31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: The Babadook

The Babadook

I can be kind of a contrary person sometimes, especially when it comes to film and book recommendations. Not when I'm asking for them (like in this thread), but unsolicited and - particularly - fervent recommendations tend to turn me off. I didn't see Pulp Fiction for years because everyone I knew was telling me I HAD to see it, just HAD TO.

It's a flaw, and I work hard to go against it - but it's there.

So. The Babadook was one of those films that kept getting recommended to me. Friends, family, Netflix. Enough already - I'd see it, when I was damn good and ready! Usually that's about the time a movie stops being available on Netflix, though.

Luckily the mood to see the film AND the availability coincided and I was able to watch this last night.

I'm glad I did - and a bit sorry (as I usually am in these situations) that I waited. It's good - really good. Even better than It Follows, which is now the second best horror movie I've seen this year.

It was also tough to sit through, and I'm not sure I'll want to watch it again soon.

Don't get me wrong - it's a really good movie - it's just... look, I know people who have been through similar situations. Not the Babadook part - the part where you're a caregiver with no sleep and dwindling social contacts and no clear view of how or when it could possibly get better. It felt so real and true to that situation. I could almost feel the desperation in Amelia as her whole world contracts. The rage and hopelessness and resentment and love and grief. Man, the grief.

Anyway.

The Movie
The Babadook is about a woman, Amelia, who lost her husband in a car accident six years ago. They were on the way to the hospital because Amelia was about to give birth. Her husband died the night her son, Sam, was born. And she still dreams about the accident every night. And she doesn't allow anyone to talk about her husband or the night of the accident, not even Sam. She nurses her grief as if it was the only thing of her husband she has left.

 Sam is a troubled child. On top of the obvious issues of being without a dad, he's an imaginative and high-energy kid. He has nightmares every night and builds weapons to fight the monsters under his bed and in his wardrobe. He alienates other children and Amelia is forced to take him out of school when he hurts one of his classmates with an improvised dart gun. He has terrible tantrums and says horrible things - that they often happen to be true in no way helps him or his mother.

Things are not going well. And into this mix of stress and sleeplessness comes a book. A red children's book that simply appears on Sam's shelf one night. A book about - The Babadook. The Babadook is a creature, the book says, that once seen - "If it's in a word or it's in a book" - cannot be gotten rid of. It simply appears and begins to torment the people who are aware of it.

And so things get worse. Sam is traumatized by the book and becomes convinced the Babadook is in the house and following them. Strange things begin to happen - doors open and close, sounds are heard, there's glass in Amelia's food. All of this could be Sam acting out - but Amelia decides to destroy the book, tearing it apart and burning it.



After a birthday part where Sam pushes his cousin out of a treehouse, breaking her nose in two places, he has a seizure and Amelia talks the doctor into prescribing sedatives to Sam. She hopes that by him - and by extension, her - getting real sleep that things will calm down, return to normal.

But things have never really been normal for her since her husband died. And even with Sam's drug-induced stupor, things get even more weird. The book shows up on her doorstep, reassembled but with new, more disturbing images and popups that show Amelia killing their dog, then Sam, then herself. She tries to get the police to help, but even there the Babadook has a presence. And of course the chalk on her hands means the police believe that she may have created the book herself. Amelia and Sam will have to face the Babadook alone, and there's no guarantee either of them will survive the experience.

The Bottom Line
Man, this is just a good film. The thing about The Babadook is that it feels both realistic and like a fairytale (a particularly dark sort of fairytale, but still). The Babadook itself seems, to me, like the personification of Amelia's grief - the things she can't let go of that have soured and darkened inside her, turning what was once love into something else, something bitter and cold with teeth like a sharks' and empty eyes - willing to tear down everything else in her life, if she lets it.

I like how Sam seems to transition from a child more akin to a monster himself - a screaming, violent changeling that is a burden on his mother and a trial for everyone else - into the innocent, the strong defender, the loving child. Is it just a change in the angle of perception - do we see the real Sam as the movie progresses?

