20 Best Cult Movies Of The 1980s

Tetsuo: The Iron Man may well have been inspired by classic body horror movies such as Videodrome, but it was Cronenberg himself who kick started the subgenre with Scanners, his 1981 film about telepathic and telekinetic people known as "scanners" hunted down by a sinister organisation called ConSec.

Best known for the infamous exploding head sequence, Scanners is the film which solidified David Cronenberg as a horror filmmaker of the highest order in the eyes of genre fans; a bone fide classic following on from his earlier low budget efforts such as Shivers and Rabid. Starring Michael Ironside as a rogue scanner seeking to bring down the ConSec organisation, it also consolidated some of his key themes, not least the misuse of power by mega corporations with nefarious intentions.

Regarded by many today as a masterwork of horror and a significant development of the genre, Scanners eschews the easy route of simply delivering a gore fest, instead opting for a slow burning dark thriller, culminating in a head throbbing telepathic confrontation.