TRANCERS

(vt Future Cop) Film (1984). Lexyn/Empire. Prod/dir Charles BAND, starring Tim Thomerson, Helen Hunt, Michael Stefani. Screenplay Danny Bilson, Paul DeMeo. 76 mins. Colour.

   Band apparently learned from his early, mostly bad movies, for this small film is confident, stylish sf. Future cop Jack Deth (Thomerson) travels back from AD2247 to present-dayLos Angeles in search of dangerous mystic Whistler (Stefani), who has fled back in time and now occupies the body of an ancestor. Protected by a number of zombie-like "trancers", Whistler plans to murder the ancestors of his future opposition. Although primarily an action movie, T is packed with sf ideas, and it has an interesting punk look about it. There are astonishing plot resemblances to The TERMINATOR , released in the same year.The sequel, Trancers 2: The Return of Jack Deth (1991, vt Future Cop 2), prod and dir Band, written by Band with Jackson Barr, again starsThomerson and Hunt. Convolutions of TIME TRAVEL make Jack Deth, 6 years on, a bigamist, his original (dead) wife, played cutely by Megan Ward, being sent back (alive) to the present. Soap-opera elements are played out against further battles with trancers, who use a trendy ecological movement as a front. This returns us to the awfulness of Band's early films. Maybe T was a happy accident. Trancers 3: Deth Lives (1993, vt Future Cop 3), dir C. Courtney Joyner, carries Deth to an even furtherfuture than the one from which he originally came, and is a partial return to form. Trancers 4: Jack of Swords (1994), dir David Nutter, takes place in a medieval alternate world called Orpheus and was shot back to back in Romania with Trancers 5: Sudden Death (1995), dir David Nutter, whichfinishes the SWORD-AND-SORCERY story begun in the fourth film. These last two represent a sad falling off and are not really sf. All these sequels went straight to video.

   PN