The Film Vindicator Review: Scanner Cop

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.

The Film Vindicator Review: Scanners III: The Takeover

Hey everyone and welcome to round two of this Scanners sequel/spin-off review special so on to Scanners III: The Takeover (or its alternate title Scanner Force).

We start off with opening text crawl pretty much in case anyone missed the first two films explaining what Scanners are. Already I’m seeing a problem here; first off in the first film it’s implied that Scanners are constantly bombarded with hundreds of stray thoughts from other people. And without Ephemerol to stop these stray thoughts eventually the Scanners would go insane. In this film it’s implied that Scanners suffered from auditory hallucinations…..ugh no they don’t at least I don’t think they don’t. Anyway after the text crawl we cut to a Christmas party where we’re introduced to Alex Monet (played by Steve Parrish) and his sister Helena Monet (played by Liliana Komorowska) both of whom are adoptive and are Scanners. In this film it’s apparent that Scanners are known to public now; this would mean that Scanners III takes place a few years after Scanners II. Alex is persuaded by one of his friends to show off his Scanner powers. He gently pushes his friend across the room telekinetically; Alex is doing well until he gets spook by a buddy tap on the shoulder. This causes his telekinesis to ramp up accidently throwing his friend out of a window falling to his death. We cut to Alex walking to monastery in Thailand in the hope to master his powers. Despite being declare not guilty for what was deemed an accident by the court, Alex couldn’t face his family and friends for what happened. We cut to two years later and meet up with Helena and Alex’s girlfriend Joyce Stone (played by Valerie Valois). Helena starts having severe migraines which is another side effect of being a Scanner….. The first film doesn’t establish such a thing about Scanners having migraine problems; Scanners II had this minor establishment of this Scanner migraine thing. But here the whole Scanner migraines are an actual thing now. Helena and Joyce are heading back to their car until they’re confronted by a street gang; you can already guess that this is not gonna end well…..for the street gang that is. Helena telekinetically throws the street gang right into the back of garbage truck; I’ve never would have guess this film to take the phrase “taking out the garbage” extremely literally. Later Helena is drop off at her place where she meets up with her father Dr. Elton Monet (played by Colin Fox). He shows her a new delivery system called Eph 3 (Ephemerol 3); an electronically charged skin patches that are worn behind the ear and absorbed in the bloodstream. These Eph 3 patches however, are not fully tested yet for any possible side effects. Helena volunteers to test them out but Elton refuses to let her and tells her to just wait for patches to be perfected. We cut to Helena waking up from a nightmare that reminds me of Phastasmagoria II; she runs out some unspecified pills and goes to the kitchen to get more. In the kitchen she come across the briefcase with the Eph 3 patches inside; despite her father’s warning from earlier she puts on the patch. The next day Helena seems to be fine that is until a pigeon craps on her hand, she gets pissed at the pigeon and makes the pigeon explode with her powers. Yeah not a good sign for the Eph 3 patch and unfortunately since it was a bird and not a person I’m not gonna count that on the head explosion counter. There’s a scene where Helena is at restaurant where she’s talking to some rich tycoon but this doesn’t go anywhere plot-wise so I’m skipping it. Helena stops at the Baumann Clinic which is a mental institution for Scanners where she and Alex were as children before Elton adoptive them. She confronts a Dr. Baumann (played by Harry Hill) and immediately tortures him starting with causing his index finger to explode. Well it’s not exactly a head explosion but I have feeling that we’re getting there. Earlier in her nightmare there are images of Dr. Baumann performing inhuman experiments on Helena when she was a child. So now Helena finally gets her revenge by…say it with me now…making his head go KABOOM! Finally, took you long enough movie but let’s see you can beat the two head explosion record from Scanners II.

After taken out the only two orderlies in the clinic, Helena liberates the institutionalized Scanners by given them each an Eph 3 patch. We cut to the monastery where we see Alex off to speak to the monastery’s master. The master tells Alex that he shouldn’t hide from himself or hide from his past; but Alex replies that he tried everything to find how to live with his powers. Master replies to rather not to deny his powers but to do good with them. We cut to Elton hearing loud music outside his bedroom; he investigate on where it’s coming from it leads him to an indoor pool where we see Helena in a hot tub naked. Wow this is the first time in a Scanners film where there’s nudity. Elton notice she’s taking Eph 3 and confronts her to take it off but Helena has a better idea. She psychically commands him to enter the hot tub and drown himself. While Elton is drowning we cut to Alex sensing his father dying; with her father now dead Helena declares to take over his company. However, the next day her father’s attorney Michael (played by Daniel Pilon) states that Alex needs to make some decisions for the company. Helena is confident that Alex can’t be found but Michael is determine find Alex. Later Michael arrives in Thailand but completely unaware that he is being followed by one of Helena’s Eph 3 Scanners. Michael locates Alex and the two discuss about his father and the company. Alex doesn’t want to take over the company and let Helena take over instead but Michael is suspicious about her. Michael is about to explain how Helena had mysterious change but the two are interrupted by two Muay Thai fighters and a crowd of people. All of them controlled by the Eph 3 Scanner. Michael tries to fend them off but is quickly killed. Alex does some force push on the attacking crowd; the Eph 3 Scanner tries to mind crush Alex but he retaliates and mind pushed him. The Eph 3 Scanner tries to get away by taxi but Alex makes the taxi explode psychically. We cut to a board meeting at Monet Pharmaceutical Industries as Helena promotes herself as chairman and C.E.O. of the company but one of the board members suggest that someone else to take over instead. So Helena scans him to have herself promoted; OK do these guys even know that she’s a Scanner? I mean Scanners are well known now so they should know that she just scan a person to her whim. But apparently the board is made of stupid. Anyway later at a MPI lab Helena ask Joyce to have Eph 3 to be mass produce for her to have more. Joyce is resistant at first but eventually she complies with Helena’s wishes. We cut to Helena at her office hiring a guy as her assistant and by her assistant I mean her personal fuck toy. I’m not kidding we cut to the two having sex and things start to get Videodrome weird. As they’re making out Helena starts scanning the TV which is set on this talk show; she psychically controls them through the TV…while having sex. I did say this would get Videodrome weird didn’t I? To summarize Helena can now control people on TV than just in person and yes it does come into play later. I would find that stupid but then again in the first Scanners film Cameron can scan computers. Alex now back in the States stops by at their home not to find Helena so he heads to the MPI to finally meet up with her. The two have their talk then Helena ask Alex to go talk to Joyce at the Baumann Clinic; insert your own “IT’S A TRAP” joke here. Alex arrives at the clinic to look for Joyce but most of the staff is all Eph 3 Scanners; they capture and torture him but he soon escape. He rides off on his motorcycle but the Eph 3 Scanners give chase on a short bus…you heard me. The chase comes to end at a factory where Alex drives off an edge and into a lake. One of the Eph 3 Scanners jumps in to check if Alex is dead so now we get an underwater Scanner fight that ends with SURPRISE another head explosion.

