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Devil’s Express, The

Friday, March 5th, 2010

a.k.a. Gang Wars
company: Mahler Films
year: 1976
runtime: 82′
country: United States
director: Barry Rosen
cast: Warhawk Tanzania, Wilfredo Roldan,
Larry Fleishman
writers: Niki Patton, CeOtis Robinson
and Barry Rosen
cinematography: Paul Glickman
not on home video in the USA

Luke (awesomely named Warhawk Tanzania) leads a successful martial arts dojo in New York. Among his pupils are as diverse people as the white cop Sam as well as Rodan (probably not related to the kaiju, played by Wilfredo Roldan), the drug-dealing thug leader of a street gang called the Black Spades.

Luke seems to have become quite successful in the growth of his own martial arts as well, at least he has earned the honor to travel to China to attain a new rank by getting his ass kicked by an elderly master. Luke seems to have some hope for instilling a bit of spiritual growth in Rodan, so he takes him on his Chinese adventure.

After a bit of fighting and losing, the New Yorker only needs to do some meditation in the woods to level up to level nine. He chooses Rodan to protect his body while he’s doing the silent soul-searching stuff. Unfortunately, Rodan is easily bored, and instead of protecting his friend, he’s all too soon roaming through the woods until he finds a cave full of century old corpses. Unknown to the freshly awakened Luke, he also steals an amulet one of the dead wears around his neck.

Both men don’t realize that their indiscretion has awakened the amulet’s owner, who is annoyed enough to possess some poor random Chinese guy and stow away on the same ship to New York the martial artists take, obviously with bad intentions in mind.

Back in New York, Rodan steers his gang into a war with a Chinese gang called the Red Dragons, while the demon, although seemingly pining for the return of his amulet, moves into the subway system and starts to kill people.

At first, the police think the gang war and the subway murders are somehow connected, but Sam – who is quite bright for a cop in a blaxploitation movie – soon realizes that there must be more to the latter than meets the eye. He also tries to get Luke’s help in containing the gang situation, but the martial artist is of course too much in love with his own machismo and the evils of The Man to be of any help.

Luke is only getting active when the demon finally kills Rodan. At first, he tries to avenge his friend on the Red Dragons, but when a random wise old man explains to him who really killed his friend, he decides to catch himself a demon.

There’s not much that could be sounding more grindhouse than a combination of blaxploitation, American martial arts and horror flick, promising a very special sort of dubious movie nirvana. Of course, “sounding good” was often as far as films made for the grindhouse circuit came to the word “good” at all, so I went into watching The Devil’s Express with some reservations regarding its quality. I was positively surprised.

Sure, Barry Rosen’s film isn’t exactly what one would call a good film, but it takes the elements of the three (four, if you add the surprise visits in cop movie territory) genres it plunders with enough enthusiasm and earnestness to win my heart.

It’s certainly a film with its share of problems. The acting – with the exception of the guy (possibly Larry Fleishman) who plays the Italian-American cop with excellent clichéd gusto and a schizophrenic bag lady – is rather wooden, but carries with it the sort of authenticity you get by casting semi-professional actors and amateurs. And I can hardly blame Warhawk Tanzania for not being as awesome as his name.

Compared to even the most mediocre martial arts movies from Hong Kong or Taiwan, the fighting (I wouldn’t really speak of fightchoreography in this case) isn’t much good either, but are there any US martial arts films with good, or even just competent, fights? At least the fights aren’t lackluster, because everybody on screen is really trying to get into it like Bruce Lee, just without the required training.

The movie’s plotting isn’t much to gush about either. The script doesn’t even seem to be able to decide who its protagonist is – Luke? Sam? both? – and therefore jumps merrily back and forth without developing much momentum.

