Director Christopher Nolan first made his mark on cinema with the black and white
nah, don’t worry, I’m not gonna go over all that shit. Also I figure all of you have already seen INCEPTION three more times than I have so I’m not gonna worry about spoilers. To be honest it would take alot of effort to spoil this one because it’s so complicated to explain what’s going on in order to give it away. But still. Don’t read this until after you’ve seen it. Goofus would read this before seeing the movie, but Gallant would wait until after he saw it and then come back and read this.

INCEPTION is a thought provoking movie, a story full of ambiguity, of possible interpretations, of ideas and questions. The main question it makes you ponder, judging from most of the reviews and comments I’ve seen, is “is this a full-fledged masterpiece, or is it just a really fucking good movie that’s only partially-fledged and therefore not technically a masterpiece although very close in my opinion but it depends on the definition of masterpiece you’re going by which of course varies wildly but if you ask me it’s like obscenity, I know it when I see it?”

It’s funny when that’s the biggest disagreement. Yes, it’s a super fucking excellent film, the best I’ve seen in ages, one that made me shiver and break into a cold sweat and thank the Lord for giving me eyeballs… but a masterpiece? Come on. Let’s not go very slightly overboard here. Again, I want to reiterate it’s a great, great movie that I love and cherish.

It seems most everybody really digs this one. That doesn’t really fit established patterns. Nerds eat their young, they gotta destroy what they love. I thought DARK KNIGHT was so popular there had to be a huge backlash against Nolan on his next one, but I don’t see it yet.

I guess part of the masterpiece debate is whether or not a masterpiece needs to say something profound or emotionally relatable (can it just be a masterfully crafted piece of entertainment?) and then if applicable whether or not it does say something profound or emotionally relatable. I’m leaning toward “yes” on the parentheses part and “probly not” on part B.

I love that it’s based around an idea being a weapon like a bomb or a poison. You sneak in and plant it in the right spot and boom. Consciousnesses maimed. This concept of the idea changing the world, or changing lives, just by being thought is more cool than deep, I think. But I also don’t think that matters. Deep is better, but cool is acceptable. (Deep and cool is the best, see THEY LIVE or ROBOCOP or THE MATRIX.)

If the movie’s a masterpiece it’s because the script is a work of genius. It’s constructed more meticulously than the “dream levels” in the movie. The first hour throws you in, sets you up and lets you flounder a little trying to understand what’s going on. Then as you feel you’ve caught on it turns into a heist and it’s the best of both worlds: the beloved familiar of the classic caper movie structure meets the fresh and new of this weird “sneaking into people’s dreams to give them ideas” concept. I always love a good Assembling an Elite Team and of course what kind of an asshole doesn’t get a kick out of a good Going Over the Plan? You always see this in a MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE or an OCEAN’S movie, you got the mastermind giving a big speech about what all the obstacles are to get past and how they’re gonna do it and you’re excited about how clever their idea is and suspensed about knowing it’s not all gonna work as planned and they’re gonna have to come up with some new shit on the fly.

The Assembling an Elite Team and the Going Over the Plan are like Parliament-Funkadelic vamping for 10 minutes before setting off The Bomb. They’re establishing a rhythm and a groove and you’re nodding your head along with it and you’re into it and part of the reason is because it makes you anticipate what’s coming next. You smile bigger and bigger the longer the groove goes on because you know eventually it’s gonna explode. And in INCEPTION it explodes into what must be pretty much a straight hour of action and suspense scenes.

You know what, let me switch analogies on you. I know it’s kind of sudden but if you’re smart enough to follow along with INCEPTION then you can follow my rambling. INCEPTION is like that board game “Mouse Trap.” Nolan takes his time setting up that complicated Bill Goldberg device and it’s worth the time it takes because when it’s all finished he lets that metal ball roll and you just sit back and watch all the contraptions do their thing.

I gotta admire that this movie can cut between three sets of characters existing simultaneously in three dream worlds where we understand that time passes at different speeds… but we can pretty much follow what’s going on. Also, I’ve given Nolan some shit about his action direction before, because especially in BATMAN BEGINS I think some of those fights should be better choreographed and shot. But once again the guy proves that he does know his shit when it comes to the vehicle chases.

Also there’s some spectacular effects in here that are so well done I honestly don’t know how they did it. I think I heard they built a giant rotating hallway (like the bedroom in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET) for the incredible fight scene where they fight on all the surfaces, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look like Joseph Gordon Levitt really did that shit. (He doesn’t rewind it and tell us he really did that shit like THE HUMAN TORNADO does when he jumps naked off that ledge, but it sure looks real). I was even more impressed by the weightlessness, that whole DePalma style suspense scene where he had to tie up a bunch of people and float them into an elevator to provide the feeling of falling without gravity (!). I haven’t been an astronaut for a long time but that looked authentic to me so until proven otherwise I’m gonna assume they actually went into space to film all that stuff.

And there are plenty of smaller things that are impressive. The whole cast is great. One character that was more interesting than expected was Ellen Page as Ariadne (was that really her name? That’s what IMDb says). I like how she starts out as the newcomer, the one used as an excuse to explain to the audience how things work. But she’s so smart she quickly gets ahead of the explanations and figures out things that the other characters haven’t picked up on yet.

(Ellen Page’s character fills in a job vacated by Lukas Haas, and then you got Levitt and DiCaprio… it’s some kind of War of the Babyfaces.)

Tom Hardy steals alot of the movie as the, I don’t know… dandy badass master of disguise I guess we’ll call him. I’m happy Hardy did it ’cause I feel much better about him playing Mad Max now. I mean of course he was good in BRONSON but it’s impossible for me to think of that movie, character and performance without being tainted by my feeling that it’s a poor man’s CHOPPER. So when he got the Mad Max gig I couldn’t help but think wait a minute, Bana’s the rich man’s Bronson, he’s actually Australian and in real life he drives the same car from MAD MAX in dangerous high speed races. And you’re going with Tom Hardy? But now that I’ve seen this I get it, I believe he can pull it off.

Also great to see Ken Watanabe in a bigger role than I expected. And at first you think he’s some corporate asshole, but he’s part of the team so they respect him and you like him. Glad to see Tom Berenger on the big screen again too, though I gotta admit I was kinda surprised how he looks now. I guess he was already an older gentleman when he was playing all those badass roles in the early ’90s. Time had to catch up to him eventually. Anyway hats off to Nolan for continuing his DARK KNIGHT crusade to put our DTV heroes back on the ol’ silver screen.

