TRANCERS

US, 1985, 73 minutes, Colour.
Tim Thommerson, Helen Hunt.
directed by Charles Band.

Trancers is an interesting and enjoyable B budget science fantasy thriller. It is reminiscent of such films as The Terminator, but, more especially, of Blade runner. It was produced and directed by Charles Band, a maker of B budget thrillers like Crash, Parasite, Metal Storm.

The film is set in the future, has time travel, has the atmosphere of a detective coping with androids. The usual ingredients are well presented within the limits of the budget.

1. An entertaining thriller? Time travel? Futuristic science fantasy?

2. Small budget, sets and atmosphere, musical score, brief running time, B budget and success within limits?

3. The plot and the credits, the future, society, the return to the present? Audience enjoyment of time travel? Suspension of disbelief?

4. Future society, parallels with the present, organisation, individuals, government? The bar and the private eye? The police? The trancers and their infiltrating society? Their zombie-like characters? Hold by the superpower? Suspicions, revelations of trancers e.g. the black woman at the bar? Martin Whistler and his power?

5. Jack Deth as hero? Tough, an equivalent blade runner? Alertness. at the bar, the attack of the negro woman. killing? A loner? His values?

6. The Council and its age, experience? The commissioning of Jack Deth to save society? The process of going down the line? His decision to go? His taking the body of his relation Phil Dethton? His mission? Phil's girlfriend, Leena? Her having to cope with Phil and Jack?

7. 1985 and the American style, the police thriller? Deth as a detective in this context? Seeking the trancers? The suicides, Santa Claus, Leena and her help? The violent confrontations of the trancers with Jack?

8. Hap Ashby and his being down and out, baseball background, the plan?

9. Wiseling as a detective, Whistler and his power? Confrontation? Death? Whistler isolated?

10. Jack Deth and his going up and down the line? The deaths of some of the commissioners? His decision to stay in 1985 with Leena?

11. Comic strip style? Illumination of basic attitudes of the present? Reflections about the future? Action and heroics?