Scanners

   As a huge fan of director David Cronenberg's movies, Scanners is one of the few that I'd only seen once and then never again. Well, I was dead set to change that, snatching the movie up on Criterion Blu Ray not too long ago, and it was a damn good purchase. The movie is much livelier than I remember, and that's a good thing. It would clearly go on to inspire such genre mainstays like The Terminator, X-Men and The Matrix. Yet not nearly enough people cite Scanners as a 'great' of the 80's, or even of it's genre. When it is brought up, people immediately say, "Yeah! The one with exploding head!" and that's the beginning and end of their fascination with the movie, which is unfortunate because Scanners has so much more to offer.