The Bad Penny (beta)

Can’t seem to find much discussion about this online, but does anyone else notice that David Cronenberg’s Scanners (1981) and Brian De Palma’s The Fury (1978) – both films that come very, very highly recommended – are virtually identical? Both movies revolve around young adults who possess telekinetic powers that can control people à la The Force from Star Wars. These outcasts keep their potentially threatening, manipulative abilities on the DL, find solace living in secret societies, and are hunted by malevolent thugs out to kill them.

The exploding cherry on top of this theory? How often do you see self-combustion sequences onscreen?

Scanners:

The Fury:

De Palma would be the obvious plagiaristic culprit here, as his 1981 John Travolta classic (not an oxymoron!), Blow-Out, copped copiously from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) – two even greater masterpieces. ‘Cept The Fury came out three years before Scanners, which Cronenberg himself wrote.

Please share any insights if you got ’em, so long as they don’t cause anyone’s head to explode.

This entry was posted on 08/30/2025 at 7:04 am and is filed under Doppelgängers, Essays, Features with tags Brian De Palma, David Cronenberg, Scanners, The Fury. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.