The penultimate film I want to discuss in this exploration into American independent cinema is the 1980 science fiction thriller, ‘SCANNERS’. The sole Canadian choice out of the four, Scanners was made by Ontarian filmmaker David Cronenberg.
David Cronenberg was born in Toronto Ontario on March 15, 1943. He studied English and Literature at the University of Toronto, graduating top of his class in ‘67. He began frequenting camera rental houses honing his film skills and in the 70s he partnered with Ivan Reitman and other film directors forming The Toronto Film Co-op. With funding from the Canadian government he went on to make Canadian feature films including Rabid and Shivers in the 70s and eventually Scanners in 1981. This became one of the first Canadian horror movies able to compete with American films at the international box office.
The movie Scanners was also the first film Cronenberg had a half decent budget of $4 million CDN to shoot with but…it came with a catch. The money had been given by a company called Filmplan International which came from Canadian tax incentives. This meant the money had to be spent and the film shot before the end of the year.
Faced with only 2 weeks of pre-production, Cronenberg had only written a first draft of the movie, so things were not complete. He wound up having to write scenes while they were actually filming. He recalls, “I found myself writing on the set, writing at lunch instead of eating, writing evenings, writing weekends.”
Michael Ironside who plays Revok remembered he “was only hired to do a black and white flashback sequence” but Cronenberg, who was obviously writing on the fly, decided to bring him in with a more pivotal role. Ironside recalled, “I literally got scenes sometimes the night before, sometimes two days before, because he was rewriting the script as we went.”
It’s clear that Cronenberg was doing everything in his power to get the movie done in the time allotted. The craziness of this restriction meant scenes were shot out of order. Special fx scenes which were usually shot later had to be juggled to meet the schedules of their cast and fx guys.
Speaking of special fx, it should be known that the head exploding scene was moved from the beginning to further into the film as Cronenberg knew a lot of movie goers arrived late to theatres and he didn’t want them missing that pivotal moment. Indeed it was one of the most talked about and memorable scenes in Scanners.
I myself have great admiration for this particular scene as it was done without CGI, using a latex replica head, assorted gore consisting of latex leftovers, bits and bobs of stringy bits and even “leftover burgers”. They used salt in a shotgun and shot it from the back of the room.
Overall, Scanners is often underappreciated and isn’t talked about as much as it deserves, its creepy musical score and crazy practical effects have always creeped me out and is a great inspiration for my want to be a filmmaker.
SOURCE MATERIAL
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