I largely ignored the Scanners-verse after Conenberg’s original. That one was pretty good. Not one of my favorites from the master of body horror, but definitely worth rewatching every few years or so. When I saw “David Cronenberg’s Scanner Cop” on the cover art (or poster or whatever), I wondered if the man really had anything to do with it. Well, he didn’t. Not really – he gets a “based on original characters by” credit but that’s not really the same thing as having creative input. Maybe it’s a small consolation to Scanners fans that the film is directed by Pierre David, who produced Scanners (and Videodrome!) Maybe it’s not. Either way, I watched it and I’ll tell you what I thought of it after a brief synopsis below. Let’s get into it, shall we?
Sam had a scanner dad who met an unfortunate end when he was a kid. Commander Harrigan takes him in and raises him as his own. Years later, Sam is following in Harrigan’s footsteps and joining the police. He is a powerful scanner but has been taking meds to suppress his psychic/telekinetic powers because they can have detrimental effects on him. When seemingly random people start killing cops for no apparent reason, he must use his gift/curse to find who is behind it. It’s a race against psychic exhaustion to catch the evil Glock (that’s the bad guy) before more innocents can be forced to kill more cops.
Scanner Cop is a straight-to-video spin-off, so I’m judging it as such. (rather than judging it against John Carpenter’s The Thing, Alien, or Citizen Kane) With that in mind, it’s actually pretty good! Surprisingly so. This film’s villain – played to the hilt by Richard Lynch – is a classic evil genius and his tarot reading underling is a fun goth baddie (despite some pretty rough acting). His plan to get revenge on cops who busted his would-be cult years back is a unique one. He injects people who find themselves around cops a lot with a powerful hallucinogenic and brainwashes them into thinking that any cop in uniform is their worst nightmare. So we get brief flashes of zombies, giant bugs and more to up the horror quotient. And Daniel Quinn has minimal lines as the lead, but plenty of opportunity to hold his breath and push his facial muscles to the limit as the titular scanner cop. There is quite a bit of screentime dedicated to close-ups of his reddened face and bulging forehead veins. And the gore/body horror special effects are decent as well. The familiar exaggerated bulging veins and eyes are back and the head popping manages to look better than the original due to some quick cuts. I guess looking better should be expected for a movie made 13 years later but it’s still notable for a low-budget straight-to-video movie that could have been a lazy cash grab. Luckily for us, it’s not.
The Final Cut: Scanner Cop is a very decent little horror film despite being extremely low budget. It’s got all a Scanners fan would want and successfully adds some of its own horrors to the mythos.
