If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Good concept, poorly executed.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

David Cronenberg's Scanners is a very original and well made thriller that is a head exploding good time. This flick deals with people with special telepathic and telekinetic abilities known as Scanners. The government is studying them and there is a rogue Scanner that wants to use his powers to rule the world(Michael Ironside). Ironside is great here as baddie Darryl Revok and is one of my favorite on screen villans. While the film is classified mainly as horror, this has elements of sci fi and a high tech thrillers as well. Scanners is a pretty intense and cerebral film that delivers on suspense and gore. Along with other Cronenberg classics like The Brood and Videodrome, this is very much a thinking person's horror that is very original and effective that separates itself from a lot of dumb and generic slashers at the time. Scanners holds up well and is highly recommended to aficionados of horror and science fiction that haven't seen this. Excellent.

Fresh as ever after five viewings, 'Scanners' is more than just a film about telepathy, telekinesis and exploding heads. The film takes a philosophical look at what telepathy could by definition mean; in the words of Patrick McGoohan's character, "the direct linking of two nervous systems", which is not just limited to human beings but also connecting to computers (machines). Indeed, as hard as it for a so-called scanner to "develop a self-personality" amid hearing so many voices from others, the movie begs the question of whether or not these mutant human beings are a superior evolutionary form. Add in brooding Howard Shore music, awesome sound effects (for all the overlapping voices), chilling dissolve edits and a curious colour red motif, and 'Scanners' is a typically atmospheric David Cronenberg ride. At times, the film has the feeling of a generic 'trust no one' thriller, but for the most part, it is a gripping ride with an excellent art therapy subplot - which could be interpreted as Cronenberg offering a commentary on himself and why he makes films (much could also be said of one character designing a giant human head to sit inside. On top of all this, the iconic special effects and action scenes still stack up well more than thirty years later thanks to detailed makeup work, particularly as the veins of those being scanned slowly rise to the surface.

I remember watching this movie as a boy and found it again on youtube. This movie is funny and over the top with some interesting special effects. The story revolves around a man called Cameron Vale, a seemingly homeless man possessed by voices. In reality the voices are because he is a scanner. The movie also has another powerful scanner named Darryl Revik who in one scene makes a man's head explode using his scanner powers. Well Vale is recruited to hunt down and find Revik and this leads to a showdown between the two. There are twists and turns and this movie is just a joy to watch but if I had one big problem with the movie it is with the lead Stephen Lack has a complete lack of presence on camera and his acting is so bland and wooden I thought he was a homeless guy they hired off the corner. Compared to the nice performances by the alluring Jennifer O'Neill, Patrick McGoohan and the superb Micheal Ironside, Lack's lack of talent really shows. This movie was done by David Cronenberg who as usual delivers the goods.

With Scanners, legendary Canadian director David Cronenberg made his most accessible movie up to that point in his career. It was so successful in actual fact that it was the number one movie in North America for a while. This mainstream acceptance was really only a pleasant side effect because Cronenberg had hardly watered down his style; he had simply moulded his themes into a narrative that happened to have a wider appeal. A happy coincidence more than anything. Whatever the case, this was the fourth feature film by this director that fell under the bracket termed body horror. This one dealt less with physical transformations, seeing as its plot focused on telekinetic powers, more specifically on a small group of social outcasts labelled scanners who had this highly unusual ability which allowed them to connect to another person's nervous system; the effects of this could range from mind reading to…head explosions! Of the latter there is one scene which was probably most responsible for making the film such a box-office draw, in it a scanner invades a victim's mind and literally blows his head apart. It an incredible, visceral scene and it remains one of the all-time great shock moments of cinema as a whole. It still looks highly impressive today and in a nutshell indicates the strong macabre imagination of its creator Cronenberg and the uncanny ability he had to come up with such unforgettably disturbing yet highly original visual ideas.I personally believe that Cronenberg's best films are his science fiction ones; these are the ones where all the ideas are his own and they feel the most original, successful and interesting. Scanners is simply another great example in this remarkable run of sci-fi horrors he knocked out between 1975 and 1986. These films were all very visceral and work really well as horror films but they also all had fascinating sci-fi concepts underpinning them which elevated them to a higher level still. Only Cronenberg would come up with the idea of a telekinesis film where a human would consider connecting their mind to a machine's nervous system. It's these kinds of left-field ideas which set him apart from others in the pack. Scanners is admittedly less disturbing than his earlier body horror films, yet it's hardly light-weight material, it is merely another step in a unique direction from one of the all-time great sci-fi and horror minds.The film benefits from a terrific acting turn from Michael Ironside who makes a great impression as the main villain of the piece. The central character is played by Stephen Lack who was a bit wooden unfortunately, albeit not damagingly so, in fairness Cronenberg chose him for the part mainly on account of his piercing blue eyes so perhaps it is not so surprising that his thespian abilities were less than stellar. There is also an appearance from Patrick McGoohan, although he seemed a bit bored to me but I don't know if that's just really good acting. More interestingly, there is also a welcome appearance by Cronenberg regular actor Robert Silverman as a scanner who has been cured by art therapy, he is once again very good value and makes a memorable impression.All-in-all, this is superior stuff from one of the true past masters of the medium. I would dearly love Cronenberg to return to his roots again one day to make another sci-fi horror film based around his own peculiar ideas. Whether that will ever happen again who knows but at least we will always have films like Scanners to return to again and again.