ALL SCI-FI

[Bogmeister]

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This was from producer/director Charles Band, known for his low budget sci-fi and horror since the late seventies (he was responsible for Laserblast in '78). This might be his most famous effort because it spawned a bunch of direct-to-video sequels and may also be his best. It's derivative of both Blade Runner and The Terminator. But it's also innovative and entertaining, despite the very low budget.

Tim Thomerson stars as a plainclothes cop of the far future, year 2247, with the unusual name of Jack Deth. Like Decker in Blade Runner, he provides some narration at the beginning. His nemesis is a criminal named Whistler, who can convert people into zombie-like killers — the ones so named in the film's title.

Whistler's latest plan is to time travel into the past and eliminate ancestors of the city council. This is done by projecting his mind into one of his own ancestors (this was also the plot of the recent X-Men:Days of Future Past). Deth follows him there — to the then-current eighties L.A. — by inhabiting the mind of his ancestor, Phil Deth. He meets the much-younger Lena (Helen Hunt in an early role), who quickly falls in love with him.

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The drawback to such a low budget venture is that it's not able to convey such a future. The film poster, for example, is misleading — Deth never wears any kind of futuristic police uniform or helmet. He is always dressed like a contemporary cop and behaves like one of those hard-boiled private eyes in a crime noir.

Of course, once he's in the eighties, the film doesn't need to show too many effects or any kind of futuristic set design. He does employ a gizmo which can slow down time for 10 seconds. I thought he could only use this gadget, once but he uses it a 2nd time near the end. Things don't stop moving completely, they just go into very slow motion.

Whistler's mind controls the body of an ancestor who happens to be a high-ranking cop, which means he can usually send other cops after Deth, and he creates those zombie-like Trancers, too. A lot of this takes place in empty alleyways and abandoned buildings, and involves bums, including an ex-baseball player who figures into the plot.

Among the humorous bits, a fellow cop who follows Deth into the past briefly, but the only ancestor he can inhabit was a little girl!

___________________Trancers trailer (1985)

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Trancer trivia: The first sequel wasn't until 1991. Helen Hunt also returned, and she was also in the 2nd sequel in 1992, but not in the later ones in 1994. These last ones were written by comic book writer Peter David, known for his long-running stint on the Hulk comic book series.

BoG's Score: 6 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Krel]

Gene/Jean...Uh, that is Tim Thomerson tried for years to launch a Jack Deth TV series, but it never came to pass.

A very popular character actor, he seemed to be Band's favorite leading man, and he made the films he was in enjoyable. How he never had a bigger career as a leading man, I don't understand.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

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Five of the Trancers films were on YouTube when I wrote this post, and I've downloaded them all using SaveFromNet for YouTube. I'm hoping they won't disappoint me.

The first one below is a different version of the one I posted in the message above. It's 4:3. (Just FYI, guys.)

UPDATE April 4th, 2020: They're all gone from YouTube now, but I have the downloads and can putany-or-all of them on WeTransfer if anybody want's copies.

Remember thought that one I upload it, the videos will only be there for seven day.

On a semi-related note, does anybody else remember All Sci-Fi member Jack Deth? He only has seven posts on the current board, the last of which was on Apr 11, 2017. But he had many post on the old board!

He's just one of about 20 members who used to post regularly, and I greatly miss them all. The old board had 261 members, and about two dozen of them were very active and interesting folks!

Members like Bongopete, larryfoster, Rocky Jones, Andrew Kidd, boaz, and others who posted for a little while after we moved to this current version of All Sci-Fi . . . but then seemed to drift away.

Guys, I hate to say it, but All Sci-Fi is a shadow of its former self. Over the years, I've tried everything I could think of to encourage the current active members to post more often, and to bring back the "lost" ones.

I've also sent numerous invitations to prominent members of the Classic Horror Film Board, and almost all them actually joined All Sci-Fi! But after joining, most of them never posted anything, or they just made a few posts and then vanished.

But I'm not going to give up, dammit, and I appreciate the handful of active, imaginative, and intelligent members who still enjoy All Sci-Fi. I want to thank them all for helping me keep it alive and entertaining.

Keep up the good work, folks! Eventually we'll be the only game in town, and the members of all those poor defunct boards might must migrant here to the The Last and Best Message Board on the Web.

And now . . . who'd like to comment on Trancers?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[ralfy]

Trancers 1, 1080p version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTHElQqIAEE

Trancers 2, 1080p version with Italian subtitles hardcoded:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB6VdGNsJtw