Scanners (1981)

No one does sheer psychological horror quite like David Cronenberg. This 1980 cult horror film delivers all of Cronenberg’s dreaded goods, plus an exploding head. I don’t kid. Literally, a man’s head explodes in sick chunky pulp detail within 15 minutes. The headless man is – was -- a scanner, a person born with the power of telepathy. In Cronenberg’s world, though, telepathy isn’t just mind reading, it’s the ability for one person to tap into the central nervous system of another. Person hacking. Years before computer hacking. (Genius!) The film follows a confused and strangely emotionless scanner (Stephen Lack) railroaded by a doctor (Patrick McGoohan) into working as a spy for a mysterious corporation. The target: Revok (Michael Ironside) a psychopathic scanner responsible for that exploding noggin and many other deaths. Cronenberg’s film loses its suffocating tenseness at the climax as bad makeup effects take over, but the preceding buildup is intense. Ironside (“Total Recall”) is scarily creepy. If you know Cronenberg’s films, the shocker end reveal isn’t too shocking. “History of Violence” indeed. A-