Scanners

Scanners is Cronenberg translating his obsession with the body's betrayal into psychic rather than purely physical terms, and the result is one of the most conceptually ambitious horror films of the decade even when the execution wobbles. The exploding head sequence remains a landmark of practical effects work, achieved with a plastic bust filled with leftover viscera and detonated with a shotgun after multiple failed attempts, and it's earned its status as one of horror's most enduring images for good reason. Michael Ironside plays Revok with a controlled menace that anchors the film's more uneven stretches, and the corporate paranoia running underneath the psychic warfare gives the story a political edge Cronenberg wouldn't fully abandon for the rest of his career. Stephen Lack's blank affect as Cameron works better as a deliberate choice than a performance flaw, turning him into a vessel the audience projects onto rather than a fully realized protagonist. It's messier than Cronenberg's tightest work but the ideas and the imagery have stayed vital for over four decades.