What does it take to be a
punk rock chick? If you’re Helen Hunt,
and you’re starring in a low budget sci-fi thriller set in Eighties
Los Angeles, the answer is “a very thin streak of blue hair”.
That’s all it takes to define her character of Leena as a wild
and crazy wild child in this cult classic.
As is often the case with these low budget gems, the premise for Trancers
is openly swiped from bigger and better hits of the era. Our hero is
Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson), a future cop who relentlessly hunts down Trancers,
the brainwashed zombie slaves of his nemesis, Whistler. Burned out and
clearly obsessed, his fondness for Raymond Chandler cliché marks
him out from the start as a more affordable version of Blade Runner’s
replicant-hunting hero, Deckard.
Booted from the force for continuing his crusade long after his superiors
have ordered him to stop, Deth is press ganged back into active service
when it transpires that Whistler has fled backwards in time and plans
to murder the ancestors of the ruling council in order to erase their
very existence. Deth is to be sent back to find and protect these innocents.
No prizes for spotting that this particular plot element bares a remarkable
similarity to a certain Schwarzenegger cyborg movie that opened the year
before.
Time travel in the Trancers world is by means of a drug that propels
your consciousness back into the body of one of your genetic ancestors.
Of course, in accordance with cheap sci-fi lore, your ancestors always
look exactly like you – in much the same way that cut-price B-movie
aliens always find a way to disguise themselves as ordinary humans (see:
Ed Harris).
So Jack Deth jumps back into the body of the less impressively named
Phil Deth, and encounters Phil’s latest sexual conquest – Leena,
the feisty blue-streaked punk rock chick played by a 22-year-old Helen
Hunt.
She spends all of five minutes disbelieving his outlandish story of time
travel, psychic zombies and super-villains, before enthusiastically joining
him on his quest to stop Whistler from doing whatever it was he was planning
on doing.
Along the way she, of course, falls in love with Jack Deth – even
though he’s clearly twice her age, and insane to boot – as
well as indulging in such heart-pounding action sequences as a fight
with a zombie Santa, an escape from a deadly tanning booth and a very
slow chase sequence on a small moped.
The movie is impossibly cheap, visibly scrimping on even the most basic
requirements and filmed on location in the backstreets of LA, probably
within walking distance of the production offices. Hunt somehow emerges
with her dignity relatively intact, as although she’s bogged down
in the often incomprehensible script, the character gives her plenty
of opportunity to showcase the sarcastic girl-next-door allure that would
eventually lead her to the Oscar for As Good As It Gets, and the sitcom
fame of Mad About You.
Jack Deth, sadly, never got his own sitcom.
Need to know: Trancers was produced and directed by Charles Band, the
no-budget impresario behind such franchises as Puppet Master and Subspecies
. He also produced Parasite (see: Demi Moore) and the Ghoulies movies
(see: Matthew Lillard). Trancers spawned five sequels, all starring Tim
Thomerson, the most recent being Trancers 6: Life After Deth, which landed
on video rental shelves in 2002.
Availability: Trancers is out on budget DVD in the UK and US.
