It’s the most famous scene in Scanners (1981). A bespectacled, white-collar business executive (Louis Del Grande) sitting at the front of a lecture hall, grimaces and writhes. His fingers fidget in an ever more manic fashion. The audience looks on in grim fascination. Finally, his head explodes in a huge, orgasmic eruption of blood and gore.
In Videodrome (1983), a VHS tape begins to pullulate and throb. Max (James Woods) is asked to “open up” before the cassette is inserted into a horizontal slit in his stomach. When Max sticks his hand into his own entrails, the cassette has mysteriously changed into a gun. A voice in his head tells him: “Kill your partners.”