As for DiCaprio, he’s great as always but I do think he should try to mix it up soon. He’s so good at being the intense star of big expensive movies by great directors, but those roles are starting to blend together. You can’t help but notice this guy’s not totally different from his character in SHUTTER ISLAND who’s also dealing with some reality bending and is haunted by memories of his wife’s death. It’s not a problem for this movie at all and I’m sure he’s worried he’s gonna dilute his power if he tries to loosen up and do an Adam Sandler movie or something. But I do think he’s a good enough actor it would be interesting to see him in a goofy comedy or playing a show-offy supporting nutball character or of course a despicable villain. He did try to play AMERICAN PSYCHO right after TITANIC but somehow he’s never ended up getting a role like that. I can’t help but think of a different world where it was him playing the Joker in DARK KNIGHT.

Nolan really won my respect with DARK KNIGHT, to the point where I almost forgot he was the guy who did MEMENTO. That’s a movie I only saw once a long time ago. Back then I thought it was plenty good but a little overrated. I thought it was a clever idea executed well, nothing more, nothing less. Some day when I watch it again maybe I’ll feel the same, maybe I’ll discover new depths that everybody else was seeing in it that I was missing. Either way, it makes sense that INCEPTION is the movie that guy would make ten years later. He gets more skills, more money, more ambition, he comes up with this crazy, complicated shit and gets a studio to bankroll it. Everybody’s making phony stories now about the Riddler being in the next Batman movie. Maybe it’s true though, because this guy is the Riddler. These are some crazy fuckin puzzles he’s making through the medium of the movies. And making it the movie of the summer.

I mean, let’s not lose track of the fact that this is a big summer blockbuster about a world where CEOs are specially trained to secure their subconscious so that corporate spies can’t break into their dreams to steal their ideas and a team of dream thieves uses this fact against one CEO so they can pretend to be part of a security force he’s dreaming so that they can trick him into having an idea that another CEO wants him to have in order to prevent a monopoly on alternative energy so they have to bring him into a dream within a dream within a dream to make him think he thought of the idea himself. (SPOILER.) I mean, some summer movies are about trying to survive an earthquake or finding a treasure map on the back of the Declaration of Independence. This one requires some paying attention. Even if you compare it to the greats like ALIENS, JAWS and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and what not… I wouldn’t say it was better or even quite as good. But I think it’s kind of more challenging. It asks more of you, requires you to be attentive.

I will admit, I got a pretty good brain but not the fastest processor. So maybe it’s easy for most of you but I did have to work the ol’ brain muscles to keep up, I felt like I was running along behind it. Not as out of breath as Clint following the president’s limo in IN THE LINE OF FIRE, but not that much better. But I felt like I kept up pretty good and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the script for helping me out with that. I felt like they had the Goldilocks-approved just right amount of exposition. Every once in a while a character says one sentence or so of explanation of what’s going on, but no more. It’s kind of like a talk radio guy resetting when he comes back from the commercial. He reminds you what the topic was but he doesn’t get into all that “22 after the hour, showers expected tonight” and all that bullshit. Just enough to keep you up to speed.

But I like to think I’m a pretty adventurous moviegoer. I like Brian Bosworth but I also like to be challenged. I like weird shit and alot of times I like movies that everybody else hates, including but not limited to various Matrixes, Star Warses, Hulks, Crystal Skulls, Brown Bunnies, etc. We, the ladies and gentlemen of the internet, seem to fall in love with movies like CHILDREN OF MEN that aren’t necessarily gonna catch on with the type of people I was watching INCEPTION with. Alot of teens, alot of text messaging going on as the movie started. I thought I was gonna have to break some bones and phones. During the movie there was alot of shifting around in the seats. I remember this sound from the remake of SOLARIS. I was being one of those elitists I guess, I was thinking man, it’s great Chris Nolan got to cash in his DARK KNIGHT check to make this one on a big budget, because this is asking too much for normal people to follow along with.

But then in that last scene, the moment when it cut away (even though come on, you knew that had to be where it was going, right?) I heard about 150 simultaneous gasps across the theater, and some laughing and clapping. I guessed everybody was bored and waiting for it to be over, but in fact they were riveted. The only time I ever remember an audience reaction like that was when I saw BATMAN BEGINS at a preview screening. I really liked it but I convinced myself everybody else was bored with the exploration of Bruce Wayne like they were with all that psychodrama I loved in HULK. But then when Gordon pulled that Joker card out it was like a bomb went off the response was so loud.

By the way, good one Nolan, putting the title right at the end again. I don’t know if it’s his touchdown dance or his “that’ll do, pig.” But he get everybody riveted and then drops it on ‘em. Bang. Fade to black. INCEPTION. Yeah, that’s right, that’s the title of the movie that just knocked your socks off. Now you know who to complain to if there’s any damage to your socks.

The other complaint I’ve heard besides “by my definition of ‘masterpiece’ it doesn’t quite qualify” is about the dreams being so normal. It definitely occurred to me too – for a movie all about dream worlds it’s sure not very surreal at all. It could use some of the ol’ Cronenberg lumps of technology. Or it wouldn’t even have to be that weird. If it were my dream I’d use my flying powers, there’d be creepy weird animals who know how to talk and alot more fuckin goin on.  But as Mr. Majestyk pointed out it’s important to the plot that the constructed dream worlds pass for reality. And also the dreamy shit been done many times before. All kinds of filmatists have had their hand at weird dream shit – which themselves don’t usually remind me of actual dreams. I kind of like that his dream worlds are normal until they become unstable. It’s avoiding the obvious approach.

In conclusion, masterpiece I guess. I don’t know, I’d have to see it again I think.

I don't know, I feel like they coulda come up with a better tagline than that. Not trying to be picky, I just personally don't think this represents their best work.

I think my problem last time was I wanted it to be more like CARRIE. It’s weird because both have Amy Irving but in this one she’s the one with the telekinesis. Or one of the ones. But it’s not very similar to CARRIE at all. Kirk Douglas plays some kind of secret agent who gets ambushed overseas, left for dead and his treacherous buddy John Cassavetes takes his telekinetically gifted teenage son Robin (Andrew Stevens). Years later Robin is living in a mansion having his powers honed by scientists and banging the gal who’s in charge. And his dad is still looking for him, following leads and psychic tips. He finds out about the girl and convinces a nurse (Carrie Snodgress) at the government-run school she’s at to get information from her and then bust her out.

But most of the story is told from the girl’s point of view. The way De Palma illustrates her powers is really cool. In one scene she’s walking with her friend and doesn’t know about the weird guy following them, but in the middle of their conversation she says his name. It just pops into her head. And as he often does De Palma invented a new use of the filmatic language to show us her visions. She’ll be standing in a room watching something that happened in the past and suddenly it’ll cut to a shot that matches exactly but it’s the present day so the lighting is different and different people are there or not there.

One of the real suspenseful parts is when she’s watching a conversation from the past that seems real close to revealing where Robin was taken, but meanwhile in the present day somebody’s trying to get her attention. You don’t know if it’s gonna distract her and ruin everything. (or cause her to shoot a guy out of a window like when the guy gets tapped on the shoulder in SCANNERS 3).