Additionally, the film’s running time is padded out by random inserts of not exactly important scenes. However, in this film the padding is where the fun lies, since here “padding” doesn’t mean the usual travelogue footage or scenes and scenes of people explaining the plot to each other, but wondrous moments of exploitative art. Sudden bouts of grindhouse social realism (the things that just happen to land on camera when you film outside in a big city without a permit), an utterly random love montage between Luke and a nameless woman, a kung fu fighting waitress, or the rambly monologueing of a bag lady unite to become something quite special.

In these moments, The Devil’s Express isn’t so much a cheap shot at making money by haphazardly throwing a movie together, but a near-magical evocation of a particular place at a particular time. This is something you couldn’t get in a more carefully constructed picture that (understandably enough) would need to keep out all the randomness Rosen’s film (probably unconsciously) embraces. Of course, not too many low budget films of this type manage to incorporate as many of these moments of magic/unconscious art as this one does.

I also have to stress that some scenes belonging to the film’s main plot line are pretty great, too. The scenes in “China” are very creatively realized, and while you’d never believe them to take place in China, Rosen gives them a very different feel from the city scenes. I think it is the quality of the light that’s mainly accountable for that effect.

First and foremost, The Devil’s Express is an extremely fun movie. I can take a lot of delight in a film that goes out of its way to keep the promises of fun it makes, even if it is a little sloppy, a bit cheap and very silly, so I felt right at home with it.

For more bizarre movie goodness, be sure
to visit Denis’ excellent review blog The Horror!?

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Real Pocong, The

Friday, February 26th, 2010

company: Sinemart Pictures
year: 2009
runtime: 97′
country: Indonesia
director: Hanny R. Saputra
cast: Sakinah Dava Erawan, Nabila Syakieb,
Ashraf Sinclair, Kinaryosih
writer: Aramantono
cinematography: Khatulistiwa
not on home video in the USA

As is somewhat traditional in films, a small, young family consisting of mother Rin(i) (Nabila Syakieb), father (I)Van (Ashraf Sinclair) and little daughter Laura (Sakinah Dava Erawan) moves into a new home in the country, although as a non-Indonesian I’d call it “the jungle” or at least “the deep dark woods”.

Rini and Van are enthusiastic about their new house. It was cheap, and there are none of the dangers of the city threatening their daughter now. One would think that the country air could also be good for Laura’s asthma. There’s a certain lack of neighbours, though, with the only person living nearby the young physician Dr. Nila (Kinaryosih). At least she’s friendly and could probably be of help when little Laura has one of her attacks.

Less friendly are other inhabitants of the area. Right on the family’s first day in the new house, Laura follows a strange, unsmiling girl of about her own age deeper into the woods, until she comes to a weather-beaten old shack beside a well. There, the other girl seems to disappear into thin air. Instead, something dressed in white funeral shrouds jumps Laura.

When Rini finds her deeply disturbed daughter, she can’t get a word out of the girl, and puts her strange behaviour on an understandable reaction to the new environment. In truth, a pocong (female Indonesian ghost dressed in white shrouds that often seems to have religious connotations I won’t pretend to understand) has taken an interest in the girl. At first, it seems relatively benign, turning into a kitten and sneaking into Laura’s room, or singing her lullabies, but just too soon the ghost again lures the girl to the shack.

Only this time, Laura doesn’t return.

The police (who are never actually shown by the film) find not a trace of the child, nor any explanation of what happened, so the desperate Rini seeks the help of a medium, very much against Van’s will. The medium diagnoses the place to be haunted and declares a pocong to be the child snatcher, but seems unwilling to act on her findings. Only when Van calls her out in a fit of aggressive scepticism she deigns to do something, and I can’t say that I find giving the sceptic an amulet that is supposed to help him cross over to the spirit world and then drive away never to return to be a very responsible action.

Surprisingly enough, Van actually uses the amulet to cross over (through a gate of pine trees, no less), and manages to bring Laura back. Of course, this is not the end of the family’s troubles.

