Scanners
| Scanners | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | David Cronenberg |
| Produced by | Claude Héroux |
| Written by | David Cronenberg |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Howard Shore |
| Cinematography | Mark Irwin |
| Edited by | Ronald Sanders |
| Distributed by |
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Release date
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Running time
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103 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $14.2 million |
Scanners is a 1981 Canadian science-fiction thriller film written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring Jennifer O'Neill, Steven Lack, Michael Ironside, and Patrick McGoohan. In the film, "scanners" are people with unusual telepathic and telekinetic powers. ConSec, a purveyor of weaponry and security systems, searches out scanners to use them for its own purposes. The film's plot concerns the attempt by Darryl Revok, a renegade scanner, to wage a war against ConSec. Another scanner, Cameron Vale, is dispatched by ConSec to stop Revok.
Private security firm ConSec plans to showcase a powerful new potential weapon: "scanners", people with exceptional powers of telepathy such as mind reading, mind-control, and telekinesis. However, when ConSec's scanner attempts to demonstrate his scanning power by reading the mind of a volunteer from the invited audience, the volunteer turns out to be a more powerful scanner, who scans back and causes the ConSec scanner's head to explode. ConSec officials attempt to take the "volunteer" into custody; however, he uses his powers to kill the men guarding him, and escapes.
Stung by this embarrassing experience, ConSec security head Braedon Keller (Lawrence Dane) advocates shutting down ConSec's scanner research program. Program head Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan) disagrees. He notes that the assassination and escape have shown the potential of the weapon they had sought to demonstrate. Ruth attributes the operation to an evil scanner named Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside) who, Ruth says, has his own underground network of scanners competing with ConSec's program. He argues that ConSec should recruit scanners to their cause to infiltrate and bring down Revok's group.
To this point, scanner Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) has lived an unhappy life as a homeless social outcast, driven mad by the unceasing stream of other people's thoughts bombarding his mind. After bringing Vale into ConSec, Dr. Ruth injects him with a drug called ephemerol, which temporarily inhibits his scanning ability and restores his sanity. When Vale's mind is clear, Ruth asks for his help, explaining that Vale is a scanner and that Revok is killing all scanners who refuse to join him, and that Revok will kill Vale if Vale does not learn how to protect himself. Under Ruth's guidance, Vale learns to control his scanning abilities.
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