The movie starts weirdly off-balance, with a goofy shot of Douglas and son in swimsuits laughing and wrestling. Then the whole shootout and everything has kind of a TV movie quality more than your usual slick and cinematic De Palma. I actually wondered if it was gonna turn out to be a movie-within-a-movie type opening. Then there’s two chunks of out of place broad humor, first when Douglas breaks into an apartment occupied by some bickering old folks (and one that doesn’t mind helping tie the others up), then when he gets driven around by two bumbling cops (one of them Dennis Franz). But once you get past that it’s a solid and unique thriller.

You do get to see Kirk Douglas being a funny weirdo. He has to flee his apartment in his boxers and does a parkour move jumping and swinging to the apartment across the way. Also he has a moment of maniacal glee where he brags about taking off Cassavetes’s arm: “I killed it… WITH A MACHINE GUN!” Douglas is pretty conservative if I remember right, so it was probly revenge for Cassavetes punching Reagan in THE KILLERS.

The irony here is that everybody’s trying so hard to get this kid back, but little do they know he’s turned into a total douchebag prick since they last saw him. If Cassavetes wanted to get Douglas off his trail he should’ve just offered to let him have lunch with his kid one time. Half an hour with this asshole and I guarantee you dad would give up any interest in rescuing him. He’d finally get to the moving on with his life stage.

This kid is always whining and pouting and jealously accusing his old lady of fucking every guy he ever sees her standing near. His immature lover’s quarrel causes a serious disaster on a carnival ride. When he makes his stand he really is like a scanner, complete with glowing eyes and bulging forehead vein.

When De Palma’s at his best his movies work like stone henge or something. Everything’s put together and carefully adjusted to line up with the stars and work exactly right. This is not one of those, it’s kind of a mess. But a good attempt for beginning druids. It’s not on the top of my De Palma list, but not on the bottom either. Actually, technically it’s scribbled in on the right side but later on I will redo the list and put it in with real nice handwriting and everything, in my opinion.

Then in the ’90s he did FORREST GUMP, which must’ve been his biggest hit and it won best picture and all that. It was a beloved commercial smash, but it rubbed some of us the wrong way. On the surface it’s fine but if you think about the subtext it kind of seems like it’s saying don’t worry, don’t think about anything, don’t have an opinion, don’t rebel, just do what your mama says and you’ll achieve all of your dreams, unless you ever did drugs or hung out with the Black Panthers. And your girlfriend will die from AIDS because she was a hippie.

Because of that I know people who still rant about Zemeckis being a “propagandist.” And then there are some who accuse him of being kind of an anti or reverse propagandist, deliberately pussyfooting around the politics to trick people of all stripes into thinking the movie’s on their side. The example of that is in GUMP when he makes a speech at the Vietnam protest in Washington. Somebody told me that in the book he actually makes an anti-war speech, but in the movie there’s microphone problems and you don’t hear what he says. So you just assume you agree with him, whatever your opinion is. You figure you and that retarded guy are on the exact same page politically.

But there was a time just a couple years before GUMP when, probly by accident, a movie that Zemeckis and his partner Bob Gale wrote wasn’t just nostalgic and feel-good, it was almost kinda relevant. It was directed by Walter Hill from an older Zemeckis/Gale script, it’s basically a b-movie with Bills Paxton and Sadler fighting Ices Cube and T, but it happens to be a real good time capsule of what was going on culturally right at that time.

TRESPASS was released on Christmas Day, 1992. That’s less than 2 years after Rodney King got beat by those cops, and less than 8 months after the riots. It was originally supposed to be called LOOTERS but for some reason that was a sensitive topic with the riots being so recent. Maybe a better reflection of where the country was at is that TRESPASS came out a week and a half after Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic”, and about a month after Ice Cube’s “The Predator,” but the best selling album of the year was a pop country album by Hannah Montana’s dad, Billy Ray Cyrus. The culture was on the verge of a major shift or split, and this story takes place right in the middle.

Paxton and Sadler play firefighters from Arkansas who, while fighting a fire, find themselves in possession of what they figure out is a map to some hidden gold. So one weekend they get in a pickup truck and go find this abandoned building in East St. Louis where the treasure is supposedly stashed. To Paxton it’s just a fun adventure, an exciting thing to do with his buddy, like being a kid again. But to Sadler it’s a way to pay off his debts and maybe have enough left over to be rich. So Paxton brings a metal detector, Sadler brings a gun. Could turn out to be a problem.

(Man, Paxton was always chasing after treasure. There was this one, there was TITANIC, there was A SIMPLE PLAN if a suitcase full of money counts as treasure, there was TWISTER if a twister counts as treasure.)

They got some bad fuckin luck too because at the exact time their plan comes together there also happens to be some gang members on top of the building tossing a traitor through a skylight. When the gangsters see the looters and realize they witnessed the murder it turns into a tense stand-off. The looters take Ice-T’s younger brother hostage and try to figure a way out of there without getting killed and, if at all possible, with the gold.

When this movie came out the hip hop influenced movie was a fairly new phenomenon. Ice-T had recently been in NEW JACK CITY and RICOCHET (after bit parts in hip hop movies like BREAKIN’ and RAPPIN’). Cube had only made BOYZ N THE HOOD. The soundtrack isn’t a classic or anything but it has a pretty impressive lineup including songs by Public Enemy, Gang Starr, Black Sheep and an Ice-T/Ice Cube team up.

Back then (and I think even still) people who weren’t into their music liked to say they couldn’t tell the difference between Ice-T and Ice Cube, but they’re actually very different from each other. Even in this movie, where they’re in the same gang, they’re always at odds. T is King James, the leader and a smooth professional type dresser (he even wears suspenders). Cube is Savon, the scowling, complaining underling who wears one of those puffy velvet hats that were okay to wear in the ’90s.

Also in the gang is Glen Plummer, who I consider a 90s staple since he was in MENACE II SOCIETY, SPEED, SHOWGIRLS (her friend and choreographer), STRANGE DAYS (the murdered rapper) and THE SUBSTITUTE (the other teacher who becomes friends with Berenger).

One element that’s pretty dated: there’s a character named “Video” who carries a camcorder around and videotapes everything, and it occasionally switches to the video point of view. It doesn’t have much of a story point, and even then I think it was an annoying cliche to have a character with a camera just so you can make a bold statement about our voyeuristic media-obsessed society or save money on film developing or whatever. People were so fascinated with that camcorder shit, it took forever for them to get sick of it and now we start all over with digital cameras, god damn it. Anyway, the DVD has some deleted scenes where you learn that in the longer cut Cube wanted the video as evidence that he wasn’t the murderer. I wish they left that in because not only would it make the Video character more useful, it would be a good irony for this post-riot story. After Rodney King people talked about camcorders as the only defense against bad cops, but of course that didn’t end up working for King.