The more films of the (as it seems still merrily continuing) Indonesian horror film boom I see, the more impressed I am with it. Of course, quite a few of the films are terribly generic, or marred by the sort of comic relief that is neither comical, nor any kind of relief, but you can say that of every country’s genre film output at the best of times. The important thing is the good films, and the good horror films made in Indonesia in the last five years or so tend to be very good, and quietly ambitious in exploring the possibilities of their genre.

The Real Pocong definitely is one of those good films. Directed by Hanny R. Saputra (whose other films I unfortunately know next to nothing about), it is a film that treats its horror story as a fairy tale. One just needs to have a look at the plot structure - like the way the film uses repetition - or the elements (the deep dark wood, the road into the other world, the child-snatching supernatural creature etc) of the plot to realize this.

The characters are more archetypes than psychologically “realistic” people. As such, they don’t always act as rational or logical as some viewers might want them to – especially Rini’s inability to completely understand what is happening around her in the final third of the film could be very problematic to some – but I’m not too sure I would find people learning that their little daughter has been kidnapped by a ghost and then acting rationally and logically that much more believable. Thankfully, the handful of actors is good enough to provide performances which do not confuse the archetypal with the inhuman.

I was especially impressed by Sakinah Dava Erawan. Child actors are often terrible, and I find it somewhat unfair to blame them for it, seeing that they just don’t have much life experience they could draw from, but I didn’t find it difficult at all to sympathize with this little girl. Cleverly, the first part of The Real Pocong lets the film’s audience share Laura’s perspective, her mixture of terror and wonder and the naturalness with which she treats the stranger occurrences around her; as a child, she doesn’t have the grip on what should be reality and what not a grown-up possesses, and because we share her view of the world, we don’t get to have that grip either.

As any good fairy tale would, the movie does well addressing anxieties people typically don’t want to be confronted with quite directly. The Laura-centric half of the film embodies many childhood anxieties. It’s not only the more banal ones like “the thing in the cupboard” or “the thing under the bed”, but the fear of not being understood by one’s parents, and the more painful fear of not being able to trust them.

The second half of the film puts the same (slightly painful) spotlight on the big parental fear of the loss of one’s child without going down either the road of Spielbergian kitsch, nor that of exploitative melodrama.

Apart from that, The Real Pocong also manages to be quite creepy (again, as a good fairy tale should be). While some of the special effects look a bit ropey, the production design and photography are excellent. This is one of the few horror films whose actions take place nearly entirely by daylight, and it proves that a director who knows what he’s doing doesn’t need darkness to build a mood of dread.

For more bizarre movie goodness, be sure
to visit Denis’ excellent review blog The Horror!?

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Sheitan

Friday, February 19th, 2010

company: 120 Films
year: 2006
runtime: 88′
country: France
director: Kim Chapiron
cast: Vincent Cassel, Roxane Mesquida,
Olivier Bartelemy, Nico Le Phat Tan,
Leila Bekhti, Ladj Ly
writers: Kim Chapiron, Christian Chapiron
cinematography: Alex Lamarque
order this film from Amazon.com

I’m going to explain a bit more of the film’s subtext than I’d strictly like in the course of the write-up, so anyone planning to see this with fresh eyes shouldn’t read any further.

It’s the night before Christmas. After being thrown out of a club thanks to the douchey behaviour of their friend Bart (Olivier Bartelemy), Ladj (Ladj Ly), Thai (Nico Le Phat Tan), the barkeep Yasmine (Leila Bekhti) and vague acquaintance Eve (Roxane Mesquida) decide to drunk drive to Eve’s country home to spend some time there.

The folks’ place must be far from Paris, because the group only arrives some time the next morning. There’s no trace of Eve’s parents at her place, only Dad’s doll collection. The only people home are the family’s satyr-like groundskeeper Joseph (Vincent Cassel) and – unseen by the Parisians – his highly pregnant wife Marie (Georgette Crochon). Marie mostly seems to spend her time making a doll out of spare parts and hiding, but the city folk are too busy with other things to notice.

