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.Written by
Paul Reynolds <pauljr@innotts.co.uk>
Famed film critic Roger Ebert gave this movie 2 stars. He praised the special effects but said Cronenberg failed to involve the audience in the telekinetic scanners' plight; " Scanners Roger Ebert January 01, 1981 "Scanners" is a new horror film made with enough craft and skill that it could have been very good, if it could find a way to make us care about it. I don't think it does. I never had the feeling during the film that it mattered much who won or lost, who lived or died, just so long as the special effects occurred on time and the movie's look of elegant chill was preserved. It was released at almost the same time as "Altered States," another horror film that was being linked with "Scanners" in some reviews. I don't think they're comparable. I know "Altered States" cost many millions of dollars more than "Scanners," but that's not the difference that matters; on the level of its technical credits, "Scanners" is a fully qualified thriller. What matters is that "Altered States" involved its characters in experiences that we believed (for the length of the movie) were really happening to them. Vicariously, they were happening to us, too. In "Scanners," we're never involved. We're always watching. And so while "Altered States" throws all logic out the window and still works as great entertainment, "Scanners" bogs down in one of those plots where the big secret is revealed in the last reel and it turns out to be big only in the mind of the screenwriter. " See more »
Goofs
Dieter Tautz cries out during Cameron's scanning of him, but his lips don't move. See more »
Quotes
[Keller backs away from the CONSEC mainframe computer as it shuts down]
Programmer:
There's no need for that. It's just internal switching.
Braedon Keller:
Yeah? No one's ever switched off a scanner before!
See more »
Crazy Credits
Credits scroll like words on the CONSEC computer monitor. See more »
Alternate Versions
Additional change to censored version: in the final battle between Vale and Revok, they substitute a weaker ending which freeze-frames Vale, shows some phony-looking blue streaking animation of a "mind transfer" from Vale to Revok, and then fades the screen, replacing the spectacular, but gory battle almost entirely. See more »
I was pretty disappointed. It's more of a step down than a step up for Cronenberg; it seemed like he was sacrificing his vision to make a mainstream-friendly film. As a result, the film is basically a bunch of great scenes strung along by a generic, rather lame plot and some truly terrible performances. Even so, those scenes - the exploding head, the phone line stuff, the final battle - are so fantastic and so memorable in their own right that they make it worth getting through everything that comes between. Just a brilliant combination of sound and image in those sequences. So, overall, the film is nothing great, but it's not a complete wreck, either.
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I was pretty disappointed. It's more of a step down than a step up for Cronenberg; it seemed like he was sacrificing his vision to make a mainstream-friendly film. As a result, the film is basically a bunch of great scenes strung along by a generic, rather lame plot and some truly terrible performances. Even so, those scenes - the exploding head, the phone line stuff, the final battle - are so fantastic and so memorable in their own right that they make it worth getting through everything that comes between. Just a brilliant combination of sound and image in those sequences. So, overall, the film is nothing great, but it's not a complete wreck, either.