I gotta mention that I’m not sure I buy these gangsters listening to Sir Mix-a-lot in the car. But maybe. He was a little harder back then, before the Grammy winning ass song. Man, people in Seattle were really into those first two Mix-a-lot albums back then, you shoulda seen it. I got a buddy who moved here from Austin, he was shocked to find out that all the places discussed in “My Posse’s On Broadway” were real locations in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, and for my part I was shocked to learn that a guy from Austin knew the song “My Posse’s On Broadway.” How the hell did that get past the state border?

Anyway, like the best b-movies TRESPASS has a bunch of clever gimmicks and touches. For example Tiny Lister plays “Cletus,” but I thought they were calling him “Cleats,” which is what he wears. All the better to stomp your face in with. Personally I wouldn’t want anybody to stomp my face in with baseball cleats, but it’s gonna be even worse when it’s a big motherfucker like Lister. So that’s a cool weapon (have cleats ever been used in a kung fu movie?) but it has another use because the looters here the sound of his steps upstairs and then start using the metal detector on the ceiling to figure out where he’s standing.

One really original suspense sequence happens when Sadler wants to kill his junkie hostage and Paxton convinces him to just dope him up instead. So, while tied up, the junkie gives them instructions for preparing his heroin and then they have to try to shoot him up.

Because these guys are firemen it sets up some of their abilities: rappelling, chopping through floors and walls, escaping burning buildings, carrying people. I think all of these (and the cleats) could’ve been used a little more than they are, but I appreciate that they’re there.

King James does alot of ranting about “the white man” selling him drugs and then coming after him for re-selling them (as if there is only one white man doing all this). It’s not all that subversive, it was a pretty common type of philosophy to spit back then, but at least it makes his character a little more dimensional seeing how he tries to justify what he does.

What works best in the movie is the racial tension. The white guys aren’t blatant racists, they would never say any racial slurs I don’t think, and wouldn’t consider themselves racist. But they have a recognizable contempt and lack of understanding of the black characters. A truly enlightened white individual could have a color blind confrontation with King James and his men, they wouldn’t have to throw in a sarcastic “homey” here and there, but that’s the type of guy Sadler is – the sarcastic “homey” type.

You could justify talking like that to the criminals, but there’s also a homeless man (Art Evans) who stays in the building, and they decide to tie him up so he doesn’t get in the way of the gold. I like the dynamic – Paxton doesn’t want to tie him up, but doesn’t stop Sadler from doing it. Whenever they need his help they try to act like they’re his buddy and ask him some question about the layout of the building or something, and he’ll usually say “FUCK YOU!” When they finally do untie him they expect an automatic let-bygones-be-bygones policy, even though they’re the motherfuckers that just tied him to a chair for hours! And they’re oblivious to the fact that they’re asking for too much forgiveness. Not a bad depiction of race relations circa 1992. The guy is kind of an angry asshole, but jesus, I would be too if I were him.

I also like this theme of everybody claiming ownership of the building and the gold. I personally believe the homeless guy has the strongest claim to it, because it’s a building that he at least has used as shelter for some time. King James and his men consider it their territory, because it’s within the neighborhood where they kill people and sell drugs. The firemen consider it theirs because they’re the ones who were given the map. But the guy who gave them the map stole the gold anyway. None of these people here owns the land or what’s on it. All the claims are on a made up time-passage basis. Well, whoever owns this building hasn’t used it in a long time, who ever owned this gold hasn’t seen it in a long time.

When you think about it it kind of shows that the whole idea of ownership is kind of a crock of shit. But these guys want the gold because they’re materialists. They’re not following some Native American idea of the land belonging to Mother Earth.

So there you have it. Clearly a commercial movie, a small but solidly entertaining one. But also it’s America circa 1992 in disc form, and I bet it plays better now than it did back then. Good job Walter.

No, you’re right, a crazy is the exact same metaphor as a zombie. It just doesn’t eat intestines. The advantage though is that Romero’s original THE CRAZIES is not a masterpiece like his first three DEAD movies. It’s a great idea, some good parts but for me it doesn’t come together for some reason. I think I’ve tried watching it three times, thinking this time I’m gonna appreciate it more, I just know it. But after I watch it I never remember much about it at all. I think it had something to do with crazies? So for me there’s no problem with this remake having to live up to the original.

The movie takes place in a small town called Ogden Marsh, Iowa, and the crazy shit first goes down at a high school baseball game. The sheriff, played by Timothy Olyphant, happens to be at the game and sees one of the locals, a dude named Rory, walk out onto the field with a rifle. Rory’s a recovering alcoholic and he’s acting strange. The sheriff tries to talk him down but ends up having to shoot him. Just like on his show ‘Justified’ Olyphant starts this one with everyone questioning his self defense justification for shooting a guy.

Of course we know enough about the movie (for example the title) to know that guy’s no drunk, that guy’s a crazy. Other people around town start doing odd things too, like repeating the same sentences over and over, staring right through you, turning on farming equipment for no reason in the middle of the night, burning their families alive, etc. Whatever’s happening here, it’s obviously no good, and the sheriff’s gotta figure out what exactly is happening and why what’s happening is happening. Oh shit, it’s the happening! Stay away from trees!

Nah, he traces it pretty quick to a military jet that crashed while carrying a biological weapon and contaminated the water. Which I’m against. But in this story the military not only causes the threat, it also becomes its own separate threat when they show up to clean up their mess. After lots of tense chases and showdowns with crazies in a mostly empty town the movie abruptly shifts gears. All the sudden the quiet town becomes noisy and crowded with troopers in biohazard suits rounding up the citizens and quarantining them, separating anyone with a fever and strapping them to gurneys. This is a bad combination – not only does the sheriff get separated from his wife, but she guts stuck strapped down when a crazy stars coming through the room stabbing everybody with his pitchfork. Fuckin crazies. They need discipline, in my opinion. Stop being so lenient. Or at least take away their pitchforks. I’m sorry but they got it coming.

Unlike Romero’s, and like all remakes of Romero movies, I don’t think this is meant to be very political. But there’s enough going on I’m sure you could read something into it. It’s a solid thriller though with a good lead (when did Olyphant turn so cool?), nice atmospheric photography, mostly tasteful stylistic touches (I could do without the computery blips when it switches to satellite POV) and lots of different types of tension and danger (though I wish a few less sticky situations were solved just by somebody else showing up with a gun). I think one secret to the movie’s success is that it uses an extensive menu of paranoia types:

1. of people you know snapping, becoming unrecognizable. They look like your loved ones but they aren’t

2. authority figures metaphorically trampling all over civil rights, as well as literally trampling over things because they wear big boots

3. disease: you don’t want you or your wife to get it

4. being misunderstood or blamed for something that wasn’t your fault

5. having to call your friend out for going too far. The sheriff and his deputy have a good bond throughout the movie but it’s strained as one of them seems to be losing it. The old “is he turning, or just being an asshole?” dilemma.