Ladj would really like to get into Yasmine’s pants, merrily ignoring the fact that he has a girlfriend at home, while both the obviously douchy Bart, and the more subtly douchy Thai both feel very attracted to Eve, who for her part isn’t exactly discouraging anyone (although I don’t think these guys would notice if she were). Joseph for his part seems strangely interested in Barth, but for what reason won’t become clear until much later in the movie.

Suffice it to say that these reasonably friendly country people have some rather strange hobbies, besides throwing smiling racist insults around. Everything Joseph and the country youth do has an undertone of violence and weird menace that people a bit more sensitive and sensible than our “heroes” would find creepy, if not outright disturbing. Of course, the violent undercurrent will come to the surface in the end, if in a different way than you would expect.


Kim Chapiron’s Sheitan really is something different than you’d think on first (or even second) sight.

It all starts out as a French variation of the backwoods slasher, promising a gore explosion in the manner of much of the French horror renaissance for its final thirty minutes.

But the longer the film is running, the clearer it gets that this is not the kind of film it initially pretends to be. In spirit, it is much closer to the great weird European films of the fantastic made in the Seventies than its contemporaries, willing to give up on the notion of plot or characters nearly completely to better be able to drag its viewers into the realms of utter strangeness and dry, wrong-feeling humour.

Instead of the expected revue of kills, the film plays out as a series of increasingly disquieting, often erotically charged set pieces bound to confuse, annoy, amuse and confound anyone with their grotesquerie. While it is obvious to the film’s audience (the characters are rather dense, I’m afraid) that something very unpleasant is bound to happen rather sooner than later, the film virtually wallows in not explaining itself too early. But, unlike in some of my other very favorite weird ass European films, everything happening does in fact happen for a reason. You see, it is important that Sheitan takes place at Christmas, because the child Marie is going to give birth to is the Anti-Christ, or at least that is what the country family thinks – there is nothing overtly supernatural going on. Much of what happens during the course of the movie happens as a twisted mirror of Christian tradition, sometimes more subtle and sometimes less (Mary and Joseph, anyone?).

Still, as I said, the film never does actually say this outright, and instead treats its high concept a bit detached and with a feeling of sardonic humour, like a joke it doesn’t need you to get to find funny.


I’m very fond of the way Chapiron directs the film. It is steady, technically adept, but doesn’t try to out-weird itself like a lot of modern horror films going for weird are wont to, very often to their detriment. This does not mean that Chapiron just points and shoots. Rather, he is building the mood of intense strangeness required for his film in more subtle ways and does not seem to need or want to put too much emphasis on his own abilities.

“Subtle” isn’t a word I’d use for Vincent Cassel’s performance here. From a certain perspective, he’s chewing the scenery outrageously, but still manages to give this outwardly blustering performance a much more disturbing undercurrent, as if his outer madness is hiding something much worse (which it in fact does). Roxane Mesquida’s performance as Eve is nearly as intense as Cassel’s, but not as aggressively over the top. She projects a quiet eroticism that also hints at something different beyond or below it.

Our theoretical heroes are just as well played, but the characters the actors are left with don’t have much depth to them. They’re supposed to be a bit dense, a bit too aggressive, and utterly unlikeable, and they manage that perfectly. Of course, this isn’t a character study, but a trip into the land of the weird, so I’m not complaining.

There isn’t much to complain about in Sheitan anyway. Sure, it doesn’t have a plot, but watching something this clearly in the tradition of 70s Eurohorror and demanding “plot” instead of a  moody trip into a strange place in someone’s head is just wrong-headed, like complaining that the moon isn’t made of green cheese.

If you let it, Sheitan can beautifully mess with your head, and make your mind a more interesting place for its ninety minute running time (and possibly afterwards). I couldn’t wish for more.



order this film from Amazon.com

For more bizarre movie goodness, be sure
to visit Denis’ excellent review blog The Horror!?

