Scanners

Scanners (1981) is about people with telepathic and telekinetic powers fighting a hidden war. They are a by product of a drug given in pregnancy, and most of them cannot cope with the voices in their own heads. A corporation wants to collect them and use them as weapons. The scene everyone knows arrives in the first ten minutes. Gary Zeller built the exploding head effect from a plaster skull encased in gelatin and packed with leftover burgers, latex scraps, some wax and whatever else came to hand. When nothing else worked the crew took cover in their vehicles and the skull was shot from behind with a shotgun. They filmed it several times and Cronenberg used the first take. The strangest thing about it is that there was no finished screenplay. Canada's hundred percent capital cost allowance tax shield at the time required a production to start immediately. The first draft was not a script but a list of ideas, and Cronenberg wrote the day's scenes in the mornings before shooting. Jennifer O'Neill, who plays Kim, was given a script with the violence removed, and cried when she read the uncensored version. It grossed 14.2 million dollars in the United States and was the first Cronenberg film to top the box office. It runs 103 minutes. Good for: body horror, practical effects of the eighties, and Cronenberg. Less good for: the violence is graphic and unpleasant. You can tell the script was written during the shoot; the middle section wanders, and Stephen Lack's performance is the weakest thing in it.