Given how realistic most of the film feels the ending should be a bit of a cheat, something more like that fairytale, but it somehow works.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Time Travel Horror Double Feature

If I'm going to get caught up here I'll have to post twice a day for a bit. Here's the first post for today. I've been doing double-feature theme weekends for 31 Days for a couple of years now. Here's what I watched for last weekend!

Time Travel Horror Double Feature - The House at the End of Time/Timecrimes

This wasn't the double feature I intended to watch this weekend. I had a  plan to do Horror Comedy with a double bill of Things We Do In the Shadows and Tucker and Dale vs Evil. Then I saw that TWDitS becomes available on Netflix on the 10th, so I decided to hold off in a fit of fiduciary responsibility.

This was a pretty late-in-the-game decision, and I felt like I needed to watch SOMETHING. I figured I'd brainstorm a theme later on and watch something on my queue to tide me over. That film was The House at the End of Time - something I added to my list solely on the basis of the neat title. Once I realized what the concept was (and surely the title should have given me some indication) I realized I could actually form a theme with this and Timecrimes. I had a vague idea of adding Triangle, but I ran out of time (sorry) - and this way it actually becomes a Spanish Language Time Travel Horror Double Feature, which is somehow cooler. I can't articulate how it's cooler - but it is.

It's tough to discuss time-travel films without giving stuff away, as the orientation of scenes is often integral to the plot. So I may hide some details behind spoiler blocks, though this is not something I usually do.

The House at the End of Time

This was a cool little surprise of a film for me, as I had heard nothing about it whatsoever. It's billed as the first Venezualen horror movie and if it's any indication of the level of quality we can expect in future films than I look forward to more.

The film is concerned primarily with two frames of time. There's the present (of 2011) , where we follow the life of Dulce, a woman who was jailed 30 years ago for the crime of murdering her husband and presumably her son, though his body was never found. She's been returned to her house, where those events occurred, as a form of house arrest - this is apparently a 'benefit' afforded to elderly prisoners. It also seems very much like an additional form of punishment.

The second time frame is 30 years prior, and deals with the days running up to the events that lead to Dulce's incarceration. Because the film starts in-media-res we know that Dulce is not a murderess and that something very strange happened to her son, Leo. Something or someone grabbed him and took him into a large sub-basement. There are no exits from that strange labyrinth, but he could not be found.

Kind of a fixer-upper.

For much of the early parts of the film it feels more like a melodrama, with a family in conflict. Dulce has married an older man, Juan Jose, and their marriage is one of disappointment, accusations, avoidance and one terrible secret. There are actually two boys, with Leo being the older son and Rodrigo the younger. There is conflict between them as well, with Leo struggling to be the more grown-up and responsible one. He resents his younger brothers closeness with their mother, as well as his success at  baseball and his friendship with a young girl.

In the present the now elderly Dulce is visited by the local priest, who runs an orphanage. He wants to know what really happened and becomes Dulce's friend and confidant as she begins to tell him the truth about what happened all those years ago.

And what happened is complicated. Strange things began to occur in the house - a figure moves from room to room, a hand appears in a doorway, and someone gives Leo a note to pass on to his mother. A note that says that Juan Jose will kill their children.

The escalation of creepiness is handled really well and is echoed in strange events that begin to happen in the present. The house, it turns out, was abandoned by the original owner - an architect and Freemason -  many years ago and appropriated by the state. In fact - as the priest discovers - many people have disappeared within the house over the years. An old man with a knife starts to appear and the numbers 11-11-11-11 appear in blood on a mirror.

In the past a tragic accident results in the death of the young Rodrigo. In the aftermath Juan Jose discovers Dulce's secret, and it's one that pushes him over the edge.

Things begin to escalate and move toward an intense but satisfying climax that had me teary eyed in a few spots, even though a number of plot elements were telegraphed well ahead of time. The ending was overtly maudlin, but I didn't really care - I'd totally bought in by that point.

SPOILER (use mouse to select the below to see the spoiler text)

The gist of the setup is that once every 10 years, on November 11th at 11pm 11 minutes 11 seconds the house comes unstuck in time, and the occupants can move back - visiting times long past and, sometimes, bringing things back to their present. Of course the presence moving about the house, leaving messages and - in the end - killing Juan Jose and bringing her son to the present day. There are a lot of things that seem like coincidences that aren't (and a lot of actual coincidences that clutter things up and stretch credulity - but like I said, I totally bought in, so they didn't really bother me). It all fits together really nicely, as a good time-travel story should, and if it became a little predictable after a while, it was still well handled.