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Maid-Droid

Friday, February 12th, 2010

company: Gensou haikyuu-sha Ltd.
year: 2009
runtime: 66′
country: Japan
director: Naoyuki Tomomatsu
cast: Anri Suzuki, Akiho Yoshizawa, Mari Yamaguchi
writer: Chisato Ogawara
cinematography: Kenji Oyamada
order this film from Amazon.com

In a near-future Tokyo where human-like (and dog-like) androids are quite typical household appliances for the discerning otaku, an old man (Akiho Yoshizawa) reminisces wistfully to his beloved, now batteryless and unmoving Maid-Droid Maria (Anri Suzuki) about their shared life. A sexless life (at least in the Bill Clinton sense of the phrase), I might add, because Maria was a prototype of her kind and not fit to be updated for sex. Since the old man was pure-hearted and terribly in love with his android, this meant a pure virginal love with occasional blowjobs for them. (more…)

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Return of the Vampire, The

Friday, February 5th, 2010

company: Columbia Pictures
year: 1944
runtime: 70′
country: United States
director: Lew Landers
cast: Bela Lugosi, Frieda Inescort,
Matt Willis, Nina Foch,
Roland Varno, Miles Mander
writers: Griffin Jay, Randall Faye
and Kurt Neumann
cinematographers: L.W. O’Connell, John Stumar
music: Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
order this film from Amazon.com



Armand Tesla, (Bela Lugosi) vampire has a grand old time sucking the blood of the British and ordering his mind-controlled, talking werewolf slave Andreas (Matt Willis) around, until the fearless vampire hunting duo of scientist(!) Lady Jane Ainsley (Frieda Inescort) and her mentor, Professor Walter Saunders (Gilbert Emery) put a stake through his heart.

About twenty years later, during World War II, Saunders dies, leaving behind a manuscript describing his and Lady Jane’s legally dubious adventures in staking a man in his sleep. It could really get the good Lady in trouble with her copper friend Sir Frederick Fleet (Miles Mander), who quickly arranges the exhumation of Tesla’s body after reading the manuscript and having a little talk with the scientist. Before that wonderful event can take place, the combined unhappy circumstances of an especially unluckily falling bomb and a gravedigger who likes to pull stakes out of corpses revive Tesla.

Not surprisingly, the vampire has revenge on his mind. Quickly he has brought Andreas – who is now working as Lady Jane’s servant – under his control again and uses the hypnotized wolfman to acquire a new identity from an unlucky scientist Andreas was supposed to help smuggle into the country. Tesla uses his new name to get close to Saunders’ granddaughter Nicki (Nina Foch) and Lady Jane. It doesn’t take the good lady too long to figure out that the so-called Dr. Bruckner isn’t exactly what he seems, but it will take all her determination to save Nicki and the young woman’s fiancée John (Roland Varno), who just happens to be her own nephew, from Tesla’s revenge.

After wading through half of the terrible movies which make up the Universal Cult Horror Collection I had nearly given up hope for so-called classic horror beyond the obvious films. Fortunately, The Return of the Vampire has come along to restore my faith. It’s just too bad that it’s a Columbia production and not part of Universal’s crappy horror set, so there’s still nothing in that one worth the money I paid for it.


Be that as it may, this film is of a whole different calibre than my last expeditions into 30s and 40s filmmaking. While it’s obviously done on the cheap, Return’s director Lew Landers (not usually praised for being all that competent) uses much of what could have been learned from the first and second generation of Universal’s horror films. There’s the shadow play that harkens back to expressionist silent movies, the gothic sets, the (after my last experiences surprising) gliding camera work, the fog – in short all the visual elements one can hope for in a film of this vintage, brought together with not inspired but expert hand.

Return is also quite pioneering in its use of a very contemporary wartime London as backdrop for its gothic trappings in a time when many horror movies – and especially vampire movies – still tended to take place in the past, as far away from the daily experience of their audience as possible.

