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Description
A scientist trains a man with an advanced telepathic ability called “scanning” to stop a dangerous Scanner with extraordinary psychic powers from waging war against non scanners. Is this an unrealistic possibility. Learn about the production behind the film and the mainstream scientific realities of parapsychology.Notes
This was a change in format… I actually kinda liked it, it allowed us to explore more in-depth a topic that I am skeptical too and confide in someone who is very knowledgeable about it. I also find our guest to be very interesting and I would want to do that over again. I had a mic issue that I noticed after I started recording… I decided to go with camera mic instead because we were doing this live and didn’t have the time to fix it. sorry for the sound issues.
- Budget
- $4.1 million
- $13 million adjusted (2023)
- Domestic Box office
- $14 million
- $44 million adjusted (2023)
- 11 million tickets sold
We had a mind opening conversation about various aspects of parapsychology. Topics covered;
(I had mic problems so I had to use the camera mic)
• We did a meditative exercise to control your own blood flow.
• Wim Hoff
• Dean Raiden
• The Institute of Noetic Sciences
• Nature vs Nurture in relation to psychics
• Jessica Utts congressional report on remote viewing
• Society for PSI research and their EXTENSIVE list of studies
• Houdini
• The Amazing Randy vs Loyd Auerbach
• Etzel Cardeña
• Rupert Sheldrake
• Mainstream science’s dirty tricks to “suppress” research in parapsychology
• Russel Targ
• Downloading messages from ETs
• Elisabeth April & the Galactic Federation
• Telekinetically communicating with video games
• Emotions affecting your interaction with electronics
• Daniel Douglas Home
• Ted Owens
• Edgar Cayce

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Making the Movie
David Paul Cronenberg
is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is a principal originator of the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation, infectious diseases, and the intertwining of the psychological, physical, and technological.
Cronenberg’s films have polarized critics and audiences alike; he has earned critical acclaim and has sparked controversy for his depictions of gore and violence. The Village Voice called him “the most audacious and challenging narrative director in the English-speaking world”.
His films have won numerous awards, including the Special Jury Prize for Crash at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, a unique award that is distinct from the Jury Prize as it is not given annually, but only at the request of the official jury, who in this case gave the award “for originality, for daring, and for audacity”
David Cronenberg was born in Toronto, Ontario, on March 15, 1943. Cronenberg is the son of Esther (née Sumberg), a musician, and Milton Cronenberg, a writer and editor.[8] He was raised in a “middle-class progressive Jewish family”
His father was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and his mother was born in Toronto; all of his grandparents were Jews from Lithuania.
The Cronenberg household was full of a wide variety of books, and Cronenberg’s father tried to introduce his son to art films such as The Seventh Seal, although at the time Cronenberg was more interested in western and pirate films, showing a particular affinity for those featuring Burt Lancaster.
A voracious reader from an early age, Cronenberg started off enjoying science fiction magazines like The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Galaxy, and Astounding, where he first encountered authors who would prove influential on his own work, including Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, although he wouldn’t encounter his primary influence, Philip K. Dick, until much later.
Early films that later proved influential on Cronenberg’s career include avant-garde, horror, science fiction, and thriller films, such as Un Chien Andalou, Vampyr, War of the Worlds, Freaks, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Alphaville, Performance, and Duel. However, Cronenberg has also cited less obvious films as influences, including comedies like The Bed Sitting Room, as well as Disney cartoons such as Bambi and Dumbo.
Cronenberg said he found these two Disney animated films, as well as Universal’s live-action Blue Lagoon, “terrifying” which influenced his approach to horror. Cronenberg went on to say that Bambi was the “first important film” he ever saw, citing the moment when Bambi’s mother died as particularly powerful. Cronenberg even wished to screen Bambi as part of a museum exhibition of his influences, but Disney refused him permission
Cronenberg attended Dewson Street Public School, Kent Senior School, Harbord Collegiate Institute and North Toronto Collegiate Institute. He enrolled at the University of Toronto for Honours Science in 1963, but changed to Honours English Language and Literature the next year. He graduated from university in 1967, at the top of his class with a general bachelor of arts
Cronenberg’s fascination with the film Winter Kept Us Warm (1966), by classmate David Secter, sparked his interest in film. He began frequenting film camera rental houses and learned the art of filmmaking. Cronenberg made two short films, Transfer and From the Drain, with a few hundred dollars.
After two short sketch films and two short art-house features (the black-and-white Stereo and the colour Crimes of the Future) Cronenberg went into partnership with Ivan Reitman. The Canadian government provided financing for his films throughout the 1970s.