The director and screenwriter, Alejandro Hidalgo, likes to present us with before/after images. We see a lot of the same framing for scenes set in the different time frames, with dissolves or simple cuts showing us the same thing in the past and in the present. The story and characterizations are well done and the acting - even for the kids - is above average.

I really enjoyed this and I can't think of many horror films where I've had a 'dust in my eye' reaction to the course of events. It may not surprise you with its twists and turns, but it's still a good story.

Timecrimes

I saw Timecrimes a while ago - and I may be mis-remembering, but I think it was from a recommendation during a previous 31 Days, 31 Horror Movies. I remember enjoying it a lot and was really looking forward to watching it again.

A small issue I had this time around was that the version on Amazon is dubbed, not subtitled. It was fairly well done, but I still vastly prefer to hear the original tone and cadence of the actors when watching a film in a foreign language. Unfortunately, I didn't really like the dubbing for the main character, which lent him a more nebishy and plaintive tone than I remember from the first viewing. This lead directly to a distinctly different reading of the film for me. The first time I watched it I was somewhat empathetic towards Hector, really feeling his desperation and confusion - this time I was annoyed by him early on and lost what little sympathy I had before he'd even got out of the time machine the first time.

Time Machine. Not hot tub.

Oh, yeah - there's a time machine.

Let me backtrack. So there's this shlumpy guy, Hector, who is renovating his home along with his wife. As he's relaxing n his backyard with his binoculars (as you do) he spots a young woman in the woods, disrobing. After his wife leaves on an errand, Hector walks up into the woods looking for the woman.

Now this is one of those moments where my perception has changed due to my reaction to the dubbing. In the first viewing I was fairly sure that Hector was concerned about the girl - that he saw something that made him think she was in trouble. This time around I felt like he was just being a voyeur, that he was hoping to get a closer look. I don't know if either impression is the correct one - it's just a noted change in my own viewing this time around.

He does find the girl, unconscious and nude, and is then savagely attacked by a figure in a coat, face wrapped in pink bandages. He flees, coming to an empty research facility. He finds a walky-talky and communicates with an engineer who is working at another building. Told that the bandaged man is coming he flees to the engineer who talks him into hiding in a strange device.

And then he goes back in time. And of course THAT goes well.

Peekaboo!

I still really enjoy the plot, and how well constructed all the events are. I mean,  I've seen it before and yet I still forgot things. Because of course Hector has screwed things up, and because he's gone back in time he thinks he has a chance to fix it all. Except that's not how time works - at least not in this movie - and the things he has to do and how he has to do them keep him on a path that spirals inevitably towards disaster and death.

Just keep biking, lady - it's not worth the hassle.

That the whole thing revolves around time travel would seem like a plot giveway (but the title should have already gone a long way towards that), but it's not the most important part of the movie. It's that flailing against what should be an inevitability - the attempt to work around events that are already in place in order to fix things without changing them - that provides the real motivation of the film. (And again - the dubbing meant that I didn't really get the urgency when the engineer explains that if he changes anything in the past that he could cease to exist. Instead I was constantly wondering why he didn't just do things differently - only to remember 'oh yeah' he might inadvertently kill himself.)

Time travel movies - good ones, anyway - really revolve on a tightness of plot and a weaving of elements together in such a way that they appear normal at first viewing and gain significance only as the film unfolds. Timecrimes really excels at this and even if I ended up not really like Hector much - and feeling like the ending was unjustifiably upbeat for him - it is very satisfying in the way things all fit together.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Horror Express

Horror Express (1973)

As I've alluded to before, Horror Express is a comfy old shoe of a horror film to me. It ran incessantly during October when I worked at a comic shop (as it was the only VHS horror film we had). It got to the point where regular customers could whistle the theme song right along with the baggage man. Eventually it became nothing but a Lee/Cushing/Savalas noise in the background of my day, something so familiar as to be invisible.

