"Told you so...". That's what my movie-buddy said when I told him how much fun I had with the copy of "Scanner Cop" he lent me. And he's absolutely right, too! He tried persuading me of its massive entertainment value before, but I skeptically downgraded it as an insignificant straight-to-video 90s horror flick and a lame attempt to further cash in on David Cronenberg's wonderful creation "Scanners".
Well, I'm glad I was wrong - like so often the case - and can only concur "Scanner Cop" ticks all the required boxes for qualifying as terrific B-movie entertainment. It has a simple but engaging and unpretentious plot, plenty of action, several familiar names in the cast, and a handful of splendid make-up effects by specialist John Carl Buechler. What more do you need? An over-the-top psychotic villain, perhaps? Sure, we'll throw him in, too.
Following an action-packed intro, in which a Scanner goes berserk from the voices inside his head and gets assassinated, his teenage son - also a Scanner - gets adopted by the caring detective Pete Harrigan. Several years later, Harrigan is police commissioner of the LAPD and his adopted son - Samuel - graduates as a law enforcer. Samuel keeps his Scanner condition under control with medication, but need to unleash his dangerous power when the city is plagued by a series of extremely violent and mysterious murders of police officers. The mad-raving culprit behind the killings is Dr. Carl Glock, who found a way of hypnotizing/manipulating the minds of innocent people and instruct them to kill cops. That sounds an awful lot like the plot of "The Manchurian Candidate", and the script also shamelessly refers to it as well.
There's not a dull moment in "Scanner Cop", but almost too many highlights to list. The murders of the several police officers are extremely brutal, especially to see them being committed by innocent and unwary marionettes, like a janitor or even a loving wife. There are also bizarre moments, like the hallucination of little heads popping out of someone's forehead, or Samuel acting like a furious Scanner against lifeless objects like police computers. Still, though, the indisputable show-stealer of the film is Richard Lynch as the utterly insane Glock with a metal plate in his skull, and a vicious grudge against cops. Biggest disappointment, however, was the minuscule and totally irrelevant role of Brion James.
