On "Scanners"

I watched the first of the three discs I had received from netflix- David Cronenberg's 1980 film Scanners. Every time I watch one of his movies or one of Larry Cohen's for the first time, it feels like this low-rent nugget of gold that only I know about. It's like it's this personal thing that belongs to me, that I can share with who I like. It takes me back to roaming the aisles of the video store and spotting something with awesome cover art, bringing home, and realizing I've stumbled across something amazing and practically life-changing.

Cronenberg's work, at least until his last couple, is also intensely weird and twisted. It's a little less so when compared to the work of Guy Maddin, but still pretty twisted. In this one, certain people on Earth have telepathic powers, and Cronenberg exploits that premise well in his story of good telepaths against evil ones. I don't give things away, but suffice it to say that Scanners possesses qualities of dread and eeriness that don't exist in today's works of science fiction and horror. Some of the entries in that genre made today are good, but none are like Scanners. Check it out.