One remake advantage for crazies is you don’t have to worry about the slow zombie/fast zombie controversy. Crazies aren’t made of rotting flesh, so it would make sense for them to run fast. Interestingly though these filmatists mostly use them slow anyway, because they know that can be more dramatic.

As long as we’re on the topic I want to point out the hypocrisy of some of the people who get worked up about fast zombies. I mean, you know my preference. I prefer the Romero shamblers, and it frustrates me when people think faster has to be scarier because it’s more of a physical threat. That’s missing the point: zombies in the original DAWN OF THE DEAD are not scary because they can get you, they’re scary because you can never get them. You kill a hundred of them a day it makes no difference, they’ll keep coming, and eventually overwhelm you.

I have noticed there are many horror fans who agree with me on that, and even pretend to be offended by the idea of fast moving zombies such as in Zack Snyder’s DAWN remake. Yet many of these same people make cute little quips and novelty t-shirts and shit that involve zombies saying “braaaaiiiinnns.” But Romero’s zombies don’t say “braaaaiiiins,” they don’t say anything. And they prefer intestines. They’ll eat what they can get, I’m sure they’d enjoy brains, but they’ve never shown a preference for them. The zombies that specifically eat brains and who say “braaaaiiiinnns” are from RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD… and they are fast zombies!

BOO YAH. So if you ever catch some whiner complaining about fast zombies but also referring to zombies eating brains, sic ‘em for me.

But that’s zombies, forget about zombies, this is crazies we’re dealing with here. I think this was originally gonna be directed by Brad Anderson of THE MACHINIST, so his writer Scott Kosar still gets a credit on the screenplay. Kosar also wrote the terrible remake of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. I guess it shows that in addition to a decent script you also need a director who can direct actors so you like the characters and put together tense sequences, get some thrills and/or chills or whatever. THE CRAZIES, believe it or not, was directed by Brock Lesnar. I don’t know how he’s had time to learn about photography and editing, let alone shoot the movie in between being three-time WWE champion, his wrestling in Japan, his attempt to play NFL football with the Minnesota Vikings and his subsequent career in the UFC, where he captured the heavyweight championship from Randy Couture in 2008. You’d think he’d have to be training for upcoming fights and everything.

Wait, hold the phone, it turns out I heard that wrong. THE CRAZIES was actually directed by Breck Eisner (SAHARA). I don’t know how he’s had time to learn about photography and editing, let alone shoot the movie in between being the son of former Disney bossman Michael Eisner. But I guess I can see how his filmatistic roots run deep. According to the Wikipedia websight “Disney CEO Michael Eisner was struck with inspiration for the [hit 1980s cartoon show 'Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears'] when his son requested the candies one day.” It doesn’t specify which one of Eisner’s sons wanted the candy but I’m gonna sitck with my hunch that it was Breck, so I consider him to be the uncredited co-creator of Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears, and therefore a successful filmmaker since 1985. His dad also supposedly came up with this one called ‘Wuzzles’ which is “animal creatures composed of half of one animal and half of another,” for example rabbit + hippopotamus = hoppopotamus. I don’t know, I suppose an adult really could’ve come up with gold like that, but to me it sounds more like the work of a gummi bear eater. At any rate, I’m sure being around all that boundless creativity had to’ve rubbed off on him. I mean, he grew up in a Wuzzles family, for Christ’s sake. Of course he’s gonna be a director.

But seriously, he seems pretty good and I would like to take this opportunity to announce Breck Eisner as the latest recipient of Vern’s I Guess If Some Asshole Has to Remake Escape From New York It’s Fine That It’s This Guy Because Maybe He Won’t Fuck It Up Too Bad seal of approval. I think we need more directors with true vision, but these days it’s refreshing just to see one with solid skills, so we’ll have to keep watching this Eisner and hopefully he’ll amount to something. If not he probly has a life time supply of gummi candy he could live off of.

James Woods plays Max Renn, a guy who runs Civic TV, a small Toronto cable channel that plays softcore porn at night. But he’s always looking for something with more bite for what his agent calls “the subterranean market.” One of his connections uses a satellite to intercept broadcasts from around the world and tape them for Max. They find something called “Videodrome” which Max considers to be a “show” but that seems suspiciously like home video of people being tortured by death squads maybe in some South American country somewhere or something. Of course, because it’s Cronenberg it’s gotta have some bizarre dream-like touches, so the people are being tortured in front of a wall of electrified wet clay. (Who thinks up this shit? Well, David Cronenberg.)

Of course it turns into a creepy mystery with him going to the source of Videodrome and unwrapping a conspiracy that involves a church mission for homeless people, an eyeware company, a media figure who’s actually dead but nobody knows it because he pre-taped years worth of TV appearances and monologues, brain tumors and bizarre hallucinations.

You can only imagine what it’s like if you’re familiar with other Cronenberg movies, because nobody else does shit like this to compare it to. It involves elaborate latex effects depicting an intersection between video hardware and human organs. He notices a huge opening on his chest and scratches inside it with his handgun. Somebody hands him a throbbing VHS tape that he puts in his chest and it programs him to be an assassin. His handgun and arm start to grow together like a couple of trees planted too close to each other. Next thing you know he’s running around with a roughly gun-shaped lump of flesh instead of a hand.

Debbie Harry plays his creepy new fling. He meets her on a talk show where she represents the Moral Majority and he defends his right to show smut. He asks her to dinner right there on the show and before you know it they’re involved in erotic ear-piercing. That’s a good one because there’s obviously some sexual component to piercing (otherwise why are all these people poking holes in their bathing suit areas?) so when you pull back to the more innocent ear lobe, but combine it with fucking, it seems somehow much weirder.

Cronenberg really demonastrates how much you can get out of just trying something that hasn’t been on screen before. Stop being literal and plum the nonsensical shit from your subconscious. You keep that hidden because it’s uncomfortable, so if you’re making a horror movie why not use it? Think of all the Freddy sequels with their comic-book-artist-killed-by-Super-Freddy type nightmares, and how much scarier they’d be with Cronenberg’s freaky shit instead. Makes you wish for some reason he’d been asked to do and willing to do that NIGHTMARE remake. He could’ve actually caused some sleep disorders.

At the same time I think this is Cronenberg’s strongest dose of the freaky shit that maintains a balance with normal thriller conventions. It dips further into Mindfuck Valley than SCANNERS does but not all the way like NAKED LUNCH or CRASH. To me that makes it more subversive because it has enough suspense to hook a normal viewer of Ashley Judd serial killer thrillers but still tricks them into seeing a TV screen grow nipples.

