Scanners is no means the worst movie David Cronenberg ever made, but you have to admit… the exploding head scene IS pretty awesome. 

Scanners tells the story of a race of evil telepaths led by the always great Michael Ironside who want to take over the world by making people’s heads explode.  Stephen Lack is a good Scanner who is trained by Patrick McGoohan to infiltrate Ironside’s camp and make his head explode like a taco that’s been left in the microwave for too long.   

The major themes of David Cronenberg’s early work are evident in Scanners, but unfortunately the film suffers from some pretty big stumbling blocks that always keep the audience at arm’s length from the movie.  The biggest problem is the performance by Stephen Lack as the hero.  He’s appropriately named because he simply lacks the qualities of a sturdy leading man, such as charisma, screen presence, and chemistry with the other actors.  In fact, in one scene I think he actually got out acted by a sofa.  Another setback the film suffers from is the laborious Scanner revolutionaries that really grate on the nerves.  Also, the pacing is particularly erratic.  After a strong start, the film quickly devolves into a third rate Man from UNCLE episode with Lack infiltrating the bad Scanner organization. 

But… those exploding head shots ARE pretty awesome. 

Besides the gory special effects, you can savor the intense performance of Michael Ironside.  He’s terrific in this flick and went on to star in such classics as Hello Mary Lou:  Prom Night 2, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers.  Ironside is particularly great in the final showdown between him and Lack where his eyes start bulging, his veins pop out of his forehead and he starts twitching like your alcoholic cousin with a bad case of the DT’s.  The mind bending ending is a doozy, it’s just a shame you have to sit through a lot of boring cloak and dagger stuff to get to it.  

As uneven and ultimately unsatisfying as Scanners is you have to admit… the exploding heads ARE awesome.  And in my book, a little exploding heads goes a long way. 

Cronenberg did the immortal Videodrome next. 

An open letter to David Cronenberg: 

Dear Mr. Cronenberg,

For more than thirty years you have been the greatest horror director to come out of Canada.  With each progressing film, you have stamped your own personal signature and given us some of the most memorable horror imagery in the history of the genre.  In They Came from Within, it was the sex parasite going up the twat of Barbara Steele.  In Rabid, it was Marilyn Chambers’ armpit monster.  In The Brood, there were those terrifying telepathic tykes.  In Scanners, you set the bar for exploding heads.  Who could forget Videodrome, where you made James Woods seem like a NORMAL person, even when he was stuffing handguns into his abdomen and shooting people with cancer bullets?  That same year you gave us The Dead Zone, one of the finest Stephen King adaptations ever made where, again you made a usually psychopathic looking actor (in this case, Christopher Walken) seem NORMAL.  Then, you made The Fly; your masterpiece.  Jeff Goldblum turning into a slimy vomit monster.  Priceless. 

But after The Fly you made Dead Ringers which was all PSYCHOLOGICAL and stuff.  You started moving away from the whole sex parasite/armpit monster/killer kids/exploding heads/cancer bullets/psychic Christopher Walken/insectoid vomit monsters business and started doing more “arty” movies.  While I got a kick out of the whole “Gynecological Instruments for Operating on Mutant Women” thing, it featured not ONE thing nearly as great as the maggot baby scene in The Fly.  You got even artier with your next film, Naked Lunch.  The biggest problem with that film was the narrative: Robocop going back and forth from the real world to the “fictional” world.  I guess it’s not entirely your fault because if you WERE to film a true adaptation of the book, it would probably land you in jail.  Then you did M. Butterfly.  ‘Nuff said. 

You made a return to form with your next film Crash, which is still the best James Spader as a Sexual Deviant That Gets Off on Vehicular Homicide Movie Ever Made.  Then Existenz came along and even though it wasn’t perfect and only played in theaters for about five minutes, it was the closest you’ve come to your “old self” in a long time.  But I’ll be damned; you got all arty on us again with Spider.  At least Spider was vaguely Cronenbergian.  Your next film, History of Violence was pure Hollywood creampuff.  I was hoping you got that out of your system, but not even two years go by and you basically regurgitated that movie and called it Eastern Promises.

How disappointing. 

In History of Violence you had Viggo Mortensen go from being a good natured man who wants to protect his family to becoming a slimy gangster.  In this flick Viggo goes from being a slimy RUSSIAN gangster who becomes a good natured man who wants to protect SOMEONE ELSE’S family. 

Basically if you slapped a bunch of fake tattoos on Viggo, gave him a Boris Badenov accent, and played History of Violence backwards, you got Eastern Promises. 

Just like History of Violence, there are NO surprises in Eastern Promises.  Whereas we pretty much knew from the get-go in Violence that Viggo was not who he claimed to be (more of the preview’s fault than yours), the viewer will recognize right away where Viggo’s loyalties will lie in this one.  The “mystery” father of the abandoned baby will also come as no surprise to any half-intellectual viewer.