We don’t see that much of the Blitz or of ruined London, but Landers puts in enough of it that the viewer can hardly ignore the subtext of a modern horror taking its part in reawakening an older horror.

What the contemporary audience of 1944 made of this aspect of the film is anybody’s guess.

The script doesn’t always fare as well as Landers’ direction. Some of the film’s ideas, especially Andreas the talking wolfman are a bit too silly for their own good and would fit much better into a monster mash than into this comparatively serious film. I also found it hard to swallow that Lady Jane doesn’t recognize Tesla at once. You’d think she has staked so many people in her career that she just forgot this particular one.

Fortunately, the script also has its good sides, first and foremost casting Lady Jane as a competent and determined chief vampire hunter, as far as I know the first time we witness a middle-aged woman put into that place. Even in this post-Buffy age this kind of female lead is not exactly a matter of course, so it is all the more surprising how normal this much older film treats her and her position. Of course and alas, the film doesn’t keep its surprising brand of feminism up all the time, and Lady Jane and her policeman assistant are relegated to waiting in the sidelines when it comes to actively dispatching the vampire.


The finale is not worth all that much. There’s too much hand of fate and too little planned action in it. Worse, the actual mechanics of Tesla’s demise are based on a character arc of Andreas the film doesn’t build up believably enough.

The ending could probably have been saved if only Matt Willis’ acting as Andreas would have been a bit more subtle and/or his wolfman make-up less cuddly and cute. The latter is very much a problem not just of this particular movie, but of the whole cycle of early wolfman films. As it stands, Willis is also the most whiny wolfman around. In his way, he fits perfectly to Nina Foch, who does look very nice indeed but really should have piped down the melodramatics.

Both Willis and Foch are further hampered by having to play most of their scenes alongside the two dominant actors in the film in form of Lugosi and Inescort.

Dear Bela must have had a very good week while filming this. Lugosi’s remarkable screen presence is always a given, even in the late phase of his career, but the subtlety he was capable of was often drowned out by his love for grand gestures (and really, the shabbiness of most of the productions he worked in). Somehow, the great man managed to find a very fine middle path between grand theatricality and subtlety for this film, and his performance is all the better for it.

Frieda Inescort is Lugosi’s perfect adversary here. Where Lugosi is all menace and slimy charm, her Lady Jane radiates the perfect mixture of calmness and steely determination while never overplaying it to become an insufferable blowhard, like so many elder vampire hunters (before Peter Cushing) often became.

For more bizarre movie goodness, be sure
to visit Denis’ excellent review blog The Horror!?

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Trancers

Friday, January 29th, 2010

company: Empire Pictures,
Altar Productions and Lexyn Productions
year: 1985
runtime: 77′
country: USA
director: Charles Band
cast: Tim Thomerson, Helen Hunt,
Michael Stefani, Art LaFleur, Anne Seymour
writers: Danny Bilson, Paul De Meo
cinematographer: Mac Ahlberg
music: Phil Davies, Mark Ryder
order this film from Amazon.com
single film | 5-film collection

In what should be the 23rd Century (although the film also calls it the 25th, so who knows), the delightfully subtly named future cop Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) spends all his time mopping up the remnants of the mind-controlled zombie slave troops (so-called “Trancers”) of his dead arch-enemy Whistler (Michael Stefani). His obsession is quite understandable, because Whistler killed Deth’s wife, but still costs the cop his job.

Deth spends his new-found free time diving in the submarine ruins of Lost Angeles, until the Future’s ruling council has need of him again. That point in time comes sooner than expected. For some reason the film is unwilling to explain, Whistler is still alive and has somehow managed to find his way into the Los Angeles of 1985 to do the Terminator thing. Obviously, Deth is the best man for the job to protect the council’s ancestors and bring Whistler back in.

