Night 17 of 31 Nights of Horror

For the longest time, I thought this was a Stephen King story. There’s just something about it that made me associate it with him. Probably the similarity between the “The Shop” and the company in Scanners that was producing a drug that gave people mental abilities. That’s not a spoiler by the way, it’s pretty much explained right at the beginning.

This movie is all David Cronenberg though, well, Cronenberg inspired by William S. Burroughs. It’s not as strange as Naked Lunch or eXistenZ and I’m not really sure why it’s considered a horror. The movie is more unsettling than it is scary, but it’s still really good.

It has been a long time since I‘ve watched Scanners and I had forgotten most of it, except the imagery of the people using their powers. I think that’s the thing about David Cronenberg’s movies, the vivid mental pictures that get burned into your memory and haunt you.

I’ve been a comic book nerd most of my life and this film is one of the few times I can recall mental telepathy being shown as an almost physical act, both the scanner and victims emote and struggle. It’s also not a passive thing, it’s an act they have to wilfully engage, which I guess is why two gunmen are able to get the drop on a literal room full of psychics.

Michael Ironside takes a lot of the credit for this movie staying with me for so long. His performance is fantastic. Actually, I’m trying to think of a movie with him in it that I didn’t enjoy and am coming up blank. There probably is one or two, nobody has a perfect track record of picking their projects, but I think it says a lot about the man’s talent and charisma that I only remember the good ones.

It’s not a perfect movie by any stretch, I feel Cronenberg is a lot like early William Gibson in not knowing how computers work and just making things up because it sounds good. I’ve worked in telecom for thirty years and I can guarantee, that even with psychic powers, there is no way a pay phone will explode like that unless you pack it with C4.

For an older movie, the effects hold up really well. The story has some pretty big holes if you start thinking about it, so it’s best not to get too analytical and just enjoy the ride.