Trancers

Original post date: 31 May 1987
Rating: ✭✭✰✰

This low-budget science fiction thriller is probably mainly of historical interest. To see it now, one would dismiss it as a cheap rip-off of Blade Runner and The Terminator, so it’s important to know that it was made before either of those movies. Jack Deth is a hard-boiled cop (trooper, as they will say in the future) in a time when old Los Angeles is somewhere under water. An evil villain has gone back in time to kill the ancestors of world leaders. So Jack is sent back to stop him. I couldn’t help thinking what they could have done with a bigger budget, but it still is a pretty clever film. Helen Hunt (Project A) plays the girl who falls in love with him and learns how to singe trancers and that “dry hair is for squids.”

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