And because this is 2010, of course some motherfucker (specifically Ehren Kruger, an individual who willingly put his name on the scripts of SCREAM 3 and TRANSFORMERS 2) is trying to remake even this crazy movie. That would make it one of the very first movies about a guy with a VHS-compatible chest vagina to be repackaged for this generation. I don’t know how you do it in this day and age, but hopefully Channing Tatum or whoever stars will grow a weird new orifice that’s equipped for text messaging.

The world has really changed since VIDEODROME came out in ‘83. Back then Debbie Harry was very edgy, she’d only been in underground movies like DOWNTOWN 81 with Basquiat, and she’d just done a closed-after-one-night wrestling play with Andy Kaufman. Now she has a Barbie doll. But the themes of the movie are still relevant, they just apply to different technology. And more importantly the tone is still creepy as, uh… as a guy with a lumpy flesh gun on his hand. There is no match for Cronenberg’s filthy Canadian mind. This is not a movie about a series of murders, but its imagery is way more terrifying than any of those types of movies. You don’t even have to understand what’s going on in this one for it to give you the heebie jeebies.

I mean, seriously Cronenberg. You’re the best. And what the fuck is wrong with you? Holy jesus. I love you man, but you need help. But don’t get it. Make more movies.

thanks Cronenberg

In this one Scanner Cop (still Daniel Quinn) has a new Scanner Case. He’s gone from we-behind-the-ears rookie to completely-dry-throughout-the-entire-ear-area cocky veteran with long hair and even – and this is how you understand what he’s all about – a brown leather jacket.

By now people don’t just think he’s a psychic, he’s out in the open about being a scanner. In SCANNERS, scanners were completely underground. By part 3 they were rumored and discussed at parties. At this point they’re common knowledge enough that Scanner Cop can say to a doctor, “You know she’s a scanner, right?” and not have to explain what that means. On the other hand, people always seem surprised and confused when they use their powers.

The science of scanner medication has also improved. You know how in SCANNER COP he had to stay off his pills to use his powers and that was real dangerous because he was guaranteed to go crazy in a couple days? In this one they brush that off by having someone mention it and somebody else says oh no, he has new medication that lets him use his powers.

“The Showdown” of the subtitle is between Scanner Cop and a new Scanner Villain named Karl Volkin (Patrick Kilpatrick, Mercenary #2 from UNDER SIEGE 2). He’s a maniac scanner who escaped from an asylum and is going around scanning other scanners, defeating them and absorbing their powers (”like a vampire”). A girl (Khrystyne Haje) who Scanner Cop wants to date and who also is trying to help him find his birth mother tracks down an obscure case that happened in Canda one time, a case we at home would call “the David Cronenberg movie SCANNERS.” Kind of sad that the earth-shattering events of the original story are now just an old newspaper clipping of something even Scanner Cop never heard of and that doesn’t even affect his case that much. But what this guy Volkin is doing is supposed to be like what happened at the end of SCANNERS, if I understand this right.

So like Michael Ironside he’s got a list of all the scanners, but he’s using it more as a hit list or a list of different snacks he wants to eat than as a recruiting tool. He goes around finding the scanners and causing them to shrivel up like mummies. One poor bastard hears his girlfriend go to answer the door and then has to peel her gooey head off the security caging.

I’d say it’s not as dumb as the case in SCANNER COP, but it’s sure not exciting enough. It’s very repetitive. In slasher movies at least you can imagine they might slip away. This guy is too super-powered. You’re just watching him feed over and over. I mean the effects are cool like usual, but that’s not enough. It’s like I COME IN PEACE without the humor, the action, or the charisma of Dolph Lundgren.

There is one minor thing to make it seem more like a straight up cop movie: Robert Forster plays his commanding officer now. Poor bastard. He doesn’t have alot of screen time and what he has is 100% dedicated to generic cop lines and exposition. But he’s Robert Forster so he still seems to make it a little better than it should be. He has that professionalism.

Also I had no idea while watching it but if you ever watch this keep your eye out in the opening scenes, it turns out that redneck sheriff who first encounters Volkin is the Lone Ranger himself, Clayton Moore. I guess I didn’t recognize him with his mask off.

The funniest part of the movie is definitely the showdown itself, when the Scanner Cop finally faces down Volkin. For some reason the girl keeps telling him that the only way he can defeat Volkin is through illusion. She doesn’t say it like, “I had this idea that you should try using the power of illusion!” She says it very matter of factly that it’s the only possible method of victory. No disrespect to her librarian skills or her scanner heritage, but what the fuck does she know about this? How is she so confident she has the solution? She’s telling Scanner Cop what to do. Who does she think she is? This is Scanner Cop you’re talking to, lady!

Anyway there are these two innocent people that get knocked out by Volkin, then Scanner Cop comes in and they have a scanner fight and Scanner Cop loses and gets torn up… but then it turns out no, it was one of those unconscious guys being controlled by Scanner Cop and made to look like him in Karl’s mind. So Scanner Cop walks in again and says, “Fooled you, didn’t I Karl?” Real proud of himself.

Yeah you fooled him. Fooled him into murdering an innocent man instead of you! Way to protect and serve, asshole. Then he does the exact same thing with the other guy. I don’t know, maybe these guys were supposed to be dead already, and he just horribly desecrated their bodies so that their loved ones will not be able to have the closure of an open casket funeral. But it seemed to me more like he used two injured people as human shields (and puppets).

Anyway, Volkin yells “WRETCHED COP BASTARD!” So it’s a pretty funny scene. And with that David Cronenberg’s original vision of 14 years earlier was finally fulfilled, and there were no more SCANNERS movies.

I know what you’re thinking: but how did he run out of pills with Canada’s health care system? Well, this one takes place in Los Angeles. A special Los Angeles where “sorry” is pronounced different.

When the dad dies in a police stand-off a beat cop adopts the orphaned kid, little Sam Staziak, keeps him on Ephemerol and raises him to become an LAPD cop played by Daniel Quinn.

The Scanner Cop’s big case comes when a series of weird cop-killings starts. Ordinary citizens keep flipping out when they see cops. It turns out a cult leader turned mad scientist is out to get Staziak’s adopted dad (now the chief) so he and a palm reader keep kidnapping people and brainwashing them so the sight of a police uniform triggers hallucinations of monsters or other evil things attacking. Then they end up killing the cop thinking it’s a monster. The police are so helpless they stop wearing uniforms.

The chief convinces his reluctant ward to stop taking Ephemerol for a few days and use his powers to solve the case. He can get into the minds of the killers and see what they thought was going on. And every once in a while he runs into a purse snatcher or something and makes them flip and bonk their heads.