Just because it's familiar doesn't mean I was looking forward to it, however. I'd seen it a little too much back in the day and wasn't sure I could really find enjoyment in it anymore. I envisioned my attention drifting - wandering back to days spent sorting comics, running games and selling *shudder* packs of whatever card game was then attempting to usurp Magic's place.

It's been 15 years or so since I last saw it, though, and as I was already planning to watch a Christopher Lee film I figured, what the hell 

And a bonus appearance by Grand Moff Tarkin!

The Medium

I had that VHS tape for a long time after I stopped working at the shop, but I never did watch it again. Last night I actually went into the basement and dug into old boxes looking for it, but I think I gave it to my brother Scott along with a lot of other old VHS horror movies. It's available for streaming for free on Hulu, but it's a pretty low-quality copy. I ended up watching it on Amazon instead, and the quality was significantly better, though still cropped.

The Movie

That theme song really worms its way into your head, doesn't it? Within seconds I could hum the whole thing again. Hell, even the extended train whistles during the opening credits had me experiencing flashbacks to new book days and putting comics in subscriber files. Once the movie started in earnest - with Christopher Lee providing a voice-over about his 'doomed' Manchurian expedition - I was able to settle down and just enjoy the film.

"Air holes, AIR HOLES! How many times do I have to tell you?"

 And Horror Express is a fun - if low-budget - Hammer-lite romp of a horror film. With Christopher Lee as the prickly, slightly amoral scientist, Professor Saxton, and Peter Cushing as his more good-natured rival. (Though it is Cushing's Doctor Wells who unleashes the true horror on the train, by dint of a little outsourced science espionage. How'd your curiosity work out for you, Doctor?) And of course, Telly Savalas as the Cossak officer Captain Kazan. If there's any real complaint that I have about this movie it's that there is nowhere near enough of Captain Kazan and his pithy pronouncements. On honest Cossak indeed.

"Am I, or am I not, the coolest person in this room? No - your expressions is confirmation enough."

 What we have is a "monster loose in an enclosed space" story, like Alien or The Thing, but in this case the enclosed space is the early 1900's Trans Siberian Express. It seems Professor Saxton has uncovered a 'missing link' specimen on his expedition to Manchuria and is transporting it to England. Of course it's not really dead - and soon the bodies are piling up, all of them with blood pouring from their all-white eyes.

The monster makeup is quite good, and the camera doesn't linger so we're not forced to examine its flaws too closely. Mostly we see a hairy arm and claws as well as glowing, red eyes. There's some fun incidents of grue, like the autopsies wherein we learn that the victims brains are now smooth as a baby's bottom. (A result, we're told, of their memories being drained.)

"I just wanted to catch the red-eye! No? I'll get my coat..."

 Things seem to come to a premature end with the creature shot down by Inspector Mirov. It's just a cue for things to get more crazy and interesting, however, as the scientists inspect the remains and discover the eye fluid contains images of everything the creature has ever seen. Including dinosaurs. Including the earth - as seen from space! I'm not saying it's aliens. But it's aliens. 

"Let's science the shit out of this!"

This movie is just so much fun, really. It goes to crazy places. Revived ape-men not enough? How about aliens? No, how about body jumping aliens? Still not enough? Hold on, we're going full on zombie horde as the movie careens along. Throw in the good Captain, a lady spy, a Count and his wife, a Rasputin wannabe and more white eyeballs and train models than you can shake a stick at. Whatever else, the movie is never boring.

And there are some genuinely interesting and visually poetic moments. There's a shot of a character, possessed by the alien and staring out the frosted window of the train into the howling snow and darkness that could easily have been the cover to a classic horror novel. Another moment after a whirlwind of death where a character is shot standing over the massed bodies of his foes could have been right out of The Matrix.

The Bottom Line

Yeah, Horror Express is a low budget film with some flat lighting and characters, a theme song that quickly gets on the nerves, and roles that don't exactly require Cushing and Lee to work at their highest level. But you know, they're not phoning it in, either. Everyone seems to be making an effort, and even if it all doesn't quite make sense at least it's not boring. I certainly enjoyed the hell out of it.

Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead - New review at Best Horror Movie List

I've got a new review on The Best Horror Movie List. I was surprised (in a good way) by the first Dead Snow film and in some ways I think the sequel is even better - certainly it's more consistent in tone. They really chose to go all-out with the comedy/gore and the horror aspect is downplayed.

This is the first time I've really noticed the editing of my reviews. God knows I need editing - actually, I think everyone knows I need editing - and I accept that as part of the process of writing, particularly for publication. There were some edits on this review that I wondered about, though. There are some new exclamation points in there and the last paragraph in particular seems chopped up. (My original paragraph had some egregious typos, to be fair.) The line about 'in my opinion' in particular seems weird - people know that a review is an opinion, right?

Not a big deal, but like I said - the first time I noticed it in a way that nagged me. Probably I'm too attached to the original wording - and I don't want to be that writer who thinks their excrement isn't aromatic - but I asked for a small edit. Figured it couldn't hurt! (Although it occurs to me that if they do agree then this post will make no sense. So... situation normal, I guess.)

Onwards!

"The Nazi zombies of 2009 Norwegian horror-comedy Dead Snow are back in a Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead.  A film that is bigger, badder, and gorier than the original. And that goes for the jokes, too..." [more]

It Follows, new review at Best Horror Movie List

My review of It Follows is now up on The Best Horror Movie List. It's weird, I keep thinking about this movie. I ramble (as per usual) in the review, but I even tormented my wife with talking it last night. It's just that kind of film - whether intended or not there are lots of avenues for interpretation and discussion.

For instance - and I mentioned this in passing in the review - but there's a distinct absence of parental/adult affect in the movie. They're there - briefly - but I'm not sure any of them even have a line of dialogue. And the behavior of the 'kids' (most all of college age, really) isn't really affected by them in any way. Their presence is - at best - tangential. The kids exist in a world where they and their problems are really the only things of importance, the only things that affect them are they choices they make and the problems they have. No obstacles or help is forthcoming from the adult world.

That's certainly how I felt when I was a teenager. Like I was in a completely different sphere of reality from adults. I dunno - does it mean anything? Is it important? I have no idea - but it was another one of those layers, another thing about the movie that stuck in my head and made me think about it much later.

Anyway...

"It Follows is a nightmare. It looks like a nightmare, it feels like a nightmare, and it has that disconnected sort of dream logic where nothing you do seems to make a difference. You run and you run and no matter how far you go or how fast you go..." [more]

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: The Visitor (1979)

The Visitor

If I had remembered that I had already seen The Visitor, I wouldn't have bought the damn thing.

It's not that it's completely worthless, far from it. It's got some interesting visuals and ideas swimming around in all that craziness - it's just not something I feel like I need to own. I guess that's the lesson I take away - don't buy something you haven't seen. Also, they had projector TVs in 1979, which is something I didn't know.

Also - WTF? This film is crazy! Not Nobuhiko Obayashi House crazy, but still pretty messed up. It's as if Lucio Fulci got tapped to direct an Omen ripoff as produced by Irwin Allen. It's a 'devil' movie, but with aliens instead of God and Satan. It's got Shirley Winters singing Shortnin' Bread while dressed as Mary Poppins. It's got Django as Jesus - at least I think he's Jesus. He could be my friend Greg Hyland, though, as they look(ed) pretty similar.

Greg? Is that 1994 you?

The Medium
I bought the Blu-ray used in a horror-movie binge over the summer. It's perfectly serviceable, but there's still plenty of noise, scratches and film damage. The cover is reversible, which I guess is nice. There are a handful of extras, including a fun interview with Lance Henriksen.

The Movie
After a bizarre opening sequence in which John Huston stands around in a desert while a little girl gets hit in the face with potato shavings, we get a rundown of how things stand as delivered by Jesus to a group of bald kids. No I'm not kidding. I think that opening sequence (which is pretty interesting, visually) is supposed to represent a cosmic struggle between the forces of good and evil. I think.

Could be soap flakes, I guess. But it looks an awful lot like potato shavings.

