I'm waiting for you, scanner cop!"
You've gotta love an action movie that tosses its title right into the dialogue. I certainly do, especially when it's done twice! Also known as Scanners: The Showdown, Scanner Cop II: Volkin's Revenge is the final entry in the franchise to date. It also happens to be the first and only entry to contain returning characters. Well, character. Only Daniel Quinn's Sam Staziak comes back in this outing, now upgraded to detective status and sporting the requisite trouble cop look (leather jacket, shaggy hair, cowboy boots).
This time around, our telepathically-tinged law enforcement tale revolves around a rogue scanner named Karl Volkin (Patrick Kilpatrick) who has busted out of a psych ward and set out on a quest for vengeance against the cop who took him down! Are you loving the cop movie cliché plot? I certainly did, especially when there's an added scanner flourish to our villain's backstory. You see, Staziak intervened in a home invasion perpetrated by Volkin and his brother, Craig. Forced between being shot by Volkin or watching Craig slit the homeowner's throat, Staziak chose Door #3: he made the lesser-powered scanner Volkin shoot Craig. Yep, not only did Staziak send his ass to the booby hatch, but he also made him kill his own brother. In the words of Jack Slater, "BIG MISTAKE!".
So how does it hold up to its predecessor? It's good, but not great. Scanner Cop II lacks the personality of Scanner Cop, but Quinn is still a lot of fun in the title role (especially when tossing out quips). And '90s henchman staple Patrick Kilpatrick (Death Warrant, Class of 1999) brings the requisite crazy as the antagonist. We also get some bonus Robert Forster as Staziak's new boss, the amusingly named Captain Bitters. On the FX side of things, the ooey-gooey gore comes from low-budget maestro John Carl Buechler, and he doesn't disappoint. Is there a head explosion? You should watch it and find out for yourself, although you probably already know the answer.
And that's all she wrote, at least until someone manages to revive the franchise in some form. As much as I'd love for there to be some newly-discovered lost sequel where Detective Staziak and scanner-fu hero Alex Monet (Scanners III's Steve Parrish) team up to save the world, it sadly was not meant to be. It's over, at least for now. There was a remake in the works with Darren Lynn Bousman attached about a decade ago, but it ultimately fell apart. Lately it has been in slow development as a potential television series, which honestly might be the best route to take. That goes double if they intelligently look to the Scanner Cop films for inspiration. Alexandre Aja has been spearheading this small-screen revival, and last I heard, it might have finally found a home. Here's hoping, because I think there's a lot that could be done with the property on television … especially when audiences seem extremely open to small-screen horror programming these days. If that day comes, expect to see this column gleefully resurrected to cover it.
Looking back on the franchise as a whole, I'm pretty damn fond of it. The original is a classic, and, while Scanners II was dud, the remaining three sequels that followed have all been good to great. Scanners is an under-loved and under-seen franchise that absolutely deserves a second (or even first) look from genre and cult cinema fans. If pressed to rank them in terms of my preference, it would shake out as follows …
- Scanners (1981) (d. David Cronenberg)
- Scanner Cop (1994) (d. Pierre David)
- Scanners III: The Takeover (1992) (d. Christian Duguay)
- Scanner Cop II: Volkin's Revenge (1995) (d. Steve Barnett)
- Scanners II: The New Order (1991) (d. Christian Duguay)
What's up next? I actually haven't decided yet, but once I do, I hope I'm lucky enough to have as much fun with it as I did here. It's been a wild (and telekinetically-charged) ride thus far.