But it’s not very interesting because 1. they basically use him like a police psychic, so we’ve seen this shit before, and secondly the villainous plot is kind of stupid, more like a bad episode of a TV show than worthy of a feature film. The one sort of cool thing they do is have him go into the psychic’s parlor and sit down for a reading but end up interrogating her without even talking.

SCANNER COP is the directorial debut of Pierre David, the producer of SCANNERS and other early Cronenberg works. I don’t think that means they’re on the same wavelength, though. They just happened to both be in Canada. Most of David’s productions are less arty. For example he produced THE PERFECT WEAPON and MISSION OF JUSTICE.

I think this could be much better if it was copying the style and content of police thrillers like DIRTY HARRY and LETHAL WEAPON, but with the cop having this ability. Standard cases would be easy to solve. Only if the perp was a scanner would this guy have any trouble. Hostage negotiations would be easy. And he could trick the angry chief into giving him back his gun and badge every time he’s suspended and taken off the case.

Being a Scanner Cop would cause new temptations and ethical questions. The tagline on the box is “Imagine a cop who can read your mind… then blow it away.” Sounds terrifying, but it’s supposed to be comforting. You’re supposed to want that, but I don’t think I do. Do you think N.W.A. still would’ve said “Fuck the Police” if all the police were scanners? I think they would’ve wanted to fuck the police even more, because they’d be even more corrupt and harassing. But I guess they wouldn’t have had to make the song though because the Sanner Police would’ve read their minds thinking it anyway. And instead of the FBI sending them that letter or the police unions refusing to do security for their concerts they would’ve just scanned them and made their heads blow up. There would be no “100 Miles and Runnin’” or “Amerikkka’s Most Wanted” or “The Chronic.” That’s why I’m glad there’s no such thing as Scanner Cops in real life. Because “The Chronic” is a pretty good album, man.

But it’s true, I bet Scanner Cops would be out of control. They’d feel superior and above the law. King Kong wouldn’t have shit on them. Only SCANNER KING KONG would. That’s why the perfect sequel to this would be BAD SCANNER LIEUTENANT. Or they could do a whole series about different scanner jobs. SCANNER LAWYER, SCANNER DOCTOR, SCANNER COMMUNITY PLANNER, SCANNER ENTREPRENEUR, etc.

Or another idea would be just to stop making SCANNERS movies.

Meanwhile his sister Helena (Liliana Komorowska – a Christian Duguay regular who appears in SCREAMERS, JOAN OF ARC, THE ART OF WAR, EXTREME OPS and HITLER: THE RISE OF EVIL) tries out EPH-3, a new experimental drug her dad’s company is working on that stops her migraines and hearing of voices but, as one character says, “it’s almost like it’s blocking your conscience.” (Also I’m sure it can cause dry mouth, drowsiness and extreme diarrhea. Do not take with alcohol or other prescriptions. Get help immediately if EPH-3 causes world-conquering urges. Talk to your physician to find out if EPH-3 is right for you).  She quickly turns from mousy nobody to scheming, cackling, patricidal, ball-busting CEO soap opera bitch queen. She pretends to be sad after scan-drowning her dad in a hot tub, but gives herself away because she can’t restrain her evil smiles while other people are still in the room.

Helena first uses her scanning powers on some punks who try to mug her in an alley. I don’t get why people in movies ever cut through alleys anyway. There’s always punks or creeps there and they always try to mug you. Anyway, this is your signal that it’s more of a shitty action movie and less of a Cronenberg follow-up.

And yes, I believe there are three head explosions this time. And a part where she makes a business rival dance badly in public. And sped up footage of a guy spinning in a revolving door until he pops. And thugs that dress kind of like the Blues Brothers.

Speaking of brothers, hers comes back to the states to save the day, there is some rappelling, some motorcycle jumps, some exploding vehicles. It’s decent action, actually, and one really spectacular flaming motorcycle stunt. But the guy doesn’t have much charisma so it’s hard to get too invested in the scenes.

The one really clever new idea is when Helena’s having sex with the TV on in the room and she accidentally transfers her orgasmic feelings to the guest on a talk show. It’s played more for weirdness than for laughs, and I dig that. But then it inspires an evil plot where she goes on TV so she can scan everybody who’s watching. She also blows up a football player during a game. Commentators aren’t supposed to interfere like that. It’s unethical.

I guess it wouldn’t have taken a scanner to guess that these movies would suck. But you know how I am. I gotta know for myself. At least there are a few laughs here and there. And they were constantly pushing the technology of bulging vein effects by making these movies. Without them who knows where we’d be with that.

But back in ‘91 when this came out I think they still thought they could tame him. They must’ve missed DEAD RINGERS, and NAKED LUNCH hadn’t come out yet. He folded his twisted sensibilities into THE DEAD ZONE and THE FLY, both pure Cronenberg visions that could pass for commercial entertainment. And all his movies had great gore in them. Melting, bubbling, tearing flesh, all done with rubber and foam of course, and it still holds up better than anything done with pixels. So that made him a hero to the Fangorians, and therefore a “horror director.” And that means SCANNERS is just a regular genre picture just asking for a lackluster part 2.

LIke the first one it starts with a grimy drifter scanner going nuts in public – he goes to an arcade and wins all the video games telepathically. He gets picked up by an orginization but instead of getting cleaned up and becoming the hero he just gets used as an evil henchman. This guy is guilty of serious overacting. I wouldn’t say mega-acting because even if it was a deliberate artistic choice I think it was a poor one. When Nicolas Cage mega-acts he seems genuinely nuts. This guy seems like he’s fakin it.

The real hero is some dude who looks like Justin Timberlake (David Hewlett) who’s a student at a veterinary school (he uses his powers to cure a cute puppy). He’s found out in the same way martial artists often are – he foils a convenience store robbery and people see the security camera footage of how awesome he is. Some scientists tell him what he is and help him hone his powers, supposedly to help society. They’ve been looking for good scanners but most of them freak out so they give them a drug that turns them into ghoulish junkies. They mostly keep those guys in the basement and when they use them outside it’s easy to spot because hey, that security guard looks like Lurch’s shorter cousin, must be a scanner.

He starts to get suspicious when they have him scan the mayor at a press conference and make her appoint the wrong person as acting police chief. That’s what this is all about – a takeover (which is weird since that’s the subtitle for part 3). The new chief talks Machievellian shit about the greater good, but the actor plays him as evil, so it’s hard to think of him as just misguided.

Our scanner decides to quit the team and go on the run, and he has to take on the conspirators himself. The writer, B.J. Nelson (LONE WOLF MCQUADE) must’ve thought scanning was like the Force, because he put in some stuff for the Star Wars trekkies. There’s a part where his dad (SPOILER coming up next word) dies and telepathically tells him he has a sister, just like Yoda did as he was (HUGE YODA SPOILER) dying in Return of the Jedis. Also he finds out he’s the son of Cameron Vale from part 1.