During this period, he focused on his signature “body horror” films such as Shivers and Rabid, the latter of which provided pornographic actress Marilyn Chambers with work in a different genre, although Cronenberg’s first choice for the role had been a then little-known Sissy Spacek.
Rabid was a breakthrough with international distributors, and his next two horror features, The Brood and Scanners, gained stronger support.
Cronenberg directed The Fly (1986) starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis. The film is loosely based on George Langelaan’s 1957 short story of the same name and the 1958 film of the same name. It was distributed by 20th Century Fox and was a box office hit making $60 million. Cronenberg has not generally worked within the world of big-budget, mainstream Hollywood filmmaking
At one stage he was considered by George Lucas as a possible director for Return of the Jedi (1983) but was passed over.
Since Dead Ringers (1988), Cronenberg has worked with cinematographer Peter Suschitzky on each of his films. Suschitzky was the director of photography for The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Cronenberg remarked that Suschitzky’s work in that film “was the only one of those movies that actually looked good”, which was a motivating factor to work with him on Dead Ringers.
Cronenberg has collaborated with composer Howard Shore on all of his films since The Brood (1979), with the exception of The Dead Zone (1983), which was scored by Michael Kamen. Other regular collaborators include actor Robert Silverman, art director Carol Spier (also his sister) sound editor Bryan Day, film editor Ronald Sanders, his sister, costume designer Denise Cronenberg, and, from 1979 until 1988, cinematographer Mark Irwin.
Known For
David Cronenberg once called this the most frustrating film he’d ever made. The film was rushed through production – filming had to begin without a finished script and end within roughly two months so the financing would qualify as a tax write-off, forcing Cronenberg to write and shoot at the same time.
Most Canadian film productions of the 1970s and the early 1980s were funded through a 100-percent Capital Cost Allowance tax shield for investors passed by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1974, and the film was rushed into production without a finished script or constructed sets in order to claim the subsidies
Cronenberg also cited difficulty with and antagonism between the leads, particularly Patrick McGoohan and Jennifer O’Neill.
Scanners was based on David Cronenberg’s scripts The Sensitives and Telepathy 2000, which he planned to pitch to Roger Corman before beginning work on The Brood. Corman was shown the script, but did nothing with it.
Michael Ironside was originally hired for a bit part of one to two scenes and was paid $5,300 CDN.
Behind the scenes Featurette
Head Explosion
The effect for the exploding head scene was accomplished by filling a latex head of the actor with dog food, leftover lunch, fake blood and rabbit livers, and shooting it from behind with a 12-gauge shotgun.
The iconic head explosion scene was the product of trial and error, eventually settling on a plaster skull and a gelatin exterior packed with “latex scraps, some wax, and just bits and bobs and a lot of stringy stuff that we figured would fly through the air a little better” as well as “leftover burgers.” When other explosive techniques failed to give the desired effect, special effects supervisor Gary Zeller told the crew to roll cameras and get inside their trucks with doors and windows closed; he then lay down behind the dummy and shot it in the back of the head with a shotgun.
The exploding head scene was filmed four times, but Cronenberg accepted the first shot and did not remain to watch the three others opting to instead take a nap in his Winnebago. The scene depicting the exploding head was trimmed down to allow for a R-rating from the MPAA. Cronenberg originally intended for the scene to be the film’s opening, but placed it later in the film after test screenings.
Stunts
The crash scene
The crash scene in the record store prominently features a float hanging from the ceiling for the RSO (Robert Stigwood Organization) record label, who paid for this placement. By the time the film was released, RSO had gone out of business.
Pyrotechnics
The final PSY fight
Production stills exist of shots in the final duel between Cameron and Revok, where the top of Cameron’s head explodes, sending sparks into the air. Apparently this climax was filmed but David Cronenberg chose to omit it from the final print.
Make up
Dick smith
Make-up artist Dick Smith (The Exorcist, Amadeus) provided prosthetics for the climactic scanner duel and the iconic exploding head effect.
Smith was born in Larchmont, New York, the son of Coral (née Brown) and Richard Roy Smith. He attended the Wooster School in Danbury, Connecticut and Yale University, where he studied pre-med, with the intention of entering dentistry, although he majored in zoology. After reading a book on theatrical make-up techniques titled Paint, powder and make-up ; the art of theater make-up from the amateur and class room viewpoint (Strauss, Ivard), he began applying make-up for the Yale drama group.
was entirely self-taught. He sent photographs of his work to the film industry, but his work was rejected until his father suggested he might try the emerging new medium of television. He was appointed as the first make-up director of WNBC (NBC’s station in New York City), working there for fourteen years. Smith pioneered the development of prosthetic makeup, now better known as special make-up effects, from the basement of his home in Larchmont, New York, a district in which he lived through most of his life.