The basic point that Django... er, Jesus, is trying to get across is that there was a super-evil bad guy (Sateen - get it?) that was defeated by a super-awesome good guy and an army of birds, but not before passing his evil on by doing the nasty with women on earth. So his evil is like a genetic trait that gets passed down and occasionally expresses itself in evil offspring with magic powers, and then someone calls cosmic 911 and super-awesome good guy (The Visitor - played by John Huston) goes and does something about it. The Visitor shows up and says they've got a new sighting - it's an eight year old girl in Atlanta, Georgia.

The girl, Katy, is manifesting powers - including telekinesis and the ability to swear like a sailor. She blows up a basketball player with her mind, I think. I dunno. Her mom is a nice but bland person who is being wooed by the basketball team owner who is beholden to a weird cabal that seems to want her to have more kids. More kids like Katy.

Lance Henriksen as the basketball team owner and all around jackass. Plus some birds.

Much of the movie revolves around Katy being a dick. She 'accidentally' paralyzes her mother, Barbara, when one of her birthday presents turns out to be a handgun. She torments some boys at a skating rink, eventually throwing a couple of them out of the rink. The detective that is investigating the shooting (Glenn Ford) gets murdered by the girls pet hawk. She swears at everyone, including the housekeeper who, to be fair, does slap her an awful lot. (I THINK she's supposed to be there to guard the mother, but she's spectacularly useless at that. And she's mean enough to Katy that you're expecting some kind of retaliation, but she's left alone.)

"Why are you even in this movie?"
"I've been asking myself the same question."

When Huston shows up to confront her (and get his ass handed to him at Pong) you wonder if there's going to be some epic confrontation of psychic powers between them - but there isn't. Even later, when Katy does try to kill him, it's mostly Scooby-doo running between doorways and one loose screw on a fire escape.

There are abductions, attempted murders, weird looking houses and one epic bird attack, but there's not a lot of sense to be had. Sometimes John Huston goes to a rooftop and holds his hands up while lights appear. Sometimes Katy does gymnastics. The hawk attacks people. Sam Peckinpah shows up for four minutes and Mel Ferrer menaces in a distinguished way. It sometimes makes sense and sometimes doesn't. The end made me think Neo was going to appear and bend spoons.

"There are four lights! No, wait, it's eight."

So much of the film feels like a low-budget Italian exploitation flick - the nonsense plot, the occasionally amazing visual set pieces, the over-the-top score. And then there's Shelly Winters slapping a kid and it's all 'you got your peanut butter in my wasabi peas' - two great tastes that are WTF together.

The Bottom Line
The Visitor is a bizarre and nonsensical film that's occasionally visually arresting. It's packed with top-flight 70's actors in weird roles. It's an experience, but your enjoyment may vary significantly from scene to scene. and you may end up questioning whether it's an experience that you needed to have.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Scanners

Scanners

Scanners, man. Scanners.

Scanners is the only movie that gave me nightmares from just the TV spot. It's not even that scary of a commercial, but somehow it got to me. I remember the nightmare in detail even now, probably because even bad dreams don't usually fill me with the horrible sense of dread I got during that particular dream.

 It'll sound stupid, but here's the dream: I'm sitting in a chair in an all white room. In front of me is a front-loading dryer, which is also white. Behind and to the left of the washing machine is a doorway to a white hall that I can only make out because the light in the hall is slightly dimmer than the light in the room. In the dryer, slowly tumbling and making sounds like a steak sizzling on a pan, is a piece of meat. Not like a steak or something innocuous like that - it's obviously an organ of some kind, like a liver or a pancreas - something I can't immediately recognize, but just know came from inside a person. And for no reason at all I'm absolutely terrified by this piece of tumbling meat. Suddenly I see someone walk by outside the doorway - it's the guy from the commercial, the guy who looks kinda like Frank Oz (the guy whose head explodes, actually, but I didn't know that when I had the nightmare). I try and call out to him, but I can't speak. The door to the dryer is going to open soon. The organ - whatever it is, all red and leathery - will stop tumbling. I don't know what's going to happen then, but whatever it is will be awful.

Gaze into the face of true fear.

And then I woke up. See? Dumb dream. Still gives me a minor sense of dread just thinking about it, though.

