Running Time: 80 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Format: Standard 4:3
Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0
Languages: English
Subtitles: None
Region: 1
MSRP: $9.98

Own It!
Trancers (1985)

One of the classics of Full Moon Pictures' heyday in the 1980's, Trancers (aka Future Cop) is the story of a bitter cop in a futuristic Los Angeles and his assignment to rid the city of human impostors called Replicants. Uh, I mean, Trancers. Sorry.

The first twenty minutes of Trancers does owe a great deal to Blade Runner, down to the overabundance of neon and the Vangelis-like soundtrack, but it soon finds its own style when Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) relocates to the more budget-conscious Los Angeles of 1985. There he meets photographer Lena (Helen Hunt) who agrees to help Jack navigate the mean streets of L.A. while looking for the leader of the Trancers.

Trancers is some good goofy fun coupled with better acting than it deserves and some swaggering bravado from Thomerson that even Bruce Campbell would envy. See the full review at Stomp Tokyo.

The film is presented in full-screen TV ratio. This is probably the way it was shot, judging by the way the boom mike dips into the frame occasionally. (This is a good sign that the filmmakers expected to crop the movie into widescreen for theatrical presentation.) Unfortunately, it's not as if Full Moon spent money on a new transfer from film. This is the same transfer as the earlier laserdisc of the film, made glaringly obvious by the end of the film, in which a title card comes up declaring the end of "side two." There are also a few lines and sparkles where the video transfer is imperfect, but it's not as if this film will ever get the digital re-mastering treatment, so we'll have to live with that. Sound is nothing special but at least it's in stereo.

I'll give Full Moon some small credit -- at least they bothered to load the disc down with trailers. The disc is double-sided, with a bevy of trailers from dozens of Full Moon releases, both new and old. Particularly amusing is watching the progression of the Dollman series -- it turns out that Dollman vs the Demonic Toys is actually a sequel to Dollman, Demonic Toys, and Bad Channels!

Also included are filmographies for each of the cast members. These are actually quite interesting because Trancers had a better cast than it deserved, including perennial TV movie matron Telma Hopkins (who came back for two more Trancers adventures), Richard Herd (veteran of Gleaming the Cube and Hercules in New York), and even Oscar-winner Helen Hunt. Not that I wouldn't take the thespian stylings of Tim Thomerson over hers anyday

Chris Holland, 4/1/2001