I was standing in line at the local grocery the other day and while waiting my turn I perused their rack of "previously viewed" dvds. I've bought one of these before with unhappy consequences, so it was not without qualm that when I stumbled across a boxed set of the first three Trancers movies that I slid them onto the conveyor belt with my bread and milk and other essential items.
Some years later the story picks up in Trancers II when another mastermind from the future heads to 1991 where Deth and Lena have been married for six years and are pretty happy. Unfortunately the future council sends Jack's first wife (who died some years after her mission begins and Jack was there) back to solve the problem and of course Jack and Lena get drawn into the mission. This direct-to-video effort is far less effective save for some reasonable acting turns by several members of the cast. The reliably sinister Richard Lynch is on hand to give the movie a proper villain, but he's not enough to save this peculiar "film noir" effort that takes place almost exclusively in the bright California sunshine. The movie is passably entertaining with some clever plot turns, but alas never achieves the right mood.
In 1992 Trancers III is unleashed and to some extent so is Jack Deth. In a classic film noir turn he ends up in a divorce with his wife Lena and ends up himself quickly transported to the future where the Trancer war has erupted with devastating results. Deth is transported to 2005 where the Trancer menace originated and he finds a black ops military unit led by Andrew Robinson (infamous Dirty Harry villain Scorpio) experimenting with steroids which create the Trancer effect. He struggles against this new threat with reasonable effectiveness, this time assisted to some degree by a future android Shark, who happens to have the head of a weird robotic shark, sort of. The end of the movie is pretty standard for an action movie, okay but not really full gear. It results in a change of premise as Jack is turned into an agent specifically charged with traveling in time to eliminate menaces, and his new partner is Shark. There are three more Trancer movies, so I assume this premise is realized.
The Trancer movies are a mixed bag by any measure. The first one has some real bite, a solid attempt to create a proper atmosphere. Deth is neatly operated within the confines of classic hard-boiled types we've seen in dozens of movies, part of a tradition, but nicely fitted into a sci-fi setting. The Blade Runner inspirations are hard to miss and it does at once help and hurt the movie, if it's to be judged on its own merits. One area these films miss is action, which almost always seems staged and slow relatively to slicker productions. They seem to rely on the actors to do a lot of the stuff and they are up to it, but it often lacks the crisp editing which really makes such things work.
It's clear that budgets were pretty meager for these movies, which have to accomplish a lot with very little. It shows sadly despite the earnest effort by the cast. The Trancer movies are diverting fun and slightly trashy entertainment, and they are slightly smarter and wittier than you might at first suspect. But they aren't great movies by any stretch, regardless of how charming Thomerson is in the lead.
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