Hold onto your heads, we're back at you with another horror film just in time for spooky season. Ethan takes Alex and David into the splattery world of David Cronenberg via his 1981 brain-exploding psychological thriller Scanners.
We ponder whether the eponymous telepaths might stand in for an oppressed neurodivergent group, while reflecting on Cronenberg's apparent anti-psychiatry stance. There's a power-play in the film from authority figures seeking to control the scanners, set against a slightly more fascistic ideology of scanner revolution, and we wonder where to place heroism and villainy in this headache of a story. The discussion winds its way to a reflection on the extensive problems around the anti-vaxx movement and we find many parallels with this film and the story of a certain Dr Wakefield. David even starts to ask if science-fiction horror has helped to fuel an anti-science rhetoric? Nevertheless, there is much to enjoy in the gurning faces of the characters, and the gutsy bodyhorror that Cronenberg specialises in.
We would therefore send a little content warning to those of you interested in watching this film - at times it is pretty horrible, and deals with a lot of dark and disturbing themes.
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50th Episode Special
The Revenant (2015) dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu
Voice (2023) dir. Ana Hjort Guttu
Doctor Who: The Tenth Planet (1966) dir. Derek Martinus (Part Two)
Doctor Who: The Tenth Planet (1966) dir. by Derek Martinus (Part One)
Isaac Julien: What Freedom is to Me (2023), TATE Britain Exhibition.
Live Event Preview: Still Lives (2023) at The Garden Cinema
Blade Runner (1982) dir. Ridley Scott
Raw (2016)
ET: The Extra Terrestrial (1982) with Sam Chown-Ahern
Harold & Maude (1971) dir. Hal Ashby, with Andrew Brenner
Tomboy (2011) dir. Celine Sciamma with Sophie Broadgate
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) dir. Chantal Akerman
The Falls (1980) dir. Peter Greenaway
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Special Episode: Relaxed Screenings with Maggi Hurt (BFI)
The Secret Garden (1993) dir. Agnieszka Holland with Sophia Rose O’Rourke
Pierrot le Fou (1965) dir Jean-Luc Godard
Sayonara CP (1972) dir. Kazuo Hara with Richard Butchins
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