File under “esoteric gifts to give someone to let them know they’ve blown your mind”:

These are cool. The company Forever Midnight is offering up these killer “magic motion” lenticular post-cards of the infamous “head explosion” scene from David Cronenberg’s 1981 sci-fi horror masterpiece, Scanners.

I’m a sucker for lenticular shit. I have a Jesus portrait with eyes that follow me around my room, keeping me sin-free. It works most of the time. But these Scanners cards are among the the best uses I’ve ever seen of the novelty effect, sometime called “wiggle pictures,” since the process was developed in the 1940s.

The “head explosion” scene from Scanners is one of the great practical make-up effects of all time. The effect was achieved by creating a latex replica of the actor’s head, using a life cast. The head was fitted over a plaster base and the insides were filled with fake blood and various bits of dog food and rabbit livers and other things laying around the effects studio. The head was then actually blasted from behind by a 12-gauge shotgun held by special effects supervisor Gary Zeller. The end result is one of the biggest “oh shit” moments in cinema history.
 

 
You’ll have to make the jump to see more head explody…

“I must remind you that the scanning experience is usually a painful one, sometimes resulting in nosebleeds, earaches, stomach cramps, nausea, sometimes other symptoms of a similar nature.”

Those words, from David Cronenberg’s anomic 1981 classic Scanners, are spoken by the unnamed scanner, played by Louis Del Grande, who has no idea that he is about to undergo a fate far worse than a mere earache.

In 2014 the Criterion Collection came out with a new DVD edition of Cronenberg’s twitchy, sweaty masterpiece of ESP horror. The DVD packaging featured some memorable cover art by Connor Willumsen, but casual observers may not have twigged just how many excellent and evocative artworks Willumsen concocted for the project.

Fortunately, Willumsen’s website features a Scanners section with all of the art he created for Criterion, including preliminary sketches. Here’s a sample, but go to his website to check out the full array of images.

Click on any image for a larger view.
 

 

 
More ‘Scanners’ portraits after the jump…