Known for
Chris Walas
Chris Walas, also worked on the exploding head effect. He is an American special effects artist, make-up effects artist, film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is best known for his work on the film The Fly (1986), for which he won an Academy Award and was nominated for two British Academy Film Awards.
Known for
Parapsychology research

The Institute of Noetic Sciences
The Institute conducts research on topics such as spontaneous remission, meditation, consciousness, alternative healing practices, consciousness-based healthcare, spirituality, human potential, psychic abilities, psychokinesis and survival of consciousness after bodily death. The Institute maintains a free database, available on the Internet, with citations to more than 6,500 articles about whether physical and mental health benefits might be connected to meditation and yoga.
Homepage
Dean Radin
investigates phenomena in parapsychology. Following a bachelor and master’s degree in electrical engineering and a PhD in educational psychology Radin worked at Bell Labs, as a researcher at Princeton University and the University of Edinburgh, and was a faculty member at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He then became Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in Petaluma, California, USA, later becoming the president of the Parapsychological Association. He is also co-editor-in-chief of the journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. Radin’s ideas and work have been criticized by scientists and philosophers skeptical of paranormal claims. The review of Radin’s first book, The Conscious Universe, that appeared in Nature charged that Radin ignored the known hoaxes in the field, made statistical errors and ignored plausible non-paranormal explanations for parapsychological data.
Following a career in classical violin, Radin went on to earn an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, as well as both a master’s degree in electrical engineering and a doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After his graduation, Radin worked at Bell Labs, and then conducted research at Princeton University, GTE Laboratories, University of Edinburgh, SRI International, Interval Research Corporation, and was a faculty member at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
https://www.deanradin.com/
Rupert Sheldrake
is an English author and parapsychology researcher. He proposed the concept of morphic resonance, a conjecture that lacks mainstream acceptance and has been widely criticized as pseudoscience. He has worked as a biochemist at Cambridge University, a Harvard scholar, a researcher at the Royal Society, and a plant physiologist for ICRISAT in India.
Other work by Sheldrake encompasses paranormal subjects such as precognition, empirical research into telepathy, and the psychic staring effect. He has been described as a New Age author.
His father was a University of Nottingham-educated pharmacist who ran a chemist’s shop on the same road as his parents’ wallpaper shop. Sheldrake credits his father (an amateur naturalist and microscopist) with supporting his interests in zoology and botany.
At Clare College, Cambridge, Sheldrake studied biology and biochemistry. In 1964, he was awarded a fellowship to study the philosophy and history of science at Harvard University. After a year at Harvard, he returned to Cambridge, where he earned a PhD in biochemistry for his work in plant development and plant hormones.
https://www.sheldrake.org/
is an American physicist, parapsychologist, and author who is best known for his work on remote viewing.
Targ joined Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in 1972 where he and Harold E. Puthoff coined the term “remote viewing” for the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target using parapsychological means. Later, he worked with Puthoff on the US Defense Intelligence Agency’s Stargate Project.
Targ received a B.S. in physics from Queens College in 1954. From 1954 to 1956, he completed two years of graduate work in physics at Columbia University without taking a degree.
Russell Targ was involved in early laser research at Technical Research Group where he co-authored, with Gordon Gould among others, a 1962 paper describing the use of homodyne detection with laser light. Later, at Sylvania Electronic Systems, he contributed to the development of frequency modulation and mode-locking of lasers, and co-authored a 1969 paper which described the operation of a kilowatt continuous wave laser.
In 1972, Targ joined the Electronics and Bioengineering Laboratory at SRI as a senior research physicist in a program founded by Harold E. Puthoff. The two conducted research into psychic abilities and their operational use for the U.S. intelligence community, including NASA, the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and Army Intelligence. Targ worked at SRI until 1982. Remote viewing (or RV) is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target using subjective means, in particular, extra-sensory perception (ESP) or “sensing with mind”. Typically a remote viewer is expected to give information about an object, event, person or location that is hidden from physical view and separated at some distance. The term was coined in the 1970s by Targ and Puthoff, while working as researchers at SRI, to differentiate it from clairvoyance.
From 1986 to 1998 Targ worked in electro-optics as a senior staff scientist at the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, where he contributed to aviation windshear sensing applications of Doppler heterodyne lidar technology.
https://espresearch.com/