The vitals:
Thursday, 12/5
7:00 ~ Doors
7:30 ~ SCANNERS III: THE TAKEOVER

If you didn’t realize David Cronenberg’s SCANNERS had two sequels and a spin-off series, then congratulations! You’re a normal person. For the rest of us however, there’s SCANNERS II and III; a double-barrel direct-to-video helping of telekinetic hysteria from SCREAMERS director Christian Duguay. This dynamic duo arrived back-to-back in 1991, produced at the same time and largely with the same creative team. While SCANNERS II is the straight-laced, older brother who earnestly aims for B-movie prestige, SCANNERS III (colon, THE TAKEOVER) is the wild younger sister; concerned only with entertainment by any means necessary. First as tragedy; second as farce.

Not since HALLOWEEN III has genre cinema seen a third installment so thoroughly divorced from its origins. The lingering psychic scars of Big Dave’s treatise on marginalized super-empaths have vanished completely, replaced by a slapstick comedy of Santa Clauses launched out of high-rises, pigeons exploded by mind powers, and so much scenery-chewing you wonder if the city of Montreal had to file an insurance claim. Undergirded by a ridiculous, literal girlboss performance from one Liliana Komorowska, SCANNERS III plays like the high-camp, surprisingly queer thesis on starting hormone therapy and discovering your hypnodomme powers that Cronenberg was afraid to make. God forbid women do anything.

~ Morgan Hyde

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