Trancers |
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 • USA • 1984 • 76m •    • Directed by: Charles Band. • Starring: Tim Thomerson, Helen Hunt, Michael Stefani, Art LaFleur, Telma Hopkins, Richard Herd, Anne Seymour, Miguel Fernandes, Biff Manard, Peter Schrum, Barbara Perry, Brad Logan, Minnie Summers Lindsey. • Music by: Phil Davies, Mark Ryder.      Jack Deth is a trooper in Angel City, circa 2247, mopping up the last of the disciples of the Martin Whistler. Whistler uses his psychic power to 'trance' those with weak minds and force them to obey his every desire. Whistler had been thought to be dead by now, but he's alive and well, and in the year 1985. Whistler's plan - to hunt down the ancestors of the City Council. With the Council disbanded, nothing is to stop Whistler from controlling the city. That's where Jack Deth fits in. Jack is sent back in time by inhabiting the body of his ancestor. The only problem is that Whistler's ancestor is a police detective, and he's begun trancing people back in 1985. With the help of Lena, a strong-minded punk rock girl, he must find and protect Hap Ashby, a former baseball pitcher now living on Skid Row, and face Whistler in a final confrontation.
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Review:
My first introduction to the cinema of Charles Band began with the Low Budget riff on Gremlins in the shape of Ghoulies, nothing that great, just a slight distraction for eighty odd minutes, now this being the 1980's the video shops were littered with all sorts of mindless dreck cluttering up the shelves, and being of an age, with an enquiring mind, in short and even still to this day, a sucker for a good looking cover i stumbled upon Trancers, not really knowing that it was made by the same producer.
Now Comparisons have been made down through the years, that Band was lurking in the shadows of Roger Corman as the pretender to the thrown as King of the B Picture, Alas my own take on that notion, is that Corman was from another time and age, that while he still maintains a presence in the Low Budget Genre Market with all the Various Dinosaurs, Carnosaurs and bubble headed Muscleman pictures, Charles Band was the man with plan and so it was, and so it began with Trancers.
Now everyone seems to think that this movie should be compared to the likes of The Terminator, However remember this being the 80's what film didn't compare just a little like something they had just watched. This Movie written by the combo partnership of Bilson & DeMeo [the writers behind the just as brilliant Zone Troopers] had concocted a hard boiled vision of the future whereby Tim Thomerson essays the spirit of a down at heel gumshoe caught between a rock and hard place and hell hath no fury if you come between him and the answers that he seeks in his quest to save the future.
At a mere running time of 82 minutes, the standard running time for the majority of all Empire and Future Full Moon Movies, the movie benefits from a crackerjack script, bubbling over with witty one liners[Spoken by the Tim Man Himself]ably assisted on his travels by the elf like Lena, the sexy santa helper from the north pole shopping mall. I never thought about it back then, but as this arena of film-making has become Tim Thomerson's bread and Butter, does Helen Hunt still care to remember her early hike up the Hollywood Ladder by appearing in such a low budgeted but very high spirited movie.
Back then ofcourse, who knew? Then Again who was i to say that, when i was just a teenager, i would find myself hooked on low budget B movies or to be more precise, the low budget B Movie that rolled of the Charles Band Conveyor belt all those years ago and even still to this day, and it all began with the first adventure of a future cop called Jack Deth, he who said that dry hair was for squids.
The many sequels that followed down through the years may not have surpassed the class and feel of the original, but they still had Jack Deth as the main protagonist, in his world rules were for jokers, he lived by his own rules. My all time favourite from the Charles Band.
This Jack is the reel deal.If you haven't already seen it, which i seriously doubt, do yourself a favour and give it another watch, you'll see what i mean.
Review by jamesbourke50 from the Internet Movie Database.
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