Cool Videos: How they made the guy’s head explode in Scanners

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

It was 1981, when movies still used practical effects and David Cronenberg gave us perhaps the most infamous sci-fi horror scenes of all time. You might have never seen SCANNERS, but there’s a good chance you’ve seen the well-known scene from the movie. You may have even used the GIF version on this site, maybe after we told you Ben Affleck was going to play Batman? Or you have seen it on other (not as awesome) comment boards around the Internet without knowing it was actually from SCANNERS.

The Criterion Collection recently shared this video that explains how the head explosion scene in SCANNERS was accomplished. It turns out that it was actually a lot of hard work to make Louis Del Grande’s head explode. Man that must have been the best day on the set though, speaking for all gore fanatics, I’m sure we would have all loved to be there.