I've never seen David Cronenberg's 1981 "Scanners", nor its sequels which the "Scanner Cop" films are supposedly a spin-off from. The sequel to "Scanner Cop" is workably unfashionable b-grade stamina, but presentably quick moving with plenty of icky make-up and blood that doesn't let up for one second. Anyhow it's a fun entry consisting of numerous skin-splitting action and carved out tension, but it does lose shape towards the latter end with repetitive actions making their way in. Forget the silly plot, as even though it's an atypical concept, what progresses is predictable (cop after bad guy scenarios) with there being little in the way of a story. What it becomes is nothing more than a slide show for the head-jigs, strained facials (which goes full-ball for the film's climax) and of course the exhilarating make-up effects, which are commendably achieved. Patrick Kilpatrick in the bad guy role is great as the viciously stringent scanner going about scanning the power out of other scanners to become even more powerful, so he can take on scanner detective Samuel Staziak (who's perfectly played Daniel Quinn). Kilpatrick was the only one in the cast that didn't seem to be taking all that seriously with the constant grimaces when notoriously scanning his victims (but he's meant to be playing a nut-case), which was the opposite for a determined, stone-cold Quinn. Khrystyne Haje, Stephen Mendel and Robert Forster provide fine support.
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lost-in-limbo4 December 2009
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Coventry11 December 2023Both "Scanner Cop" and "Scanner Cop 2" can be used as examples to contradict people if they claim that cool and amusing horror movies didn't get made during the 1990s. They may not be masterpieces, but these spinoffs to David Cronenberg's magnificent classic "Scanners" (1981) are action-packed, entertaining, and extremely gore!
Troubled Scanner and young Brad Dourif lookalike Sam Staziak once more needs to control and wisely divide all his powers, this time to defeat a maniacal scanner - Karl Volkin - who found a method to literally drain and absorb the abilities of other Scanners. Volkin is buffing up to confront Staziak because he killed his brother by using his scanning skills during a police intervention.
The script of "Scanner Cop 2" isn't groundbreaking or particularly clever, but it does offer an unpretentious, exhilarating, and straightforward cat-and-mouse situation between a likeable hero and a loathsome villain. The latter, played by Patrick Kilpatrick, is responsible for several of the most sadistic, excruciatingly painful, gooey, and splattery murder sequences of the entire 90s decade. What Volkin does to his fellow Scanners to obtain their abilities is beyond sadistic, as he drains and pulverizes them like a vampire without teeth. Their skin burns, their entire body melts, and their corpses remain behind unidentifiable. Special effects and make-up wizard John Carl Buechler must have tremendously enjoyed himself during this assignment. What makes it extra cruel is that most of these people didn't even (ab)use their scanner skills and were trying to lead a normal life. -
poolandrews14 February 2006Scanner Cop II like the original features scanner Samuel Staziak (Daniel Quinn) who has now made detective in the L.A.P.D. Samuel is currently trying to locate his natural birth Mother & enlists the help of Carrie Goodart (Khrystyne Haje) who happens to be a scanner herself & runs the 'Trans Neurol Research Center', an organisation set up to help scanners such as themselves. Samuel now takes a special form of Ephemerol which lets him have all the advantageous abilities associated with being a scanner without any of the negative side effects. Samuel often puts his scanner ability to good use in the fight against crime in Los Angeles but Samuel's past returns to haunt him. A powerful, & mad, scanner named Karl Volkin (Patrick Kilpatrick) is out for revenge after Samuel put him away in a bust that ended up with Karl's Brother being shot dead. Karl has developed a way to absorb other scanners power & life-force thus increasing his, in a fight to the death Samuel must face the most dangerous adversary he ever has...
Directed by Steve Barnett, who also is credited as post-production supervisor, this is the second & to date last Scanner Cop film which in itself was a spin-off from David Cronenberg's Scanners (1981), a film which I personally can't get on with at all despite it's good reputation. In a series of just two films there is a 50/50 chance that Scanner Cop II will be better than it's predecessor Scanner Cop (1994) right? Well unfortunately even with those odds it isn't, although having said that it's not too far behind it & it's still a fairly decent way to pass 90 odd minutes. The script by Mark Sevi moves along at a nice enough pace but feels very similar to the original. Also like the original Scanner Cop II is as much a police thriller as horror & the decision to take Samuel out of uniform & into plain clothes as a detective was a bad one in my opinion, this is just another cop in a leather jacket running around lifted straight from any number of 80's & 90's low budget action films. The uniform gave Samuel a certain vulnerability & distinctiveness which is missing here as he uses his powers to sort situations out like freeing hostages & in the process defusing a bomb by simply staring at it. In the original Samuel had conflicts with himself & was a well developed character with more depth than usual but in this he is just your average 'save-the-day' action hero with a bad hair cut.
