Trancers!

"Only squids can be tranced."

An iconic line from the 80's, I remember saying this to lots of chicks in high school. Maybe that explains why I had such bad luck with women. Hmmm. For those in the know, it's a quote from Tim Thomerson's TRANCERS! This was an entire series of movies, back in the 80's and 90's, when Tim Thomerson was as famous as Sylvester Stallone and Helen Hunt was somebody who had never been in Twisters yet.

The original movie came out in 1985, about a year after Terminator did so well at the box office, and was a different take on the whole Time Travel schtick hollywood loved back then. Tim Thomerson plays Jack Deth, a cop from the future who travels down the line (their way of saying, into the past) into the body of one of his ancestors in order to hunt down Whistler, a psychic from the future. At least, I think he's a psychic, the way they describe him, he's some kind of superhumanoid smarty-pants kind of guy. Only, in the movie, he seems like just your average bad guy with an army of thugs.

Helen Hunt was 22 years old when she made this movie, and I thought it was one of her first roles, but a quick check of IMDB tells me she had been acting since she was 10 years old, so this was just another paycheck for her at this point. Although as far as I can tell, Trancers (followed by Trancers 2 and 3) was the only series of movies she's ever done. Trancers, of course, was but one of Tim Thomerson's series, starring in things such as Dollman, Dollman vs demonic toys, and so on (most of which are viewable on netflix).

What really confuses me, apart from the whole time travel thing, is how the hell a character actor as prolific as Art le Fleur (who played Thomerson's boss in trancers 1 and 2), who has played in movies alongside sylvester stallone, mel gibson, and dozens of other A-list actors, does NOT have an IMDB bio. I just don't get it. The guy's been working in hundreds of films since the 70's and there's just NOTHING about him at all. Makes no sense whatsoever.

On a sad note, I was reading Tim Thomerson's bio when I noticed Brion James had passed on about, oh, 13 years ago, now (he died in 1999). He was one of my favorite B-movie actors and I had been wondering where he'd gone to lately. Turns out he had a heart attack just two years after playing the general to Bruce Willis' character in Fifth Element. Tragic really, I would have loved to continue to see him in movies well into the 2000's.

But back to Trancers. If this series isn't in dire need of a remake, I don't know what is. How can you compete with such lines as "Only squids have dry hair" and "You're going up the line... with no stops!" For those in the know, squids are weak-willed people. Thus the phrase, "only squids can be tranced" meaning, only weak-willed people can be psychically dominated by a psychic from the future. Or, by jedi, apparently, if you remember the scene from Return of the Jedi, where the jedi mind tricks fail to work on Jabba the Hutt.

So let's sum up the plot, and if you want to watch the movies, stop reading here. Jack Deth is a trancer-hunter. He killed Whistler about 6 months before the start of the first film, and has been cleaning up whistler's "trancers" (psychically dominated zombies) for months. Apparently how this works is, once you've been tranced, you're basically a zombie drone. You're still technically alive, but at some point (like the appearance of Jack Deth), you're going to turn into a raving psychotic killer with superhuman strength and bad skin. You aren't actually a zombie-zombie, meaning, bullets still kill you, but once you're dead you just turn to ash because you're, well, already a goner, basically.

So Jack finds out whistler isn't actually dead, he's just escaped into the past and he's systematically killing off the ancestors of the members of the high council. Council members are basically the final arbiters of government in the future, so obviously this is a bad thing. Basically, whistler is doing what "The Terminator" couldn't, killing off people in the past to prevent them from stopping him in the future. Which just reinforces what I always say, never send a cybernetic terminator to the past when you can send a psychic brainwasher instead. Uh. Yea. Which means Jack has to go into the past and, just like in the Terminator, prevent the final ancestor of the last council member from dying so he can live long enough to procreate and thus ensure the future council.

Now here's where things get fuzzy. The final ancestor is actually a 50-year old bum. At least, he looks 50, he's grey-haired, out of shape, grizzled, apparently an ex-baseball player, and at the time of the movie in 1985, Jack has a baseball card with Hap Ashby on it from 1963. Now... doing some quick calculations in my head... If Ashby was in his 20's in 1963... let's see.... carry the one... he's at least 50 years old in the first movie. yet jack tells him he's going to "get off the sauce, find a woman, get married and have kids..." Hmmmm. Now I know men can still have kids into their later years, but... really?

So then 6 years later, when Trancers 2 starts, Jack is living with Ashby, and ashby is now a millionaire, having done very well on the stock market, or some ridiculous explanation. In any case... It's 6 years later, there's no girl in sight, Ashby has to be close to 60, and still no wife or kid? Doesn't that kind of contradict the first movie just a tad?

Ah well, suffice it to say, Trancers 1 and 2 go very well together. Done 6 years apart, the only differences I can tell are that Tim Thomerson seems to have aged just a smidge, and helen hunt goes from being someone who looks like a teenager in her first movie to someone who's going to do Twister just 5 years after making trancers 2. She obviously looks older and seems more polished as an actress. Essentially, she doesn't look like someone who should be doing Trancers 2. lol The music is the same in both movies, Art le Fleur plays the same character, and if Tim Thomerson kicks off any time in the next few weeks, I'm going to picture him as the scene in the end of Trancers 2, having cleaned up the trancers and just bought a house with Helen Hunt to live happily ever after.

I can see why Tim Thomerson returned to Trancers 2, though, I mean, the script calls for his boss to be in the body of one teenage girl, his ex-wife (who died before the first movie) is in the body of another teenage girl, and Helen Hunt plays his current wife. The man is literally surrounded by teenage girls. And he looks like he's having a rough time? Pish! Guy needs to loosen up a little.

Of course, Tim goes on to star in Trancers 3, 4, and 5. I've seen these films but they aren't currently available on netflix. Helen Hunt is in 3, and in 4 and 5, Jack goes so far back into the past he has to kill trancers with swords. None of those are ever as good as 1 and 2 were, although honestly, 1 was still much better as far as good lines go. Jack hardly ever calls anyone a squid in the second movie, although Jeffrey Combs (of Reanimator fame) does put in an appearance as a lab geek crony of the bad guy, played by Richard Lynch! Who, as we all know, has played every bad guy in every movie in every decade, ever. lol

This month, in honor of the oscars, I'm going to try to review movies of some people who deserve oscars, but never got them, simply because they were in horror films instead of mainstream drama. I was discussing flicks with one of my buddies earlier and he was telling me about a scene in Pulp Fiction, which i have not seen all of. Because there's no monsters in it, that's why! No monsters, no watchy! No movie is ever complete without SOME kind of monster in it. Seriously, who watches movies without monsters in them? WEIRDOS, THAT'S WHO!!!! So now I have to try and sit through all of Pulp Fiction just so I can see what he was talking about. How can people watch that drivel with a straight face? Using GUNS to kill people instead of lasers shooting out of eye sockets? How archaically laughable!