You can see the TV spot that inspired it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksQduKLehOU  (EDIT: It's actually this trailer, as my brother pointed out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adxyW-rANuU)

When I finally did see the movie it was nowhere near as scary as my dream. It was, however, the coolest psychic powers movie I had ever seen. Watching it now you'll find that it's very slow and talky and most of the psychic stuff involves closeups of people who look like they're having a gas attack, but at the time it was frackin' amazing. That scene where Vale is basically hacking a computer with his mind and the bad guys shut the link off? In my head that shit was up there with Star Wars in awesomeness.

Not as cool as Imperial Stormtroopers, though.

I spent a good part of the eighties obsessed with psychic powers in movies and fiction. The first comic book character I created was a telekinetic. The second or third short story I ever wrote was about a guy who developed psychic powers and used them to kill the kids that were bullying him at school. (I would probably get suspended or expelled for writing something like that in school nowadays.) I can lay that fascination directly at Scanners' door - and it's a movie I re-watched a lot back then.

One last tangent (yeah, right) about my experience with the movie. The first time I watched it I loved it, but I was initially very confused. For some reason I had gotten it into my head that the movie was an adaptation of "Scanners Live in Vain" by Cordwainer Smith (which I still think would make a great movie). Took several minutes to adjust my expectations.

The Medium
I picked up the Criterion Collection Blu-ray release, and it's fantastic. The transfer itself is top notch - the best the movie has ever looked by far. It's not going to be as clean or detailed looking as a more modern movie - there's a significant amount of grain in certain scenes, for instance - but it looks very sharp. I've read some folks who have a problem with the color tone, which has a distinctly greenish cast, but it doesn't bother me.

There are quite a few extras, including trailers, interviews and Cronenberg's first feature-length film, Stereo (which I'm looking forward to watching). No commentary track, which is a little disappointing.

The packaging is also very nice, with an illustration theme that runs throughout the set. I personally like the art style a lot, but it's an individual taste thing. You can see a gallery of the images here: http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3221-illustrating-scanners

The Movie
Scanners is a movie about people with a special ability called 'scanning.' It's a little like telepathy, but as described in the movie it's "the ability to connect two nervous systems separated by space." A scanner with enough power can read thoughts, speed up a heartbeat, control someone's actions, and even kill. There's also a telekinetic element and even some pyrokinesis - this stuff seems to fall out of the given definition of scanning, but it's all psychic powers, right? Right.

Hell if I know.

The movie follows a character named Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) as he goes from homeless person to psychic spy. He's hauled out of being a transient after mentally assaulting an older lady in a shopping mall. He explains his attack by saying something like "she made me do it by thinking about me." There's all kinds of space in that statement to follow up - is it the abuser's "she made me do it" cry? Is there something about being an untrained scanner that means your mind is easily sucked in by those around you? Does an intense 'thought' provoke an intense response in a scanner? It looks deliberate - the attack - to me, so that "she made me" defense reveals a certain flaw in Vale's character if you look at it that way. None of those things are followed up on - it's just a throwaway line - but it's interesting to think about.

That's a total jackass look, though, right?

Cameron finds himself tied to a bed, dressed in white clothes, while a distinguished looking man in glasses (and black clothes) proceeds to psychically torture him with a crowd of people. Eventually the man, Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan) gives Cameron a drug called Ephemerol that dampens his abilities, allowing him to hear himself think for the first time. I'm not sure what the torture session was supposed to accomplish. It goes on way too long for it to be simply a way to show how effective the drug is (this is one of the scenes that slows the pace down a significant amount). It  really does feel like Dr. Ruth (yeah, I know) is purposefully torturing Cameron, breaking him down to the point that the relief the drug offers engenders a sense of gratitude in his torturer.

"At least it's not water boarding, am I right?"

Meanwhile, a company called ConSec (which actually employs Dr. Ruth) is having a demonstration - revealing to a select group of people that scanners exist and what they can do. The demonstration goes horribly awry however when the volunteer in the audience turns out to be a scanner himself, Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside). This leads up to that infamous head-explosion scene.