Director Barnett takes over from Pierre David who acts as producer here, he directs with competence but Scanner Cop II has no real style to it. The special make-up effects could have been better & the gore is somewhat restrained, there are some splitting, bubbling, pulsating skin effects & melted bodies but little else except for the obligatory head explosion which you have to wait until the last five minutes to see & frankly it isn't worth the wait & doesn't even come close to the fabulous exploding head from Cronenberg's original.
With a very healthy sounding budget of about $4,000,000 Scanner Cop II should look a hell of a lot better than it does, I mean 4 big ones is a lot of cash for a film such as this, I really can't see where the money went. No major stars, no big action scenes, very limited special effects & only one split second head explosion? You tell me where the money went. The acting was OK & Kilpatrick has a certain intensity & makes for a good villain (am I the only one who thinks he looks like Michael Ironside?) but Quinn definitely isn't all guns blazing action hero material.
Scanner Cop II is a decent enough way to pass 90 odd minutes but just don't expect any kind of classic, worth a watch especially if you enjoyed the original. -
mythicfox24 February 2001Scanner Cop 2 is decent, for a B-Movie. It's certainly watchable. It's not as bad as, say, Scanners 3, but it certainly has its moments. However, I personally feel the movie was cheapened a bit... a constant point of stress in the Scanners universe involved the inner struggle between using Scanner powers and experiencing the side effects, or taking the drugs that dull their powers, possibly becoming addicted and becoming vegetables in the process (as shown by Scanners 2). In this movie, a new Ephemerol is magically created to allow the scanner cop to use his abilities with no penalty, without going nuts in the process. True, addition of this plot point may have possibly taken some of the focus from the movie, but that would be like making a Batman movie which completely ignores the blow dealt to Batman's social life by is 'nightly job'. But I'm getting off-track. Scanner Cop 2 is definitely a good movie, compared to some of the others in the series.
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disdressed1218 September 2007once again,we have B movie with Z grade acting.the dialogue in this one,as in the previous Scanner Cop movie is cringe worthy and delivered the same way.thought the acting wasn't great in this one,our hero,played by Daniel Quinn,has actually improved from the previous movie.not a lot,but some.i didn't find the story particularly compelling,and again,like in the previous film,i really did care either way about the characters.except for one.that would be the villain played by Patrick Kilpatrick.i don't know what it is,but the guy makes a great villain.he just has some quality.plus,in this movie,he was really having fun with the role.one other thing i want to mention.the movie was far too disgusting,for no reason.i don't mind disgust when it serves a purpose,but that isn't the case in this movie.anyway,my vote for Scanner Cop II is a 4.5/10
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NoDakTatum8 October 2023This sequel marks the end of the series...or does it? The rookie cop Staziak (Daniel Quinn) is now a plainclothes detective (he must have had one good year), and uses his scanning capabilities to rout criminals and foil evildoers. We meet an evil scanner (Patrick Kilpatrick)- yes, another one- who has escaped from a mental ward and is trying to kill Staziak. It seems he can also suck the "lifeforce" out of other scanners. You see the scanner finale coming as scanner cop and evil scanner do scanner battle.
In the beginning of the film, Staziak fools a kidnapper into thinking he is an accomplice, not a cop. He does this by "scanning." The problem is the director uses the exact same special effect from "Scanner Cop," but in a very different scanning context. Another complaint I have had about the entire series, and I have seen all the entries, is that the Scanner power is never explained. We see scanners command others to do their will, we see scanners getting scanned, but what specifically does "scanning" entail? Reading minds? This question has never been adequately explained, but now machines can be scanned as well?
The good scanner vs. Evil scanner plot has been done, yet it is still trotted out for this video. This came out years ago now, without a sequel, but after witnessing the rebirth of movie series like James Bond, Halloween, Friday the 13th, etc., I am not holding my breath. In a complete pageant of unoriginality, every single episode of this film series has had an exploding head, but none of them matched the gore of the first film. This showdown is underwhelming. Also known as "Scanners 4: The Showdown." -
Leofwine_draca10 October 2022SCANNER COP II (1995) is the last (for now) and least of the SCANNER franchise and a direct sequel to the last one with Brad Dourif lookalike Daniel Quinn reprising his role of scanning detective Staziak. This time around, he's on the trail of a murdering psychopath who's given up taking his ephemerol to instead go on a city-wide killing spree, murdering other scanners to ingest their powers.
