SunnyHello Nice effects though.

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Scott LeBrun Karl 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.

lost-in-limbo 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.

Paul Andrews Scanner 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.

mythicfox Scanner 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.