feel like their consistency from the original are ridiculously minimum. But I gotta review these films so here we go.
We start off at a dirt filled apartment where we see a young boy playing with his toy car while his father is bat-shit screaming in the bathroom. It turns the father is a Scanner who has ran out of Ephemerol and is now being bombarded by voices. We cut to a land-lord showing up at the apartment companied by two cops; it would appear that the father is two months behind on the rent. The cops enter the apartment attempting to arrest the father but he Scanner pushes one of them out of the apartment. The father then scans the second cop to the point that he almost makes the cop’s head explode. Sadly no genuine head explosion when his son uses his Scanner powers to stop him; the father doesn’t take that well and scan push him but then comes back to his senses. The land-lord comes in with a double-barrel shotgun and shoots the father dead; this pisses off the son and just about to mind crush but is stop by the cop. Later officer Peter Harrigan (played by Richard Grove) who was saved by the boy decided to take him home. The next day at the Chatsworth Mental Institute, Harrigan learns that the boy is a Scanner. OK seriously is it selective amnesia or something; how is it no one (aside from scientists) is not aware of Scanners? Anyway this doctor guy wants to experiment on the boy but Harrigan says the hell with that and the two leave. Harrigan give the boy a choice to stay with him and his wife, the boy agrees so. Cut to 15 years later we see the now grown up Samuel Staziak (played by Daniel Quinn) recently promoted as a police officer. While Samuel celebrates with his family and friends, a murder spree is taken place in the city. Regular citizens are mysteriously attacking and killing police officers on sight. Gees am I watching Grand Theft Auto or Sin City? Cut to Samuel gearing up and heading out on his first patrol. At a hospital two cops bring in an injured perp to an operating room; a hospital intern looks at one of the cops goes all crazy and stabs him. Harrigan is called in from the hospital and heads there immediately; the intern who stabbed the cop is in the state of catatonia. Making it difficult for Harrigan to question him; that is until he gets an idea. Cut to Samuel and his partner arriving at an ice packing plant which turns out to be a drug smuggling ring. Samuel and his partner take out two of the drug smugglers but one drug smuggler about to attack Samuel from behind. Samuel stops and disarmed the drug smuggler with his Scanner powers. After the drug bust Samuel is order to report his captain immediately; at the police station Samuel meets up with Harrigan discussing about the cop killings. Harrigan asked Samuel for a favor to scan the catatonic intern in order to find the person responsible for these killings. However, Samuel refuses because that would mean he has to stop taking Ephemerol. Later a janitor from the police station is kidnapped by a fortune teller Zena (played by Hilary Shepard) and me without a “Does this smell like chloroform to you?” joke. The janitor awakes in some kind of laboratory where we meet this film’s villain Karl Glock (played by Richard Lynch that go-to-character actor whenever Rutger Hauer is unavailable). Glock begins to program the janitor with some kind of weird brainwashing techniques. SPOILER ALERT he’s not a Scanner……yeah that’s bullshit.
Back at the police station Samuel and his partner are talking in the locker room until the janitor from before walks in. He sees a cop, goes bat-shit crazy, picks up a nearest shotgun and starts shooting down a few cops including Samuel’s partner. The janitor is eventually taken down leaving with two cops dead including Samuel’s partner. A little bit later Samuel goes to Harrigan and finally agrees to help. Back at the hospital Samuel and Harrigan approached the catatonic intern but once again the intern freaks out at the sight of Samuel. A Dr. Joan Alden (played by Darlanne Fluegel) quickly clears the two out of the room; she makes the conclusion that the intern has been programed to kill cops in uniforms. She suggests removing the trigger by having the police out of their uniforms. In the next scene Samuel attempts to scan the intern seeing exactly what the intern is seeing. From the intern’s eyes the images of the cops were replaced with horrifying hallucinations with drove the intern to kill. After Samuel tells Harrigan and Joan what he saw the intern kills himself by lunging his neck on a broken window he shattered. Cut to a woman walking to her car from a grocery store until she’s being mugged by two armed men. Samuel is walking to his car from the grocery until he hears the woman screaming nearby. He goes to stop them but one of them aims a gun at him; Samuel uses his Scanner powers to mentally paralyze him. The other mugger is about to shoot Samuel but gets Scanner push into a street lamp as Samuel arrests them both. Later at his home, Samuel has been neglecting to take his Ephemerol and starts hearing peoples’ thoughts. However, Samuel tries to filter out the thoughts without Ephemerol and it work. Harrigan issues a tactical alert for civilians to stay away from any police installations and for the police to work in civilian clothing only. Cut to Samuel reporting to a police lieutenant investigate the cop killing; with the power of film editing he uses his powers to read a stack of case files at lightning speed. Yeah I think its bullshit too. At an autopsy room Joan discovers a puncture mark behind the ear on the intern; upon further inspection she discovered traces of a hallucinogenic compound in the brain. This compound puts the subject’s mind open to any suggestion; basically these “killers” are imprinted with a command to kill. We cut to a woman being kidnapped by Zena forgot my “Does this smell like chloroform to you?” joke again. Cut to nighttime when we see a cop being dropped off at his place; he sees his wife cooking dinner but acting rather odd. It’s the same woman who was kidnapped by Zena earlier. The cop tries a bit of foreplay and then shows his badge; the wife sees the badge goes ape-shit at a hallucination grabs a kitchen knife and stabs him dead. The next morning the cop’s partner stops at by to pick him up; the partner gets no response and goes around the back of the house. He makes it to the kitchen only to find his partner dead and the wife in shock. Later Samuel, Joan, and Harrigan arrive to the crime scene attempting to question the wife. Samuel starts scanning the wife and sees what she sees, discovering that the cop’s badge is the new trigger. Samuel goes deeper into her memories and sees her being imprinted. From her mind’s eye Samuel sees only a silhouette of the suspect; he scans even further trying to get an image but the wife’s head starts to hemorrhaging. Again there’s no head explosion when Joan stops Samuel; that’s strike two on no head explosions movie and I don’t like it.
