While bored out of my mind this early Monday morning (no work due to the Memorial Day holiday) I do what I usually do to try and get out of it: I surf YouTube. Doing this sometimes alleviates my boredom and sometimes it doesn’t. This time around it did as I came across a scene from a film that has to be one of my all-time favorites. An all-time favorite film and scene both.

The scene I came across is one of the earliest sequences in David Cronenberg’s seminal sci-fi work, Scanners. It stars Michael Ironside in the film’s villanous role as Darryl Revok. In this scene we don’t know he’s the heavy. We suspect something to be off about him, but we can’t put a finger on it. It’s during the unfolding of this short scene that we finally realize that Revok is not what he seems to be as the unfortunate “scanner” expert next to him begins to feel the depths of Revok’s ability. A feeling that soon turns to pain and then finally the explosive result.

I think I was nine years-old when I first saw this scene and to say that it left an indelible mark on me would be an understatement. I was still too young to truly appreciate Cronenberg as a filmmaker then, but years later when I saw this again when film started to become more than just entertainment for me was when I saw just how much a genius the man was. This scene helped put me on what would turn out to be an ongoing love affair of all things Cronenberg.

Also, for those who don’t know, Michael Ironside also ends up voicing that iconic video character Sam Fisher from the Splinter Cell franchise.