Friday Night Flicks: Scanners
The orchestral crescendo. The single, bulging forehead vein. The position of the head in the frame, the way it shakes. And that slow, dreadful, inward zoom. With absolute certainty, you know his/her head is about to explode.
I call this the “Cronenberg effect.”
This also must be where “micro effects” come into play, a subcategory of special effects I didn’t even know existed until I saw the opening credits of Scanners, the 1981 cult classic from Dave Cronenberg. The film tells the story of a superhuman race of telekinetic beings and their bloody bid for international supremacy — a concept that provided the blueprint for much of the ESP-related cinema and television we consume en masse today. Scanners walked so Stranger Things could run.
Scanners one of the best worst movies ever made, merging the visual aesthetic of B-movie body horror with the mainstream appeal of your typical mid-80’s blockbuster in a way that just might blow your mind. —Jackson Todd
““Fantastique.””
