DRIVE-IN SATURDAY
10 Seconds: The Pain Begins. 15 Seconds: You Can't Breathe. 2Q Seconds: You Explode. No, we're not talking about your reaction to the new Nina Hagen album. Just quoting the ad copy for Scanners, latest film from Canadian director David Cronenberg, a man who is not content with enduring privately the horror of life North Of The Border, but who is determined to inflict it upon us and make us pay money for the privilege of watching.
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Scanners Over Birmingham
by Edouard Dauphin
10 Seconds: The Pain Begins.
15 Seconds: You Can't Breathe.
2Q Seconds: You Explode.
No, we're not talking about your reaction to the new Nina Hagen album. Just quoting the ad copy for Scanners, latest film from Canadian director David Cronenberg, a man who is not content with enduring privately the horror of life North Of The Border, but who is determined to inflict it upon us and make us pay money for the privilege of watching. There hasn't been this much Canadian arrogance since Margaret Trudeau turned up as a celebrity panelist on To Tell The Truth.
So what are scanners anyway? Well, if you believe this movie; they're telepathic curiosities capable of using brain waves to harm and even kill other people. Though there are only 237 scanners on earth, as opposed to four billion of the rest of us, the scanners are said to be winning. Still they have their problems. As one character in the film remarks: 'You can't get two of them to sit in the same room together without one of them going berserk.' (Of course, you could say the same thing about members of the Rolling Stones.)
Flick center? around Stephen Lack, a pathetic social mkfit who happens to be a 'good' scanner. Recruited by a kindly doctor, he's given the job of infiltrating the ranks of the 'bad' scanners who pre, naturally, interested intahing over the world. Unimpressed by the odds of 236-1 (he is, after all, Canadian), he soon joins forces with Jennifer O'Neil, a 'bad' scanner defector, which immediately cuts the odds to 235-2. Still rough, but when you're hooked up with Jennifer O'Neil, who cares? Right?
Wrong. The evil are out for blood. Their specialty is exploding people's heads like water balloons and they're curious to see what our hero will look like minus ten pounds of ugly fat. Once we realize the villains are led by his older brother, we get a case of do-or-die sibling rivalry unmatched since the night the Wilson Sisters mud-wrestled each other at a private party at Dave DiMartino's house. (Watch for this soon on ABC's Wide World Of Sports.)
☆ ☆ ☆
It was a cold December night and the stars shone brightly over Birmingham. The Dauphin stood on South Woodward Avenue, debating whether to heave a rock through the front window of the Midtown Cafe,, an establishment which had just refused to serve him [Or the rest of us!!!—Ed.] another Kamikaze due to his inability to sit up stright without drooling. Posed to propel the boulder, The Dauph paused and chanced to look heavenward. And there it was, big as life, hovering over Merrillwood Mall—you guessed it, an Unidentified Flying Object! No kidding. Honest.
Don't believe me, do you? That1 s okay. Though polk show that more than half the U.S. populace is convinced of the existence of UFO's, just announce sometime that you've actually seen one and watch your friends roll their eyes condescendingly—that is if they don't call the authorities immediately and send you packing to the nearest laughing academy.
Cinematic encouragement for us UFO believers is here in the form of Hanger 18, a new quasi-expose that should have drive-in audiences honking their car horns and shining their headlights skyward expectantly. 'Cause this flick not only proposes that flying saucers exist, it charges that the U.S. Government is concealing one, complete with extraterrestrial crew, at a secret Texas airbase. Take that, Ronnie Reagan—and may you soon have a Close Encounter Of The Dumb Kind.
According to the movie, a collision between a UFO and a U.S. space shuttle's orbiting capsule led to the saucer's unscheduled landing in Arizona. From Goldwater Country, it was whisked to Hangar 18, thanks to an unscrupulous White House Chief Of Staff, along with leaders of the FBI, CIA and, for all I know, XTC, NRBQ and AC/DC.
Hoping to clear their space capsule of blame for the mid-air fender-bender, a pair of bumbling astronauts defy government cover-u'ps and track the saucer down to its hiding place. But not before they've blundered their way through half a dozen escapades designed to show that, compared to them, John Glenn (who fell on his head in a bathtub in Ohio) was indeed the Thinking Man's Astronaut.
When we finally get inside Hanger 18, the saucer looks like the prototype for the Mattel Mechanical Cow Pie, the aliens resemble main eventers on Wrestling From Florida, and we still don't know what's in those 17 other hangers. But that UFO over Birmingham was real! Would The Dauph kid ya, huh?
See Hanger 18—and watch the skies!