Where to start with this one? It's a real cheapie for sure, a straight-to-video enterprise that looks static and small scale. The plot is extremely limited and basically has the baddie killing people until he faces off with the cop at the end. That's it. Quinn's okay but the film really belongs to B-movie veteran heavy Patrick Kilpatrick who's having a ball as the orgasmic, demented villain. Robert Forster has a small role too. To make things a bit easier there are plenty of gooey and very slimy SFX courtesy of John Carl Buechler, always creative, and at least one crowd-pleasing head explosion. -
Hey_Sweden5 October 2016Karl Volkin (Patrick Kilpatrick) is a vengeance-crazed Scanner who's escaped from prison, and is hellbent on striking back at heroic Scanner cop Samuel Staziak (Brad Dourif look alike Daniel Quinn). What he does to work towards this end is suck the life out of other Scanners, leaving them twisted, burning hunks of flesh. He hopes to become even more powerful than his nemesis, and stops at nothing.
This is actually a pretty good B movie, made with competence (if not flamboyance) at every level. Its story, concocted by Mark Sevi, is ultimately very routine, but director Steve Barnett does keep us entertained. It's amusing, as it always is with these movies, to watch actors make all manner of faces as they unleash their devastating mental abilities. Volkin leaves quite the trail of bodies behind him, so viewers can take comfort in a respectable body count, as well as some reasonably impressive (if protracted) makeup effects sequences devised by John Carl Buechler and his company.
The cast gives it their best effort. Quinn is a decent enough good guy, but he's outshone by veteran movie villain Kilpatrick, who's fun to watch. A number of recognizable actors pop up along the way, although Robert Forster is given precious little to do as Staziaks' superior officer. Khrystyne Hage ('Head of the Class'), Stephen Mendel, Brenda Swanson, Jerry Potter, and Jewel Shepard ("The Return of the Living Dead") co-star, while Eugene Robert Glazer ('La Femme Nikita'), Allan Kolman (Cronenbergs' "Shivers"), Aaron Lustig ("Bad Channels"), and none other than Kane Hodder have small parts.
A worthy follow up to "Scanner Cop".
Seven out of 10. -
mm-3918 June 2023Well better than Scanner Cop 1! Starts out strong with a criminal Scanner who is caught in a small town. The Scanner heavy is played well. There is flashbacks between Scanner cop and the bad guy for good story develop. Scanner heavy is killing off the Scanners in the Scanner network, but why? Scanner cop in the second half becomes bogged down with predictable plot twists; the low budget hit part 2 hard with lame special effects. Well, Scanner Cop II ending is predictable with all story sub plots working out. A bit lame, but okay. If your a Scanner fan you will have to watch all the movies. If not skip this installment. 5 stars.
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Det. Sam Staziak (Quinn) is not simply a Cop On the Edge, he's a scanner Cop On the Edge. As a member of the L.A.P.D., he's used his scanning abilities to thwart bad guys city-wide. His Captain, Jack Bitters (Forster), supports him, but Staziak is having some personal issues, as he's trying to find his mother. Towards this end, he's enlisted the help of fellow scanner Carrie Goodart, who runs the Trans-Neural Resource Center, sort of a non-profit group by and for scanners. But a new threat looms in the form of Karl Volkin, an evil, malevolent scanner who's going around the city killing other scanners in his quest to be the ultimate scanner. Like a vampire, he feeds off their power and is growing more and more strong by the day. Looks like it's time for the ultimate showdown: Staziak vs. Volkin in a mind-melting duel to the death. Who will prevail? We liked Scanner Cop II (or Scanners: The Showdown, as the VHS we viewed has it). As a sci-fi sequel, we went in expecting the worst. But it's really not bad. There are a lot of interesting scanner-based ideas, such as using scanning power for good or evil, the vampiric scanner, and the scanner killing other scanners for scanner domination. Did we use the word "scanner" enough yet? There are other ideas woven into the plot as well, which helped immensely. If there are ideas that are reasonably well-thought-out, it's hard to go totally wrong, and thankfully the writers knew that so they developed certain thoughts. It's all perfect for the video stores and pay cable outfits of the 90's. On top of that, there are some cool and gory effects, making Scanner Cop II better than expected.