I have to give this movie some credit, because it has some pretty cool ideas in it. The best new scanner concept is that the brother and sister focus in on one of their enemies until they can see through his eyes, then they remotely control him into a secure building, then scan other people through him. Daisy chain scanning. But then the bad guy shows up and it’s three scanners poking around in the same head, so that causes problems. By the way, a medical tip: don’t leave a big rack of syringes on a table with the needles pointing up.

Also there’s some good effects – veins popping, heads bulging, and of course they do 2 (two) head explosions this time. In the first one the bad guy was pretty much trying to take over the world by leading a scanner uprising, in this one they’re just trying to rule the city with an iron fist. So it seems like a de-escalation but it’s not, because there are 2 exploding heads. That’s how sequels work.

I thought they were gonna do three exploding heads for a second there but with the last guy they stop right before it hits the breaking πoint, leaving his face horribly deformed. I like that. Also there’s a weird, ambiguous ending where I think brother and sister both have two pupils per eye. I think it means they both can see through each other now. Not sure.

That reminds me, there’s some weird, incestuous undertones when he scans his sister and she has to tell him to be more gentle. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but at least they didn’t go completely safe.

But without Cronenberg’s style the movie just doesn’t work. They turned it into a normal movie. THe guy has a mullet, the end credits have a song that sounds liek Brian Adams or somebody. The score contains what I think should be called “mystery sax” – you know, that cheesy type of saxophone they put on movies and TV shows when they want to say, “You know, this is like one of those old timey private eye type stories.”

Director Christian Duguay was considered a cool, stylish, MTV type director at the time. I don’t know this from any research, but from the fact that there’s a scene that takes place in a room only lit by a light behind a big rotating fan, creating a strobing effect. And there are a bunch of mannequins in the room. But it’s the fan that’s the dead give away. For some reason they were all into that trick, they really thought it looked amazing. Cronenberg’s scene taking place inside a giant sculpture of a head still looks cool. The fan trick I don’t think holds up quite as well.

Duguay went on to become an Emmy nominated director of mini-series such as JOAN OF ARC and HITLER: THE RISE OF EVIL. Hewlett became a regular for director Vincenzo Natali, appearing in CUBE, NOTHING, CYPHER and SPLICE. But also BOA VS. PYTHON.

If you’re a scanner you can just read my mind instead of continuing to read this, but all I got left to say is I wouldn’t really recommend this picture.

A member of the Scanner-Canadian community faces many hardships, so they tend to become outcasts, not really knowing how to fit in. We follow one of these scanner misfits, Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack), as he scans some old ladies for talking shit about him in a food court, gets spotted and picked up by a private security firm called ConSec, and gets recruited to stop a militant, supposedly crazy scanner (Michael Ironside) who’s trying to band together all of the scanners for an uprising and kill the ones who won’t join up so there’s nobody to stop them.

That plot is pretty similar to X-MEN, and it’s easy to imagine this made today as a slick PG-13 thriller with lots of show-offy CGI and an ending that sets up a trilogy. But in 1981 young Dave Cronenberg made it as a creepy, seedy, low budget, lo-fi creepfest. It has all his early obsessions: video distortion, weird synthesized sounds, horrible and unnatural bodily mutilation, dangerous clandestine organizations, untrustworthy private companies involved in secret programs. It has a very cool thriller concept and enough groundbreaking gore effects to get in the horror magazines, but it doesn’t feel much like a normal genre type of movie. Cronenberg’s movies feel like they’re actually made by a madman. (Except FAST COMPANY, which is just made by a car enthusiast.)

Of course you know about the famous scene early on where Ironside causes another man’s head to (SPOILER) get full of silly ideas (THAT WAS A FAKE OUT SPOILER, HERE IS THE REAL ONE) explode. It’s a classic scene that says, “Despite my polite Canadian demeanor I assure you that I mean business!” There are plenty of other intense scenes like the car crash a scanner causes in order to escape custody, a bunch of shootouts and further scanner-on-scanner brain fights. I like that the bullet hits mean business too, there’s always a serious splatter and it seems like chunks of meat fly off.

But alot of the “action” is really just people staring and other people being affected by that staring. It’s amazing how much mileage Cronenberg gets out of facial expressions, convulsions and Howard Shore’s weird keyboard sounds. It really seems like you can almost see the beams coming out of their heads. It’s incredibly effective for something so simple.

In fact that could be the one thing that protects SCANNERS from getting recycled by the remake factory is that it’s not a power that would be easy to spend millions of dollars on. They’d have to change it to something that can be seen more. They don’t figure anybody wants a movie based on imagination and pretend and implying stuff. The concept does lend itself to all kinds of other stories (that’s why they made a bunch of sequels [also because what're they gonna do, make up a new movie?]) but you’d have to change it alot to be expensive. Of course, I’m sure they’d add a bunch more exploding heads. But only on the unrated version you didn’t see in theaters DVD.

What is it about that time between about 1978 and 1982 that just lent itself to this kind of dark, grimy mystery? SCANNERS reminds me of THE HOWLING how this guy is out in the city hiding his weird secret. But the serial killer werewolf doesn’t get cleaned up in a tie and trenchcoat and sent to inflitrate werewolf subversives. And also it’s more cerebral. (Well, no shit.) It’s such a good paranoid concept. How are you supposed to outsmart somebody who can read your mind? That’s a tough one.

Late in the movie there’s a part where Vale scans through a pay phone, sending his thoughts through the wires, causing a fire. In context it seems to make alot of sense. If your thoughts can travel through the air into other heads, why not travel through a wire like other forms of information? It made me think of those hackers who can do crazy shit just using a phone, except this is the Cronenberg version of that so it’s biological.

Another good idea for a SCANNER movie would be if one of them wins a bunch of money on “Jeopardy.” Or it could be more like ZAPPED and they just use their power for pervy reasons. But I guess Cronenberg’s idea of pervy is different from anybody else’s. It wouldn’t just be girls taking their shirts off, it would be erotic fingering of bullet wounds and shit.

SCANNERS is a real good example of a crazy artistic mind allowing itself to be just barely constrained by the rules of exploitation. I like that kind of stuff. Definitely check it out if you haven’t seen it. I mean, you can just tell by that little picture above that alot of crazy shit happens in this movie. But don’t tell the Hollywood people about it. I don’t mean to spend too much of the review worried about the remake potential, but it just seems so obvious that it could happen. So I would like to point out that the lead looks alot like Scott Adkins. Instead of remaking it I hope they consider just re-releasing it as a special edition with some new judo scenes.