How They Shot the Head Explosion Scene in ‘Scanners’
"If ever you want to blow up a head, I advise using kosher salt. But don't do this at home." - special effects artist Gary Zeller.
Welcome to How’d They Do That? — a bi-monthly column that unpacks moments of movie magic and celebrates the technical wizards who pulled them off.This entry looks into the head explosion scene in Scanners.
Much like its infamously explosive setpiece, the making of Scannerswas a real headache.
With director David Cronenberg hot off The Brood, the abnormal time pressures of the Canadian tax-shelter era rushed Scanners into production without a script. With only two months to wrap principal photography, Cronenberg was forced to write and shoot the film simultaneously, all while managing a hectic production with his biggest budget to-date.
Luckily, Cronenberg’s notorious sense of calm prevailed, and Scanners was a box-office success. As close to a standard sci-fi thriller as Cronenberg ever came, Scanners dodged the genre marketing practices that had consistently worked against him in the past to deliver his first mainstream hit.
Scanners concerns an antisocial derelict named Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack), who is recruited by the mysterious ConSec research agency as one of the world’s few hundred “scanners” — individuals born with remarkable telepathic and psychokinetic abilities. A ConSec doctor named Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan) tasks Vale with eliminating the megalomaniacal Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside), a powerful scanner who intends to subjugate humanity, and all scanners who oppose him, with his gifts.
Set alongside the obsessive grotesques of Cronenberg’s earlier work, Scanners is a relatively tame entry from Canada’s Baron of Blood. With one explosive exception: a notoriously gory and shockingly visceral setpiece in the director’s career-long mind/body discourse.
Early in the film, we’re invited to a ConSec marketing event. A scanner (Louis Del Grande) gently declares that he will “scan” every person in attendance, one by one. From behind his thick mustache and even thicker glasses, he calmly explains that the process has been known to hurt a little. With that enticing caveat, he calls for his first volunteer. The people in the crowd exchange hesitant and doubting looks. Finally, a man in the back raises his hand. Unbeknownst to the lecturing scanner, and to us, this man is not supposed to be here. Not only that, this man isn’t just a man. This is Darryl Revok.
Revok descends towards the stage and, with a subliminally menacing air of faux-ignorance, follows the lecturer’s instructions. He focuses his mind. And it quickly becomes apparent that’s not all he’s doing. Something is terribly wrong. As Revok’s face contorts in concentration, the lecturer gasps for air and pounds his fists in discomfort that quickly escalates to agony. The pressure mounts and mounts until finally, abruptly, the lecturer’s head explodes. His face balloons outward, his eyes pop forward, and horribly viscous gore erupts in all directions; a scarlet mushroom cloud of skin, brain, bone, and flesh.
Meg Shields: Based in the Pacific North West, Meg enjoys long scrambles on cliff faces and cozying up with a good piece of 1960s eurotrash. As a senior contributor at FSR, Meg's objective is to spread the good word about the best of sleaze, genre, and practical effects.