Scanners III: O Duelo Final

Scanners were the offspring of women that were given a drug during pregnancy. They had severe mental and emotional problems, but one great power: the ability to blow someone else's brains up if you pissed them off. I did not see Scanners II, but by number III they not only got the ability to use psychokinesis, but to control others actions--even over the television.

One brother went to a monastery in Thailand to learn to control his powers, while his father gave his sister an experimental drug that gave her the same powers instantly (but for only 24 hours while wearing a patch). She becomes power mad and uses them to take over her father's drug company and next the world?

Her brother finds out about his relatives deaths and returns. His sister has released a bunch of drug enhanced Scanners as hit men to prevent his displacing her.

The final battle reveals which approach is stronger--it is not as straight forward as you think.

Just like in Scanners (I), not enough of what scanners were famous for--blowing up heads. How expensive can this special effect be anyway?

This movie is not a bad waste of viewing time and the sister is not hard on the eyes -- one brief nude scene in a hot tub.

'Scanners 3: The Takeover' is actually a bit of a mini-epic. It doesn't have half the budget of the previous film and there are some off-the-wall, kooky performances from almost all of the characters but this is definitely the better – and by better, I mean camp fun - of the 2 films. The film begins with an introduction to Alex Monet, a brash Scanner that has reduced his abilities to a literal party trick. When he absent-mindedly kills his best friend at one such party, he decides, in an effort of contrition, to find a way to better hone his powers. This leads him to the Buddhist monasteries of Tibet. Meanwhile, his sister, Helena Monet, (who is the heir to the pharmaceutical company that is working on a 'cure' for the previously-described side effects of the scanning mutation) is experimenting with said drug, turning her into a power-hungry megalomaniac. Much as the original 'Scanners' introduced the ability to control computers, Helena attempts to control people by passing a 'scanner signal' through pre-recorded video. When Alex returns, it is a cat and mouse game pitting brother against sister.

There is no doubt in my mind that the spark that inspired these follow-ups was the singularly iconic exploding head from the original and these sequels do not let down. There is a surplus of gooey gore and a sense that each death is an attempt to outdo the last. If you're after the headier (no pun intended) aspirations of Cronenberg, you are bound to be disappointed with these. If you are hoping to see fountains of blood spewing from the skulls of random characters, this is the place.

Opening with a Christmas party in which a scanner shows off his powers with unexpectedly tragic results, this second sequel to David Cronenberg's 'Scanners' begins on a chilling note. Things only get more interesting as one of the party guests soon has to use her scanning abilities to fend off muggers, which results in massive headaches (having avoided scanning in so long) with a possible cure in an experimental nicotine patch style of sorts. After this promising start though, the plot soon derails as the patch as the side effect of turning her into a homicidal megalomaniac, similar to Raoul Max Trujillo in 'Scanners II'. Lead actress Liliana Komorowska manages to chew the scenery even more so than Trujillo though in such a wildly exaggerated performance that it is draining to watch. There are also a host of ill-defined supporting characters who inexplicably wear sunglasses all the time (to stop accidentally scanning??) and as she manages to control others through television sets, her powers end up more fantastical than pseudo-scientific as in the first two films. 'Scanners 3' does, however, deserve some points for presenting a more original plot than Part 2. There is also quite a bit of humour in the mix (forcing an obnoxious date to dance; waking up in a morgue) and the special effects are uniformly excellent, but this is a hard film to get excited about.

I remember throwing in the towel on the Scanners series after being particularly underwhelmed by Scanners 2: The New Order, and subsequently kept my distance when Scanners 3: The Takeover, Scanner Cop and Scanner Cop 2 (aka Scanners: The Showdown) all appeared on the video rental shelves. Maybe I was a little premature on calling time on the series though, as finally catching up with it nearly thirty years later, Scanners 3: The Takeover unexpectedly turned out to be lots of fun.

Colin Fox (star of the legendary Canadian horror soap opera 'Strange Paradise') essentially has the Patrick McGoohan role in this one, playing the scientist father to a pair of scanner siblings. The son, Alex grows up to go all Rambo 3, attempting to find himself by living among Buddhist monks. Daughter, Helena on the other hand becomes the Guinea Pig in her father's experiments which transform her from the meek and mousy type to a megalomaniac vixen who uses her scanner powers to climb the corporate ladder.

After two sombre sequels, Scanners 3 really beats you about the head with the silly stick, as naughty Helena uses her scanner powers to make a chauvinistic colleague perform a striptease at a well-to-do restaurant, forces a talk show host and his star guest to make horny fools of themselves on live TV, while a pigeon learns the hard way that it is not wise to poop on a scanner. Helena also has male scanner followers, who once mobilised, start dressing like prohibition era gangsters, and an oversexed nurse scanner who seems to think she is acting in a parody of a porn film.

Considering how tonally different this all is to the first Scanners film, there is a surprising amount of callbacks to early Cronenberg movies here. The flirty behavior on the live talk show recalls the James Woods/Debbie Harry antics of Videodrome, dead bodies end up in a garbage truck à la Rabid, and on the basis of this and Rabid (original and remake), Canadians must really have it in for men dressed as Father Christmas.

As Helena, polish actress Liliana Komorowska drops into the film with all the subtlety of a megaton bomb, playing a mixture of Joan Collins and Donald Trump, while sporting an accent so thick that it feels like she was on a one woman war against the English language. The long-of-name Komorowska easily overshadows the bland 1990s pretty boy playing her sibling/adversary, as the series ventures into the era of male ponytails, corporate villains, erotic thrillers and yes even kick-boxer movies.

A young female scanner turns from a sweet young thing into a murderous, power-crazed villain after she takes an experimental drug developed by her father. Her brother, who is also a scanner, is the only one powerful enough to stop her.

We start out with the standard good and evil plot, brother against sister... but, in all fairness, this is a plot structure that works. From there, it actually gets much more creative, introducing the use of Eastern meditation to control the scanning and the use of TV to more widely broadcast scanning.

Some memorable moments are here, too, including the mind-control dance scene, the Taiwanese boxing and plenty of firefights and explosions, including an arm that flies off.

As with "Scanners II", this definitely could have been a series, even more than the last film. The ideas developed here really set up a broader picture of good scanners against bad ones, and how such powers could be used not just on a combat level, but to actually infiltrate and dominate society. There is much potential.