Scanners(1981)

This film was written and directed by David Cronenberg who also directed Rabid, The Brood and Videodrome.He was a favourite of mine before he started to make movies like Eastern Promises(2007) . Anyway, this movie is a horror/sci-fi classic by now and it starts Patrick McGoohan(from The Prisoner) and Michael Ironside. I read that there is some remake being made and of course, that will be full of special effects and not much else!!! Yes, ANOTHER remake..... The movie begins with a grubby man who is walking through a mall. He looks homeless and people are disgusted by him. A woman begins to look at him and she has some sort of fit. This is no normal man. He is a scanner...He is captured by two men and brought to Dr.Paul Ruth(McGoohan) who informs him that he has special powers. The man is Cameron Vale(Stephen Lack) and he can hear everybody's thoughts. It hurts him to hear everything and he couldn't cope with it which is why he became down and out. Meanwhile, there is a meeting of people who want to see the scanners in progress. Unfortunately, there is a rogue scanner, Darryl Revok(Ironside) who murders the last scanner who was working for ConSec, a weapons and security systems company. Now, Dr. Ruth has to get Cameron to infiltrate Revok's underworld but it isn't easy as Ruvok is aware that he is doing so due to a leak at ConSec. Revok is collecting rogue scanners and he wants to take over the world. Scanners can control people's thoughts and Revok is sending his people out to kill the good scanners. Cameron is told that the only way that the voices in his head can be silenced is by a drug called ephemerol. Cameron tries to find a lead to Darryl, but he is killed. Cameron meets a fellow scanner called Kim(Jennifer O' Neill) and she tries to help him to get to Darryl before Revok can stop him. They eventually get captured by Revok and Cameron has to face him, scanner to scanner....... An interesting movie with some good special effects(who could forget that exploding head?). I enjoyed it. I am going to give it a 7/10.