B-horror classic - Scanners (1981)
By peyronies 4 Comments
Who hasn't dreamed of killing someone with just their mind? If you answered "No", then you are a liar and deserve to have your head exploded in 80's gloriously gory fashion like a pepperoni Hot Pocket by Michael Ironside. It also explored the emerging paranoia of "modern" medicine and pharmacology along with the subplot of subverting pregnancies toward a malicious unethical corporation.
Darryl Revok is the most powerful of all the scanners, and is the head of the underground scanner movement for world domination. Scanners have great psychic power, strong enough to control minds; they can inflict enormous pain/damage on their victims. Doctor Paul Ruth finds a scanner that Revok hasn't, and converts him to their cause - to destroy the underground movement.
This movie taught me many valuable lessons:
- Nosebleeds only occur from one nostril, never both
- No man with a beard or mustache will survive to the end of a movie
- The best way to inject IV drugs is into the palm of your hand by your thumb
- Computers in the 80's actually were smarter than now and you could just type in what you wanted it to do
- Call an old bearded man "Doctor" and have speak slowly in a tweed jacket increases his credibility and likelihood-to-molest-you ratio by 1000%
- Somehow when 9 Scanners are concentrating as one, this causes them to be completely oblivious to thugs cutting them down with shotgun blasts at a 6 inch range
- Trying to drill a hole in one's own head leaves a nasty scar
Scanners arguably had 4 sequels all written by David Cronenberg
- Scanners II: The New Order (1991)
- Scanners III: The Takeover (1992)
- Scanner Cop (1994)
- Scanner Cop II (1995)
Just in case you want the goodies, here is the Michael-Ironside-just-mind-fucked-you scene:
