Trancers

Up for review today is the first of a 6 film series. 1985's Trancers, directed by Charles Band, starring Tim Thomerson (Iron Eagle, and too many other things to mention) as Jack Deth - a trooper sent from the future to the year 1985. Deth is trying to stop a criminal mastermind named Whistler, who controls his victims through some mysterious psychic ability that turns them into zombies. Whistler is trying to go back and kill his enemies ancestors so they're wiped out in his present time.

When Deth goes back to 1985, he meets Leena, played by a young Helen Hunt (Mad About You, As Good As it Gets, etc) who he recruits to try to protect the last remaining ancestors of the future leaders of "Angel City". Angel City is the new Los Angeles, after LA floods. Deth is exposed to LA, a city he's never actually been to, except in diving expeditions. What results is a fun ride through 80's sci-fi.

Trancers takes a little from that 80's sci-fi with an attitude of "a little bit of this, a little bit of that". The Deth character is a little like the Rick Deckard character played by Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, and at the beginning it tries to emulate the neo-noir style of Ridley Scott's film. The plot obviously takes from James Cameron's The Terminator, which only came out a year before Trancers.

The sets that take place from the future are pretty cheesy, and look pretty cheap. The 1985 setting looks really good and believable, which I wouldn't think was very hard to pull off since it looks like it was mostly filmed in LA. One of my favorite effects was when Deth would be driving with Leena on the city streets, and you could tell they were obviously on some kind of flatbet truck. They were driving a classic Thunderbird, but they were too high off the ground, and Thomerson would turn the wheel back and forth but the car keeps going straight regardless of how many times the wheel is turned.

I didn't expect much from this movie, but it's a great starting point for the Trancers franchise. This movie is a lot of fun, and it's not too long. With credits, the film clocks in at 76 minutes... Just an hour and 12 minutes, and it fills that entire time with enough movie to keep any sci-fi and b-movie fan entertained.

We'll be reviewing more of the films from this franchise, so keep your eyes open for those reviews in the upcoming weeks.