Saturday 13 October 2007

Trancers



What is there to say about Trancers? Trash or
Classic you can't ignore it.

I first became aware of it through director Alex Cox when he featured it in a season of cult classics. With a plot that borrowed from Blade Runner and Terminator it was a great little piece of cheap sci-fi pulp.

Tim Thomerson played the lead as Jack Deth a sort of grizzled bargain basement Blade Runner. The eye candy was provided by a very young Helen Hunt in an early role as a sort of young punkette waitress. She performs a particularly buttock clenching (for me) dance scene in a punk club that she and Jack visit.

Several more Trancers movies followed spreading the already thin premise to almost transparent levels. Each getting cheaper and more dreadful as the numbers stacked up - a bit like Police Academy except Trancers was good in the beginning..but I digress.

The original is still worth seeking out though the official DVD that I have is a pretty dire transfer from what looks like a video disk mastered from a VHS. I only say this because half way through a fight sequence there is a very noticable break in the film as if the laser disk stopped and had to be turned over.

Mark Ryder & Phil Davies' electronic score for the film apparently had an official release sometime in the 80's but created few ripples in the music world, possibly because the majority of it was pretty undistinguished and followed a predictable Brad Fiedel /John Carpenter style. One area where they did get it right though was the haunting theme which is well worth listening to.

Check it out.

1 comment:

Crispy32 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.