As a horror movie fan and a gore fan (though more in my teens and twenties than now), that head explosion was always the one against which any other gore effect was measured. It's just truly startling in its realism and graphic nature. It also occurs early enough in the movie to be a calling card - letting the audience know what they're in for.

The movie goes on to pit Revok and Vale against each other. Cameron tries to infiltrate a group of scanners in order to get access to Revok and stop him from killing or subsuming all other known scanners. Along the way he finds a group of unaffiliated scanners, including Kim Obrist (Jennifer O'Neill), but Revok seems to always been just one step behind, attacking and killing everyone Cameron comes into contact with.

With Kim's help Cameron finally infiltrates Revok's company, only to find that things are a lot more complicated than they at first appeared - Revok may be working for ConSec - or perhaps it's ConSec that's working for him. Either way, Revok's plan, a program called Ripe, is a massive conspiracy to create more scanners - and Dr. Ruth may be involved.

On the run from both Revok and ConSec, Vale attempts to download the information about Ripe by scanning the ConSec computer remotely. Security attempts to wipe the computer drive - and Vale - with explosive results.

"Dialup is so damn slooooowwww!!!"

This is still an awesome sequence, 80's phone connection and tape drives and all. As things go bad and stuff starts to explode on both sides of the connection I'm always filled with a level of uncomfortable glee - "that's what you get for messing with a scanner, asshole!" Small details like melted plastic running out of the phone mouthpiece as just fantastic. And if an exploding telephone booth is a bit goofy? Ah well - psychic powers, right? Whattaya gonna do?

Armed with the computer info, Vale and Kim uncover the truth about Ripe and Revok's plan, leading to a final confrontation from which neither Vale nor Revok will emerge unscathed.

It always looks like he went for a fart and got a bit more than planned.

The veins! The flames! It's a fantastic set piece. I never realized that Dick Smith had worked on this film - he's the guy who did makeup for The Exorcist and The Godfather, amongst others (his last film was apparently the remake of The House on Haunted Hill). There was a team of effects guys on this film, but a lot of this final confrontation was created by him.

Watching the film this time around, the creepiest part of the movie to me is the long-range plans of Revok. This is a man who is planning generations down the line. He's seeding the population with scanners and planning on culling and harvesting them into an army. He's got lists that include doctors and patient names and addresses and is willing to put the time and effort and inhuman patience into this plan.

I also still really like the way the powers are portrayed. Scanning is not some easy, twitch-reaction thing. It takes time to make the connection, effort and concentration to accomplish any effect. It looks painful and difficult. Yeah, there are a few too many shots of shaking jowls and rolling eyeballs, but it's still effective stuff. Before that guy's head explodes you feel the pressure building in his skull.

This is a rough estimate of how my migraines feel, by the way.

The movie is let down in a couple of spots. The pacing is off, with some parts being glacially slow and others being over before they have a real chance to get good. Vale's 'indoctrination' via crowd torture goes on way too long and his 'Rocky Training' moment with a yoga master is over almost before it begins. The lighting is often flat, often looking more like a 70's film than an early 80's one.

The biggest issue with the movie, though, is the lead. Stephen Lack's surname seems appropriate, as there is definitely something lacking in his performance. I actually think this lack of affect is intentional - Cameron is someone who has literally never had a moment in which to develop his own personality, so of course he's a bit of a cipher, a bit flat. It's not always enjoyable to watch, however - no matter how much I identified with him as a teen.

Is he mad? Scared? Confused? Constipated?

The other actors are much more fun to watch, with Michael Ironside always worth the price of admission and Patrick McGoohan providing much needed gravitas to all  his scenes. Jennifer O'Neill often looks a bit lost, but she balances that out with some very effective 'Blue Steel' looks as she 'scans' people.

Gotta love the choker plus necklace look.

The soundtrack by Howard Shore is great, with a lot of dissonant electronic chords and isolated piano keys. The theme music is appropriately bombastic and distinctive and adds a certain gothic atmosphere to the scenes in which it plays.

The Bottom Line
Scanners is an old favorite that, for me, holds up even now. It's got its rough spots - uneven pacing, a lackluster star - but it's still a classic. Every time I watch it I find new things to enjoy and think about.