David Cronenberg’s sci-fi horror ‘masterpiece’ is now available on Shudder via Amazon Prime Video just in time for Halloween.
Scanners, released in 1981, follows Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack), a man suffering from voices in his head.
He is taken to Dr Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan), who takes him under his wing, informing Vale he is one of a select group of super-powered humans known as scanners, who are capable of telepathy, empathy, biokinesis, technopathy, and psychokinesis.
At the same time, a powerful scanner, Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside), wages war against private military company ConSec and aims to lead scanners in a quest to dominate humankind.
It was the iconic director’s first film to hit number one at the box office, and catapulted his unique and extreme brand of body horror to mainstream attention.
The cult classic spawned two sequels in 1991 and 1992, as well as spin-offs and a remake that was announced in 2007, but has not yet gone into production.
Scanners was named among Rolling Stone’s greatest science fiction films of all time, and is often praised for its practical effects and boundary-pushing content.
The film holds a 68% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the critics’ consensus reading: ‘Scanners is a dark sci-fi story with special effects that’ll make your head explode.’
In their review, the Austin Chronicle wrote: ‘This relatively early work from Cronenberg shows all his signature stylistics in full bloom.’
Starburst Magazine said: ‘It’s a film that staggers the imagination as much today as it did four decades ago, and it’s not difficult to understand why.’
Film-authority.com thought it was ‘an unnerving and challenging work of nihilistic prescience,’ while filmcritic.com said it is ‘an absolute must-see cult classic for horror and sci-fi fans alike.’
Combustible Celluloid added it is ‘an early masterpiece by David Cronenberg.’
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Time Out summarised: ‘Part conspiracy thriller, part political tract, it is Cronenberg’s most coherent movie to date, drawing a dark (but bland) world in which corporate executives engineer human conception to produce ever more powerful mental samurai.’
Speaking to Unclean Arts, Cronenberg discussed his back catalogue and what exactly inspires fear in the horror maestro behind The Fly, Crimes of the Future, and most recently, The Shrouds.
‘The same things scare me that scare most people. I mean, I’m not superhuman or parahuman, or whatever,’ he said.
‘You worry about your kids getting sick and dying, and you worry about your plane crashing that you’re flying in. I mean, all the usual stuff. I’m not immune to it.
He continued: ‘It’s odd–I don’t really think about fear all that much. When I’m making a movie, it’s not like I’m thinking, What is the essence of fear? How will I make people afraid?
‘Which I think ultimately is one of the reasons that I never thought that I was doing the same thing as directors like John Carpenter or George Romero, or even, at times, Hitchcock, even though I was compared with those other guys.’
Scanners is streaming now on Shudder via Amazon Prime Video.
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