Patrick Kilpatrick usually plays a baddie and here you get to see him at the height of his evil powers. Robert Forster does almost a sit-down role but he adds color and professionalism to the proceedings. Kane Hodder and Jewel Shepard appear in small roles, but the true star of the show isn't Quinn, it's a man we think is named Julian Neil (but we're not sure) who plays "Kidnapper Leader". This bad guy who is not important to the plot at all, gives an insanely over the top performance. He has a highly comical Muppet voice and he just about steals the movie with his brief screen time. This guy should have gone far.
We have a screener copy (not to be confused with a scanner copy) of this on VHS from Republic Pictures. In a packaging move we haven't seen anywhere else, there's a gatefold flap that unfolds from the left hand side of the box. We don't know if it reached stores with this added value piece. It might be just for the screener, or perhaps just for the Canada VHS, which is where it was released as Scanners: The Showdown. We thought this was worth mentioning because it was so unusual.
In all, Scanner Cop II was way better than we thought it would be.
For more action insanity, drop by: www.comeuppancereviews.com -
BandSAboutMovies23 December 2021Also known as Scanners: The Showdown, this brings back LAPD scanner cop Sam Staziak (Daniel Quinn) and places him on the case of renegade scanner Karl Volkin. He's already put the man in jail once before and killed his brother, but now Volkin has been killing other scanners and adding their power to his own.
Volkin gets his revenge by causing Staziak's mother to kill herself - well, she sacrifices herself instead of letting him scan her - and that leads to a brutal final battle in a warehouse.
Khrystyne Haje is in this, following being in Head of the Class. She's also in Cyborg 3: The Recycler and Demolition University, but don't feel bad for her. In 2001, it was reported that she was the quarter owner of a Silicon Valley company worth $500 million.
Director Steve Barnett also made Mindwarp and Hollywood Boulevard II, a movie that I never knew existed until now. Writer Mark Sevi seems to be a sequel master, scripting films like Class of 1999 II: The Substitute, Ghoulies IV, Dream a Little Dream 2, Excessive Force II: Force on Force, Dead on: Relentless II and Relentless IV: Ashes to Ashes.
Plus Robert Forester automatically adds several stars to any movies he shows up in. -
hwg1957-102-26570417 January 2022A vengeful scanner Karl Volkin escapes from an asylum and proceeds to kill other scanners to gain enough power from their life essence (or something) to destroy our hero scanner cop Samuel Staziak (returning from the first 'Scanner Cop' film) who had arrested him before. Detective Staziakis is played again by Daniel Quinn and he is blander than in the previous film, The film has two things in its favour that makes it as good as the first film. One is Patrick Kilpatrick as the villainous Volkin with the unholy smile, being intensely scary as he stalks his victims. The movie is at its best when he is onscreen. Two is the squishy make-up and creepy practical effects that are quite alarming when Volkin is attacking people and draining them, helped by the grinding music score by Richard Bowers. Nicely nasty.
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I enjoyed SCANNERS 2 and SCANNERS 3, which I thought had effective spins on the original SCANNERS movie. Recently I saw SCANNER COP, and I enjoyed that movie as well, so I eagerly rented SCANNER COP II when I found it at my local video store. Unfortunately, this entry in the series, while not really awful, is disappointing all the same. I will admit that the movie never has a boring moment, and it boasts some good make-up effects and other gory moments. Despite this, the movie comes across as quite cheap at times, with shabby sets or locations that look like they were shot in abandoned warehouses. There is also a subplot involving the hero's long- lost mother that seems awkwardly tacked on, and is hardly worked on for the most part. The biggest problem is that much of the movie seems to be repeating itself, with the villain doing the same things over and over. If you've seen the other entries in the series, you might as well watch this, but definitely keep your expectations low.
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scannercopmovies25 October 2020This movie, in my Opinion was better than Scanner Cop because it had more of a storyline to it!
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This movie, like the other Scanner movies made past the first one, had good make-up effects, but also some less-than-par acting (the hold-up/hostage scene with the three thugs was so bad it was hilarious). But other than that, the movie was very entertaining in my opinion. Carl Volkin, played by the intimidating-looking Pat Kilpatrick, is an escaped criminal scanner on the loose, trying to become the most powerful scanner in the world. He accomplishes this by draining the life force of various scanners around the city, resulting in some bizarre melting/death sequences. In the end he has to contend with Sam Staziak, the most useful cop on the police force (obviously). There's a few cool-looking face-contorting illusion sequences, and a head explosion in the end (of course). Overall this movie was fast-paced, the acting was a little hard to swallow, but the special effects were awesome for a b-movie. I'd recommend it if you like innovative sci-fi or cop action movies.