It looks like (the film doesn’t bother to explain this point either) you can send dead matter back through time as you wish, but can only transfer the consciousness of people into the bodies of their ancestors. As luck will have it, Deth’s and Whistler’s respective ancestors both look exactly like they do, so Deth can go on a merry hunt through Los Angeles without having to look at a strange face in the mirror.

Jack ropes his ancestor’s one-night-stand Leena (future Academy Award winner Helen Hunt, not as completely annoying as she would soon become) into working as his native guide – and of course future love interest. To make life a bit more difficult for him, he is only a lowly reporter, while Whistler’s new body is a Police Detective without rank but with considerable influence.


Once, before his unhealthy obsession with living dolls overwhelmed Charles Band’s complete output as a producer and overrode even the small interest in making watchable movies he might have had, the producer/director/writer/etc was trying to be a small-time Roger Corman, just with less talent and imagination. At least, Band had enough clout to rope in promising talent (see Reanimator). Trancers was made in that still promising phase of Band’s career and is probably his best work as a director.

Of course, keeping in mind that I am talking about the future director of The Gingerdead Man and Dangerous Worry Dolls here, one has to keep one’s expectations at a realistic level, which is my long-winded way of saying that, while words like “style” or “intelligence” just don’t belong into the man’s vocabulary as a director or producer, Band’s work here at least doesn’t suck completely. He points, he shoots, he doesn’t embarass himself.

The movie’s script by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, the pair responsible for the rather delightful ”Tim Thomerson is Sergeant Rock and meets aliens” film Zone Troopers, has more logical flaws than my attempts at doing arithmetics. From the wildly inconsistent way time paradoxa work (people whose ancestors are killed and their own children disappear, but everyone still remembers them?) to the fact that the film really should have ended after about 30 minutes – a point where Deth has ample time and opportunity to get rid of Whistler – there is not much that stands up to even the mildest of scrutiny. Worse, the film never explains any of its concepts that need explaining. My remarks about the way time travel works are based only on conjecture, for example. Still, I can’t say that I cared much about logic or needed explanations while actually watching the film, because what the film lacks in artfulness, it makes up for in (sometimes consciously ironic) low budget film charm. Following Deth, we flit from one obvious and silly situation to the next.


This is the sort of film that doesn’t need to spare the killing of a department store Santa Claus for the grand finale, because it also has a (terrible, of course) punk rock club, little girls with the souls of gruff police chiefs and our hero riding a motor scooter instead of a motorcycle to throw at us. Among other things. But most importantly, Trancers not only shows us those things but does its best to let them be fun, by not taking itself serious. Not taking yourself serious in the good and entertaining way must be a lot more difficult to achieve than it looks like or most films that try for the effect wouldn’t be as bad. The difference between Trancers‘ version of this brand of fluffiness and the bad sort as incorporated in Troma films or Band’s later Full Moon Productions lies in the fact that it still takes its audience serious. Where a Troma film winks at itself in a mirror, this is a film still winking at us sitting in front of it.

While I usually just can’t stand Helen Hunt, I do approve of the fact that the film doesn’t make her character completely useless and only be there to be rescued by Thomerson and wear troubling fashion. She’s useful, she has moments of being sensible, she’s as much as you can hope for in a cheap SF actioner.

And she’s next to nothing compared to the film’s true trump card, the utterly awesome Tim Thomerson doing the perfect square-jawed cynical hero with delightfully silly one-liners (personal favorite: “Dry hair is for squids”) while having at least one toe in the territory of a parody of a perfect square-jawed cynical hero, which, let’s be honest, is the only way those guys can ever be made sympathetic. Somehow, Thomerson even makes Deth kinda cool.

A few years later, Band would go on to turn Trancers into a confused franchise of films that have nothing to do with each other beyond Thomerson, but none of the later films is even vaguely watchable, so this is the one to watch if one wants to see Thomerson doing what Thomerson does best.

For more bizarre movie goodness, be sure
to visit Denis’ excellent review blog The Horror!?

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