Going the mental images of the wife, Samuel goes off to find the place where the wife was imprinted. After a rather boring driving montage Samuel arrives to the area where the wife was taken. He stops by and enters a fortune teller parlor and meets with Zena. She performs a fortune reading until Samuel starts scanning her, after which he then leaves but got a good glimpse of Glock before walking away. Back at the police station Samuel gets an I.D. on Glock whom Harrigan recognizes. Glock used to be a well-respected neurosurgeon until he was fired for conducting unauthorized brain experiments. We then cut to flashback where Glock is hiding out at a log cabin along with some children he’s been experimenting on. Harrigan and a group of cops arrived at the cabin to take out Glock; Zena spots the cops and warns Glock to escape. A small shootout breaks out resulting one cop shot and killed and Harrigan morally wounding Glock with a rather huge graze to the head. Glock was locked away at Chatsworth but escaped a year later; basically he’s targeting Harrigan out of revenge. Cut to some cops and S.W.A.T. teams arriving at the fortune teller parlor but Glock and Zena are nowhere to be found. Harrigan calls it a night for now and ask Joan to talk Samuel home to rest up and to take his Ephemerol. Back at his place Joan gives Samuel some Ephemerol but he refuses to take them; Joan decides stay for the night to watch over him. A little bit later Harrigan’s lieutenant gets taken by Glock and Zena and then being imprinted to kill Harrigan believing that it’s Glock. The next day Samuel and Joan head to Chatsworth to get more information on Glock. When Glock was admitted a part of his skull was blown off rendering 20% of his brain damage; the Chatsworth doctors replace that part with a titanium plate and soon after he recovered. Afterwards Glock made his escape after killing one of the doctors he was charming. Samuel continues on questioning until he starts hearing voices from the Chatsworth patients and leaves.
Samuel returns to the police station when he spots Harrigan’s lieutenant looking suspiciously odd as the lieutenant heads up in the elevator. Samuel soon follows on other elevator; not sure why he could’ve used the stairs be a little faster. Anyway the lieutenant arrives to Harrigan’s office and shoots him only for Harrigan getting hit in the shoulder. Samuel arrives at the office trying to stop the lieutenant but he continues with his imprinted instructions. A few cops arrived at the office and shoots the lieutenant dead; Harrigan is taken to the hospital and put on intensive care. Zena arrives outside of the hospital and reports to Glock by pay phone that Harrigan is still alive and well guarded. Meanwhile at the hospital Samuel and Joan have an argument until Samuel here’s Zena’s thoughts. He immediately runs outside of the hospital and spots her; Zena makes a run for but gets run over by an ambulance. With Zena dying Samuel quickly scans her to find Glock; inside her mind Samuel ends up at mental representation of Chatsworth looking straight out of Hellraiser II. Samuel finds Zena but is trapped; Zena tries to escape but Samuel scans her again. This time Zena’s head goes KABOOM; FINALLY and I know this is all in her mind and her head hasn’t actually exploded. But you what screw it I’m counting that one. Samuel discovers that Glock is still at the parlor and immediately heads there. He arrives back at the parlor only to find a secret passage way; Samuel continues down this dark hallway until Glock gets the drop on him via trap door. When the hell this became a Bond movie all of a sudden? Samuel is incapacitated and is prep to be programed to kill Harrigan however; he uses his Scanner powers to cause some of Glock’s equipment to combust starting a fire. Glock leaves Samuel to burn off to kill Harrigan himself; Samuel manages to break free from his bonds and escapes the burning lab. Samuel arrives back to the hospital but unfortunately so has Glock disguised as one of the surgeons for Harrigan’s surgery. Samuel spots Glock in the operating room and stops him with his Scanner powers. Glock tries to kill Harrigan again but once again Samuel stops him. Glock seems to be a little resistant to Samuel’s powers but he continues to scan Glock until the left side of Glock’s head starts melting away revealing the titanium plate. Apparently titanium blocks out a Scanner’s telepathy; umm…..OK I don’t see how it’s not exactly vibranium or any other fictional comic book metal that shields your mind from psychics but whatever. Samuel uses his Scanner powers to control the defibrillator paddles electrocuting Glock. Samuel enters the room to check on Harrigan however, Glock quickly recovers and attacks Samuel. Persistent bastard now isn’t he folks? Samuel grabs a hold of Glock and scans him again; this time Glock starts hemorrhaging to the point that his titanium plate pops out of his head. Along with a few brain fragments killing him instantly; it’s a tough call if that was a head explosion so I call it more of a head fountain. Harrigan recovers from surgery and the film ends with Samuel back in uniform and on Ephemerol.
My Final Verdict: The word average seems to be the only word I can think of with this film. It’s like the further this franchise goes the less impressive it gets. Apparently this film decided to reduce the Scanner population to ONE…ONE FLIPPING SCANNER. This film seems to know about Scanners but are not seem to be a dime of dozen here. Maybe if Glock and Zena were Scanners this film might have been more interesting who the hell knows. Because oh yeah having one Scanner going against normal human villains seems fair…except that it isn’t. And before I forget this film has brought back the existence of Ephemerol but has fully disregard Eph 1-3 from the previous films. So what was exactly wrong with the original Ephemerol; what made it necessary to create newer versions of it in the two sequels but were completely forgotten in this spin-off? Virtually no explanation on what or why Ephemerol was just obsolete all of a sudden but then just brought back to use.
OK I think I’m done with this film and thankfully its sequel is the last film to go; stay tuned for the conclusion as we look into Scanner Cop II.
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