Hey everyone Happy Halloween and welcome to the last leg of David Cronenberg Month so buckle up folks.
We start off at a mall food court where we're introduced to Cameron Vale (played by Stephen Lack). He sits at a table and stares at two middle aged women; he continues to stare while they started denigrating him until one of them begins to convulse. It turns out he's causing her convulsions mentally out of being provoke. He spots two mystery men who have noticed the commotion and leaves but the two men follow him. As he makes it to an escalator one of men shoots him with a tranquilizer gun; Cameron continues to getaway until the tranquilizer dart takes affect and the two men takes him away. Cameron awakens in a room strapped to a bed he is approached by a Dr. Paul Ruth (played by Patrick McGoohan) who informs him that he's a scanner. Basically able to "scan" and control people's minds; in other words way more awesome than those Scopers from Speed of Thought...just saying. The problem with all Scanners is that they're constantly bombarded with hundreds of stray thoughts from other people as it's shown with Cameron as Dr. Ruth brings in a group of people in the room. Dr. Ruth then gives Cameron an injection of Ephemerol which acts as a temporary suppression to Scanners and can help block out the stray thoughts. Later at a ConSec facility a scanner demonstration is taking place and the first volunteer to be scan is Darryl Revok (played by Michael Ironside). The demonstration starts and oh boy does it ends with a hell of a BANG. We see the Scanner trying to scan Revok's mind but struggles to do so; this leads to him to clinging violently until his head goes KABOOM! Turns out that Revok is a Scanner and a very powerful and dangerous one at that. So dangerous that he uses his scanner powers to kill some ConSec men and escapes. At a ConSec meeting Dr. Ruth informs the branch that there's an organized Scanner underground and Revok leads this underground. He then proposes that they send out Cameron to infiltrate the underground. Back at the undisclosed location Dr. Ruth continues to help Cameron to understand his gifts and help to control them. He then shows Cameron a film reel of a psychiatric session of Revok going ape crap crazy. Dr. Ruth explains that Revok has been seeking out other Scanners killing those who refuse to join him and that it's up to Cameron to him. Later Cameron is shown a dossier of a Scanner name Benjamin Pierce (played by Robert A. Silverman) who was in a prison for criminally insane for trying to kill his family. Dr Ruth explains that Pierce could be Cameron's only lead to Revok. Cameron heads to a art gallery where Pierce's sculptures are on display; he scans the gallery owner's mind and finds Pierce's address. He arrives at Pierce's and asks for his help to find Revok but Pierce refuses. They conversation is cut short when four of Revok's people with shotguns arrived and killed Pierce but Cameron uses his scanner powers to subdue them. With his last moments Pierce tells Cameron psychically to go a Scanner name Kim Obrist and her group of Scanners if he wishes to find Revok.
Later at night Cameron arrives at a apartment building where he meets other Scanners and Kim Obrist (played by Jennifer O'Neill). As Cameron joins in on their share scanning two of Revok's people enter the apartment building armed with shotguns gunned down a few of the Scanners. Insert your own "I got a shotgun" joke here. Kim takes out the two gunmen with her powers and the remaining Scanners escape by small bus. A black van filled with Revok's men catches up to the small bus and open fire with their shotguns killing all expect for Cameron and Kim. Gees shotguns are really affective against psychics are they? Cameron and Kim get away from the gunmen but are immediately confronted by a single gunman. Cameron stops him with his power and gains info on where Revok is via a small glass container with a Biocarbon Amalgamate logo on it. The next day Cameron infiltrates Biocarbon Amalgamate and tries to access a computer but no prevail only to find some program called Ripe and that Revok runs the place. Cameron returns to ConSec along with Kim informing Dr. Ruth about Biocarbon Amalgamate (which Dr. Ruth was its founder before selling it to ConSec) and that their shipping off ephemerol to somewhere. Meanwhile Kim is being interrogating by Keller (played by Lawrence Dane) but it turns out is working for Revok and is about to kill Kim. Fortunately Kim fends off Keller and escapes; Keller recovers sets off the alarm. Cameron leaves Dr. Ruth to go find Kim; Dr. Ruth starts monologuing to himself (for some reason) about the Ripe Program. He continues to monologue until Keller finds him and under orders of Revok kills Dr. Ruth. Cameron finds Kim and the two escapes from ConSec; at a gas station Cameron attempts to use his powers to access ConSec's main computers via phone booth. Back at ConSec Keller realizes that Cameron is scanning the computers and orders the computer techs to have the computers to self-destruct. While the computers are counting down to self-destruct Cameron has gain access to the Ripe Program; accessing a list of where the ephemerol is shipped off to. The computers self-destruct but Cameron causes a feedback causing the computers to explode killing some of the techs and Keller in the process. Hell even the phone booth exploded gees. Cameron and Kim stop at a small clinic where some of the ephemerol is shipped to; two revelations are revealed in this scene. One while Kim is in a waiting room she immediately gets scanned and discovers that she got scanned by a pregnant woman's unborn child. The other is what Cameron discovered that ephemerol is being injected into pregnant women ultimately creating unborn Scanner babies. Suddenly a tranquilizer dart crash through a window hitting Kim from behind; as soon as they're out of the clinic Kim passes out and Cameron is tranqed by Revok. We cut back to Biocarbon Amalgamate where Cameron awakens in Revok's office and this is where everything is revealed. It turns out that Dr. Ruth is Cameron's AND Revok's father and the two are brothers. Revok explains that ephemerol was originally used as a tranquilizer for pregnant women but ephemerol had an "invisible" side-effect on unborn babies resulting in creating Scanners. Furthermore, Dr. Ruth injected their pregnant mother with ephemerol resulting themselves becoming Scanners. Revok offers Cameron to join him in the new order along with the new generation of Scanners about to be born. Cameron refuses so Revok decides to "suck his brain dry" but Cameron fights back leading to a psychic duel between the two. And here's where things get really gruesome in this psychic duel so for the sake of your stomachs I'm just gonna skip a bit. We cut to Kim awaken and enters the office where she sees the burnt reminds of Cameron. But shocking she sense him psychically and finds him sitting at a corner only to see that it's Revok but with Cameron's mind now in full possession stating that "we've won" and the film ends.
My Final Verdict: Do I have explain how awesome this film is? The concept of people gaining psychic powers via drugs while still a fetus at the time is flipping scary. Kinda makes wonder what weird stuff your mom was injected with while you were still in the womb. The body horror effects are as gross out as ever and Michael Ironside is awesome considering that he make peoples' heads explode. Like The Fly Scanners had two follow up sequels Scanners II: The New Order and Scanners III: The Takeover and had a spin-off called Scanner Cop. And also like The Fly David Cronenberg was not involved directing them. Cronenberg still makes films nowadays but not as frequent as he did back in the 70s and 80s; and apparently has broken out of the body horror genre since then. His most recent films (that I've not seen yet) are History of Violence, Eastern Promises, and a new film that premiered this year Cosmopolis which....stars Robert Pattinson. Well at least Kristen Stewart or THANK GOD Stephenie Meyer is nowhere to be seen.
So I hope you enjoyed this years' celebration hope to see you again next Halloween as for me I'm gonna take a short break. But I'll be back with a new film to review so stay tuned next time as we look into Where The Heart Is. Happy Halloween.
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