Trancers

Watched May 6, 2022

 "Dry hair is for squids" says Jack Deth

1985

Starring: Tim Thomerson, Helen Hunt, Michael Stefani, Telma Hopkins

In a future coffee shop, Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) hassles a big guy about being a trancer. Jack puts a bracelet on him but it indicates he's not a trancer, but the server behind the counter is. She goes from looking normal to looking zombie-like and crazy. She attacks Jack, after a tussle he grabs his blaster that had been slapped out of his hand and 'singes' the trancer, making them disappear. Jack's boss doesn't like that he keeps destroying the trancers and he isn't following protocol. Jack's wife was killed by a trancer so he's very bitter. 

The head of the organization of trancer destroyers reveal that Whistler (Michael Stefani), a super bad guy has time traveled back to 1985 and is killing the ancestors of the current anti-trancers board. Aunt Rachel from Family Matters (Telma Hopkins) is the scientist that can send the brain back to a family member's body in the past. They send Jack's brain into his distant relative Phil's body in 1985. Phil is casually dating Leena (Helen Hunt), so Jack in Phil's body wakes up and drives her to work. It's a Christmas movie, she's a mall Santa photographer. Jack walks her into the mall and it turns out that Santa is a trancer. Santa fights Jack, Jack gets a security guard's gun and kills Santa. Jack tries to explain to Leena about the time travel deal and trancers, she's not having it.

They go to the tanning salon to find one of the people Jack is trying save or contact. Leena stays in the car, but then drives off since she thinks the guy she knew as Phil is nuts. It turns out that the tanning dude is a trancer and he locks Jack in a tanning room and turns it on super hot. Leena comes back to see the dead trancer dude disappear/singe, now she believes Jack's story. She saves Jack from the hot tanning room, it was jammed shut by a surfboard. As they leave the tanning salon, the cops show up and Whistler turns out to be the head of the cops...so they're all trancers? They are about to shoot Leena and Jack, but Jack has a special watch that makes one long second, a second that last 10 seconds. Everyone is basically frozen in time, Jack grabs Leena and throws her in the car and they get out of there.

 They can't go back to Phil's place, so they go to Chinatown where Leena knows a friend's apartment is empty since it's Christmas Eve. The apartment looks like a neon club and happens to be over an actual club. They go downstairs to the punk club to dance, but Leena is hassled by an old boyfriend she's not interested in. Some punk trancers attack Jack, so Jack and Leena get out of there. They go back upstairs to make out but are interrupted by a little girl. She's the only relative Jack's co-worker McNulty (Art Lafleur) could find, and she reminds Jack that another board member is dead. Jack kicks the girl out and he keeps making out with Leena. But the future pulls him back to tell him that it's getting serious. They have a photo of the relative he is supposed to find before Whistler does. He goes back to 1985, but missed the sex with Leena. Lenea tries to go to sleep but Jack wakes her up to try to find  the guy in the photo. 

Leena knows how to hot wire scooter, they take some from in front of the punk club. They head to skid row but are pursued by Whistler. Jack and Leena find some hobos, ask about the guy in photo, they say check the old paper factory for him. They do find another group of hobos including an old baseball player who is the future ladies' relative, the last board member. They grab the guy, use Leena as bait to trick Whistler. But Whistler throws Leena off the building, Jack got another watch when he went back to the future. He saves her again, then the hobo baseball guy throws something at Whistler and he falls off the building. Whistler doesn't have a future body to go back to, as Jack had destroyed it on one of his trips back to the future. Since Whistler's past body is destroyed and so is his future body, he dies or stays in brain limbo. Jack stays with Leena in 1985 to become his own Grandpa or something.

At only 76 minutes it still feels a little long at times. There's not a lot to it, but compare to Fateful Findings at least its a real movie. It's spawned a whole bunch of sequels, which might be fun. Helen Hunt is great, Tim Thomerson seems too old to be dating her but that's usually how it goes. They don't really explain how people become trancers, but it does seem to be like a trance-like switch, I guess Whistler was in charge of them the whole time, I just don't understand why they are killing.