The fourth film in the Scanners series and the first film in the Scanner Cop series, this movie is all about rookie LAPD cop Sam Staziak (Daniel Quinn),a scanner who has been brought onto the force to use his telekinetic and telepathic abilities to stop crime.

When a series of murders target the police, Sam begins to lose it, with his powers going into overdrive and his mind potentially betraying him as he hunts the killer.

In all honestly, this movie is hundreds of times better than it has any right to be. You have to admire the sheer balls it takes to grab the Scanners idea, throw it into a straight police movie and just go with it. Even better, Richard Lynch, the bad guy of all bad guys, shows up and does his thing.

This was directed, produced and written by Pierre David and was the first film he directed. He executive produced Scanners, Videodrome and The Brood. He may have only directed one other movie, Serial Killer, but he has 216 production credits, mainly TV movies like She Is Not Your Daughter, My Daughter's Psycho Friend, Murdered at 17 and My Life as a Dead Girl.

I still can't believe how much I loved this movie.

This surprisingly enjoyable B-movie is a cut above most efforts from the early 1990s, thanks to a plot which takes the series in a new, interesting direction, plenty of gore and violence, and some decent acting. It's a movie with no pretensions which really packs in the groceries when it comes to gory action - I've never seen so many policemen get violently murdered in a single film! You know exactly what you're going to get with a film like this and it doesn't disappoint.

The opening is admittedly cheesy, with a scene where a hallucinating man sees lots of little screaming faces appear in his forehead (nice effects, but there's something just too rubbery about it). After this arresting sight, things slow down in pace as we are introduced to the film's main hero, played by Daniel Quinn. Quinn is very charismatic in his role of the cop, torn between wanting a normal life and using his special powers as a method to fight crime. In fact, I really liked his performance and most of the performances in this film - some, like Richard Lynch's, are deliberately over the top yet still highly amusing. Hilary Shepard is an alluring femme fatale, while Richard Grove provides solid support. Only the introduction of Darlanne Fluegel as an unnecessary love interest rings false - her character is completely worthless to this film's development.

The film focuses on a series of violent murders committed by members of the public who have been "programmed" to kill officers on sight. The unwilling murderers hallucinate that their worst fears are in front of them (bugs, gang members, etc.) leading them to attack with extreme violence. Of course, this is just an excuse for the special effects guys to show as many different monstrous beasties as possible. All of the classic 'scanning' action is saved for the film's finale, where the grue really flies.

One clever scene has our cop hero scanning a dead woman - and following her soul down into hell. This scene is actually pretty highbrow for a simple film like this. There's a grand total of one exploding head, which is nice and meaty, and lots of disturbing imagery of asylum patients abusing themselves. The build-up to the ending is rushed and full of plot holes (including one of those staple moments from the Bond films and many others, where the chief villain traps the hero and leaves them to a fate worse than death, only for the hero to escape in the nick of time). However the final hospital battle is an intense one, with full of gooey bits and even some brief, effective stop-motion thrown into the brew. It finishes with the baddie's metal head-plate blasting from his skull in a spectacular fashion. SCANNER COP may not be an epic, but it sure is a lot of fun.

Scanner(one who can make a telepathic connection reading someone else's mind). Los Angeles rookie cop Sam Staziak(Daniel Quinn)happens to have inherited the ability to scan. An evil wrong-doer Karl Glock(Richard Lynch)is brain-washing common people into killing cops. It is easy to see that there is hardly a budget for special effects; nevertheless some scenes are pretty gory and disturbing. This movie is more science fiction than horror. The latter is more believable of course: if you have nothing else to choose from...SCANNER COP is OK.

Lynch is probably the only actor you'll recognize. Others of note: Brion James, Darlanne Fluegel, Richard Grove and Luca Bercovici.