So this film is tied with Scanners II with only two head explosions. We cut to Joyce returning to her home to find Alex waiting for her. She rather shock to hear that Helena try to kill Alex; they both comes to the conclusion that there’s a side effect to the Eph 3. After a hot steaming sex scene, we cut to Alex on a roof for some reason until he’s attacked by more Eph 3 Scanners…armed with guns. When using a gun instead of psychic power it deeply defeats the purpose of being a Scanner. Anyway Alex tries to escape by rappelling down the building but an Eph 3 Scanner shoots the rope and Alex falls on to a car. We cut to Joyce at Helena’s office looking through her computer to the list of the Baumann Clinic Scanners who are released. She gets busted when Helena enters the office. Cut to Alex in an emergency room; an Eph 3 Scanner disguised as a nurse enters the room to…poison him. OK I’m getting a feeling that these other Scanners are completely underused here. She’s misses the opportunity when a visiting doctor enters the room. This gives Alex the chance to fake a flatline by controlling his heart. Alex awakes in an autopsy room and leaves immediately; he arrives back at Joyce’s place and calls her at the MPI lab but no answer. Alex heads to the MPI to look for Joyce; he scans a security guard to find out where she is but he doesn’t know. Alex sees Helena on a TV broadcast somehow knowing where she is and heads there. Meanwhile people are watching a live football game; one player is about to score a touchdown but gets tackle down and then KABOOM the player’s head explodes. Yeah Helena made a guy’s head explode via TV; so that’s three head explosions in this film a new record. Helena begins her mind control broadcast announcing the people to serve her. Alex arrives at a TV broadcasting building and finds both Helena and Joyce. He takes out three of the Eph 3 Scanners leaving only one left. Alex is about to escape with Joyce but she’s under Helena’s mid control; fortunately Alex scans Joyce’s mind to break the control. The last Eph 3 Scanner chases the two down to the lobby; Alex telekinetically throws the Eph 3 Scanner to a revolving door and spins the door. He telekinetically spins the door so fast the Eph 3 Scanner’s head gets compressed to the glass until…another head explosion. So that’s four head explosions; this film really love head explosions doesn’t it? Alex goes back to the broadcasting room to confront Helena; he moves a camera away from Helena cutting off the mind control broadcast. The climax of the film is a Scanner battle between Alex and Helena or as I called it really goofy staring contest. Helena appears to be winning given that Alex’s head is about to explode but he managed to telekinetically remove the Eph 3 patch stopping Helena. She returns to normal feeling regretfully of what she did and decides to kill herself by electrocution. Alex and Joyce leave the broadcasting room ending the film with really stupid sequel bait. The film ends with Helena’s…..spirit…..soul……something goes into the electric cable and into the camera; seeing her smiling and laughing. Luckily there’s no sequel that follows up on this not even the spin-off Scanner Cop follows on something that stupid.

My Final Verdict: As much as I was fair with Scanners II I was rather bored with Scanners III. At least in some parts of the film I felt rather bored. I was bothered that the evil Scanners kept using guns instead of their powers; I guess the filmmaker wanted to save money. The rules on Scanners are way off continuity from the first film; pretty much adding some new symptoms that made no sense I think. The film as a whole feels like it’s avoiding the events from the previous films. Clearly in the film everyone is aware about Scanners but they don’t seem to take it further than that. They just name drop the term Scanners and that’s it. It’s like if the X-Men were made back in 1992 the human characters name drop the term mutants and go no further just completely forget about mutants. The chose and usage of soundtrack in this film is really odd; most if not some of the intense and action scenes have a music score that sounds it belongs to a 90s kids film. Overall this film feels meh the only thing interesting here is the high number of head explosions.

Well that’s it for the sequels now we hit the bottom of the barrel in the form of the Scanners spin-off. Next time its Scanner Cop stay tuned.