3 out of 5

Director: David Cronenberg

While Scanners is well-regarded in underground circles and is a hiply reference-able movie, besides a couple super-charged scenes, it has always come across as Cronenberg-lite, sprinkling bits of his concepts over a pretty straightforward plot. Scanners is about a brewing war between humans and Scanners – humans with ESP-like powers. These powers involve taking over neural systems to whatever end… controlling them, making heads explode, etc. The story gets rolling when a Scanner (Stephen Lack) is brought under the wing of scientist Patrick McGoohan (lord how I miss him) to go undercover and find out the plans of uber-Scanner Michael Ironside. Lacks acting is laughably flat for most of the movie and while there are some interesting developments, the film otherwise lurches between scenes of Scanners doing their thing (cued by googly eyes and high-pitched music) and people getting shot. What keeps it from becoming B-movie material are those groovy Cronenberg touches – some involving camera work, a creepy score, and splashes of interesting yet simple dialogue. McGoohan acts everyone out of the room and Ironside has some respectable bi-polar moments. The background of filming is fascinating, as this was apparently a nightmare to produce, but you can certainly read about that on Wikipedia. Essential for Cronenberg fans, and good casual viewing for sci-fi/horror followers.