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Scanners
David Cronenberg (director)
Second Sight Films (studio)
18 (certificate)
103 min (length)
31 March 2025 (released)
3 d
This Canadian Sci-fi Horror from 1981 is Cronenberg at his twisted best and now, this unsettling shocker with its timeless echoes of corporate greed and corruption, is available both in standard Blu-ray as well as Limited Edition 4K format. Exploding heads, anyone?
The premise of the film concerns so-called scanners - both male and female individuals born with mighty telepathic and telekinetic powers. As it so happens, most scanners believe in using these extraordinary qualities for positive reasons, however, an initially small group of renegade scanners not only carry out a vendetta against non-scanners and good scanner but in the long run, hope to create a super-race of scanners which will dominate mankind.
The opening scene takes place in a shopping mall (presumably in Toronto) where homeless drifter Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) scavenges a café for food leftovers but it’s clear that something is wrong with him, as he suffers from voices in his head. When two women sitting at a table close-by begin to look at him due to his odd behaviour, he causes one of the woman to collapse in a seizure purely by means of telepathy. Amidst the ensuing chaos, Vale attempts to escape running up an escalator when he is captured by a bunch of men in suits. The men are in the employ of ConSec - a private military organisation overseen by Dr. Paul Ruth (a chilling performance from Patrick McGoohan) with an agenda of his own. One of Ruth’s agendas is recruiting Vale - together with a group of other scanners - to destroy a renegade ring of scanners whose leader is Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside in an even chillier performance…), a former patient of Dr. Ruth. As a ‘Thank you’ for his efforts to track down Revok and his ilk, the good doctor promises Vale a relief of his troubling voices by injecting him with a drug called Ephemerol, which will stabilise the voices in his head though at the same time, it will temporarily lower his scanning abilities.
From that point onward, the film plays out like a tense thriller mixed with a generous amount of gore (we are talking Cronenberg after all). A race against time is on to track down Revok, who always seems one step ahead and even manages to infiltrate a ConSec marketing event, where the very scene is about to unfold which elevated SCANNERS to horror-cult status… At the same time, internal disagreements within the corporation threaten the success of Vale’s mission, for example, when Keller (Lawrence Dane) urges Dr. Ruth to shut down the entire scanners operation (of course, Keller has his own agenda too) whilst Ruth firmly believes that the positive scanners are the answer to save humankind from evil. Are you kidding?
After visiting an unaffiliated scanner named Benjamin Pierce (Robert Silverman) in his remote barn, where he works on his sculptures and paintings, Vale hopes to get some answers from the reclusive artist but Revok’s assassins are waiting in the wings. After an almighty shoot-out, Vale manages to read Pierce’s dying brain in the nick of time and learns of another group of scanners led by Kim Obrist (Jennifer O’Neill, who gets top billings but doesn’t come in until halfway in the film) who also are on a mission to destroy Revok. Things get even more convoluted when Vale learns of a pharmaceutical company called Biocarbon Amalgamate, which is used by Revok to distribute copious amounts of Ephemerol via a ConSec computer programme. Oh dear! To give any more away would spoil the film’s surprise twist towards the end, which is just as unsettling as the entire concept of the script (penned by director Cronenberg).
The Bonus Material is as abundant as the amounts of Ephemerol traded by Revok and includes audio commentaries, interviews and a video essay by Tim Coleman. The Limited Edition 4k & Blu-ray set furthermore includes a 120 page book, six collector’s art cards and comes in a sturdy slipcase with new artwork.
The premise of the film concerns so-called scanners - both male and female individuals born with mighty telepathic and telekinetic powers. As it so happens, most scanners believe in using these extraordinary qualities for positive reasons, however, an initially small group of renegade scanners not only carry out a vendetta against non-scanners and good scanner but in the long run, hope to create a super-race of scanners which will dominate mankind.
The opening scene takes place in a shopping mall (presumably in Toronto) where homeless drifter Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) scavenges a café for food leftovers but it’s clear that something is wrong with him, as he suffers from voices in his head. When two women sitting at a table close-by begin to look at him due to his odd behaviour, he causes one of the woman to collapse in a seizure purely by means of telepathy. Amidst the ensuing chaos, Vale attempts to escape running up an escalator when he is captured by a bunch of men in suits. The men are in the employ of ConSec - a private military organisation overseen by Dr. Paul Ruth (a chilling performance from Patrick McGoohan) with an agenda of his own. One of Ruth’s agendas is recruiting Vale - together with a group of other scanners - to destroy a renegade ring of scanners whose leader is Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside in an even chillier performance…), a former patient of Dr. Ruth. As a ‘Thank you’ for his efforts to track down Revok and his ilk, the good doctor promises Vale a relief of his troubling voices by injecting him with a drug called Ephemerol, which will stabilise the voices in his head though at the same time, it will temporarily lower his scanning abilities.
From that point onward, the film plays out like a tense thriller mixed with a generous amount of gore (we are talking Cronenberg after all). A race against time is on to track down Revok, who always seems one step ahead and even manages to infiltrate a ConSec marketing event, where the very scene is about to unfold which elevated SCANNERS to horror-cult status… At the same time, internal disagreements within the corporation threaten the success of Vale’s mission, for example, when Keller (Lawrence Dane) urges Dr. Ruth to shut down the entire scanners operation (of course, Keller has his own agenda too) whilst Ruth firmly believes that the positive scanners are the answer to save humankind from evil. Are you kidding?
After visiting an unaffiliated scanner named Benjamin Pierce (Robert Silverman) in his remote barn, where he works on his sculptures and paintings, Vale hopes to get some answers from the reclusive artist but Revok’s assassins are waiting in the wings. After an almighty shoot-out, Vale manages to read Pierce’s dying brain in the nick of time and learns of another group of scanners led by Kim Obrist (Jennifer O’Neill, who gets top billings but doesn’t come in until halfway in the film) who also are on a mission to destroy Revok. Things get even more convoluted when Vale learns of a pharmaceutical company called Biocarbon Amalgamate, which is used by Revok to distribute copious amounts of Ephemerol via a ConSec computer programme. Oh dear! To give any more away would spoil the film’s surprise twist towards the end, which is just as unsettling as the entire concept of the script (penned by director Cronenberg).
The Bonus Material is as abundant as the amounts of Ephemerol traded by Revok and includes audio commentaries, interviews and a video essay by Tim Coleman. The Limited Edition 4k & Blu-ray set furthermore includes a 120 page book, six collector’s art cards and comes in a sturdy slipcase with new artwork.
