I love time travel movies so it’s strange that I’m only seeing
Trancers
now for the first time. This story of a man from the future going back
in time to “save the world” from an evil villain was certainly
overshadowed by a much similar movie that came out the very same year,
and let’s face it, a better movie,
The Terminator.
With an even lower budget, and dodgier script,
Trancers
had only stars Tim Thomerson and Helen Hunt to compete with the likes
of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Bien and Linda Hamilton.
And it didn’t have the world’s greatest poster.
Producer/Director
Charles Band
valiantly tried to step into the marketplace abandoned by Roger Corman,
but unfortunately the marketplace no longer really existed and thus
Charles Band became a straight-to-video producer and
Trancers is one of those rare films of his that did get a little bit of a theatrical release.
Though it’s five sequels had no such luck.
The story starts off in the year 2247, where police trooper Jack Deth (
Tim Thomerson) is checking out a local diner in the off chance there could be a trancer inside. A villainous psycho named Whistler (
Michael Stefani),
that Jack supposedly killed years ago, had the ability to turn weak
willed people into murderous mind-controlled zombies and Jack has made
it his life’s mission to track down and take out all those remaining
trancers.
“Tell me about your mother.”
At the diner he finds a low life looking patron that Jack thinks
could be a trancer, but it turns out that it’s the kindly old black
waitress who is the trancer. We learn that when a trancer is triggered
they go from mild mannered to zombie make-up applied psychopath in a
heartbeat. So anyone is a potential threat.
Do not ask her about today’s specials.
After frying the trancer Jack is confronted by his boss McNulty (
Art LaFleur)
who orders him to get back to his regular job and to stop this one man
war obsession with trancers. Jack does the only thing a rogue cop could
do in this situation, he tosses his badge to McNulty and quits.
The year 2247 on a $1.48 budget.
Deth’s retirement is cut short when McNulty and some troopers drop by
to interrupt his diving on the sunken remains of Los Angeles to tell
him that Whistler is alive and targeting members of the council
chairmen. This should be impossible, as the High Council is located in
mountain fortress, but Whistler has used a drug that allows one to
travel back in time and enter the body of one of his ancestors and then
simply track down and kill an ancestor of a council member which will
result in all of their descendants ceasing to exist. Once the council is
out of the way, Whistler has an army of trancers ready to swoop in and
take over Angel City.
“Jack, he could also go back and inspire an Ashton Kutcher movie about the Butterfly Effect.”
Jack volunteers to take the drug that will send him back to 1984
where he will inhabit his great-great-grandfather, a journalist named
Phil Dethton, while tracking down Whistler who is in-turn occupying the
body of police detective named Weisling. Before Jack leaves 2247 he
incinerates the body of Whistler so the sonofabitch will have no body to
return to. This displeases his bosses who wanted to put Whistler on
trial for already making one of the Council chairmen cease to exist.
I bet they end up drawing a penis on his face while he’s out of his body.
Jack finds himself in the bathroom of Phil Dethton who has just had a great night of sex with a punk rocker named Leena (
Helen Hunt).
Doing his best to cover for the fact that he has no idea who Leena is
or how to navigate Los Angeles circa 1984 he takes Leena to her job as
mall Santa helper. Lucky for Deth it turns out that Santa is a newly
turned trancer and immediately tries to kill him, which aids in proving
to Leena his crazy story about being a time traveling cop. I myself have
tried, and believe you me it is a tough sell.
“You’ve just made Santa’s shit list, Mister Deth.”
The rest of the film consists of Jack Deth and Leena wandering around
Los Angeles trying to track down the ancestors of the two remaining
council members before Whistler and his trancer flunkies can kill them.
Overall, the fish-out-of-water element of the movie works well, as Tim
Thomerson can pull off the world weary Dashiell Hammet character
perfectly and Helen Hunt can easily handle her comic role as slightly
ditzy punk girl (though we are talking very lite-punk rocker) and the
action though of a low budget nature is effective enough.
Helen Hunt is quite adorable in this film.
What does fail is any moment dealing with time travel. Now the idea
of using a drug to send your mind back in time to an earlier ancestor is
quite clever and nicely dispatches the need for a time machine, but
what they fail to even comprehend (or apparently care about) is the
cause and effect of time travel. When Deth is first hired to go on this
mission to stop Whistler, Chairman Spencer (
Richard Herd)
describes his fellow councilman, as well as his descendants, as
disappearing before his eyes after Whistler killed his ancestor.
However, killing the man’s ancestors should result in the man never
having been born, meaning no one should have any memory of him ever
having existed. Killing someone in the past should have an immediate
effect on the future, and the only way this would work is if Whistler
left a bragging video explaining how there used to be three council
members, and now there are only two.
“Thinking of time travel makes my head hurt.”
So the time travel element fails but then so do most of The
Terminator movies, with only the first one’s closed loop holding up
quite well. With a plot that makes little to no sense and with low
budget’s cheesy effects this move should have been relegated to the
video dustbins, but somehow the cast pull this off (I don’t give much
credit to Charles Band here) as Thomerson and Hunt have great chemistry
together, and the supporting cast with the likes of character actors Art
LaFleur and
Telma Hopkins as the time travel engineer gel beautifully.
Whistler and his trancer cops.
Science Note: Jack
Deft has a cool watch that extends one second to ten seconds for the
wearer and uses it a couple of times to save the day. First to evade a
firing squad of trancer cops and then secondly to catch a falling Leena;
that he should have taken the time out of evading the firing squad to
put a bullet in Whistler gets a pass as the script has Leena ask Deth
why he didn’t kill Whistler and he tells her he didn’t have time to save
her and get Whistler. *
bullshit* But I won’t let slide the
fact that while time is frozen apparently gravity is localized. Jack
should not have been able to slide down a wire to get under a falling
Leena, because with time frozen so is gravity and thus would not allow
Deth to travel any faster than how she was falling.
Now all its goofiness is available in Hi-Def!
As a time travel movie it doesn’t quite
work, but as a fun 80’s action film it’s worth checking out. Even with
its plot and technical failings the cast do not hold back and all
deliver terrific performances.
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