Scanners III: The Takover (1991)

SCANNERS III: THE TAKEOVER (1991)

Dir: Christian Duguay

A New drug for Scanners gets rid of that pesky thing we call a conscious and transforms the mind-readers into sociopathic power players. What do they want? Well, as the title implies, to take over the world.

So the director, Duguay, made both Scanners 2 and 3 at the same time, but didn’t think to have any crossover between their storylines? That seems crazy and more expensive. First off, you’re basically hiring a whole new crew. You’re not re-using sets or shots or elements from either film. Do you know how mad Roger Corman would be if these were his films?

In Scanners 2: The New Order we see Scanners with an Eph-2 (Ephemerol variant 2) addiction that leaves them junkies. At the beginning of The Takeover, a chemist has made a breakthrough with Eph-3. This and the act of scanning is the only thread that links all these films together. In The Takeover we begin at a party where brother and sister, Alex and Helena Money, are attending. There’s talk about Scanners. Some people don’t believe while others think the phenomenon is fascinating. This leads Alex to show off his scanning abilities and inadvertently kill his best friend. The guilt makes Alex wander off to Tibet to control his scanning. Helena’s abilities occur over time. She begins to feel the headaches and the screaming of the world’s thoughts. She finds out her adoptive father has invented a prototype for Eph-3, but is warned that it’s never been tested on people. Helen says f*ck it and wears the device.

The rest of the film is Helen standing up for herself. She humiliates and eventually kills her sexist boss. She destroys her father to gain control of his company. She mass produces Eph-3 to scanners and controls them like flunkys. And in her final act of female domination she attempts to scan and destroy all non-scanners. I assure you it sounds better on paper. Taking a few steps back from how bad the film is, one may get that sense of “Good for her,” storytelling. This is no Carrie White, Jennifer from Jennifer’s Body (2009), or Dani from Midsommar (2019), no it’s just a psychopathic scanner versus her Tibetan Monk trained scanner brother. Nothing to see here, folks.