David Cronenberg’s paranoid sci-fi thriller Scanners (1981) follows the awakening of Cameron Vale, a man who struggled with the misunderstood symptoms of his untrained capacity for scanning — a supernatural ability that encompasses telepathy, biokinesis, technopathy, and psychokinesis — until he was scooped up from a shopping mall by the weapons-and-security experts at ConSec. He learns that his condition results from the fact that his mother took the experimental sedative Ephemerol while pregnant. Rushed into production without a script, Scanners lacks some of the operatic or erotic power of Cronenberg’s oeuvre, while touching on many of the themes that run through his filmography: corporate malfeasance, the surveillance state, eugenicist projects, and the transformation of the body.
These themes are carried over from the clinical environs of the original film into a neon-gothic, hormonal maelstrom in Scanners III: The Takeover (1991). Helmed by the Canadian director Christian Duguay, as was Scanners II: The New Order (also 1991, Duguay’s feature debut, and the only Scanners sequel to receive a theatrical release), The Takeover follows twentysomethings Helena and Alex, who are descendants of the original scanners. Susceptible to the same extra-sensory powers and accompanying physical stress, they’ve learned to manage with the support of their adoptive father, Dr. Elton Monet. Prior to his intervention, the two had been subjected to torturous experimentation at the Baumann Institution. As Helena recalls in a nightmarish flashback, Dr. Baumann blasted her hyper-sensitive eyes with lasers and took humiliating photographs of her tormented expression. “The subject demonstrated pain responses, which could not be verified without further examination,” he notes as she sobs and begs him to stop. This queasy scene reverberates beyond its low budget and high drama, a potent encapsulation of the current moral panic surrounding gender-affirming care and disingenuous calls for an “evidence based” approach to the medical treatment of children—after all, Dr. Baumann is just asking questions.
Dr. Monet reveals to Helena that he’s close to a breakthrough on Eph-3, the latest iteration of the drug now intended to help scanners manage the painful aspects of their abilities. Despite his vehement warnings that Eph-3 is untested and may have untold, devastating side effects, Helena helps herself to a sample and unleashes her inner Revok, with a sexy, feminine twist. The new, powerfully-coiffed Helena wields a rage borne of the misogyny she’s faced from family and colleagues alike, refusing to hide her true identity and leaning into an inherited desire for world domination. Alex, who has been on a journey of self-discovery and martial arts training in Thailand, like so many traumatized action film protagonists before him, returns to Canada, revs up his old motorcycle, and prepares to face down their shared demons.
Cronenberg’s Ephemerol was undoubtedly inspired by Thalidomide, the sedative often prescribed to treat morning sickness during pregnancy that caused deformities as well as miscarriages and premature deaths. The drug was developed and released in the late 1950s and sold until 1961 by Chemie Grünenthal, a German company whose medical staff was composed, to an alarming extent, by known Nazi eugenicists and, in some cases, convicted war criminals. Canada was one of the last countries to take Thalidomide off the shelves, doing so three months after it was removed from circulation in Germany and provided only meager compensation to survivors until 2015. The FDA scientist credited with preventing Thalidomide’s sale in the United States was a Canadian-American named Frances Oldham Kelsey. As is outlined in Cheryl Krasnick Warsh’s recently published Frances Oldham Kelsey, the FDA, and the Battle Against Thalidomide, “the popular media’s narrative invariably harkened to her ‘innate’ motherly instincts” and celebrated her “female obstinacy,” traits for which they credit her ability to withstand the efforts of an aggressive, masculine pharmaceutical industry. These are histories that echo throughout Scanners III’s low-budget gore and gonzo action, making it a wildly entertaining vehicle for righteous paranoia and constantly relevant gender trouble.
Scanners III: The Takeover screens tonight, May 29, at Alamo Drafthouse Downtown Brooklyn as part of the series “Wild Things.”
