Trancers 6 (2002)

September 11, 2002

by Nathan Shumate

aka Trancers: Life After Deth

Directed by Jay Woelfel
Written by “Gene Yarbrough” (aka C. Courtney Joyner)
Starring
- Zette Sullivan
- Jennifer Capo
- Robert Donavan
- Timothy Prindle
- Jere Jon
Produced by Johnnie J. Young
Executive produced by Maurice Smith and Charles Band

My, Jack Deth, how you’ve changed!

First, the behind-the-scenes preamble. The Trancers franchise has always been among the most popular for Full Moon — an odd thing, in that the original (which is really the basis of all the popularity) was made under Charles Band’s old banner of Empire Pictures; the Full Moon sequels range in quality from “mediocre” to “Lord, smite this man!” And unlike some other Full Moon franchises, this one doesn’t revolve around a set of props which can be trotted out from storage to menace a brand-new set of unknown, hungry actors. No, the Trancers movies revolved around the character of Jack Deth, as played by Tim Thomerson: nature’s perfect hardboiled private eye, treading juuuuust this side of parody. It’s Thomerson’s portrayal of Deth that was, frankly, the only watchable aspect of the sequels.

And therein lay the dilemma. Since the split with Paramount in 1995, Full Moon’s fortunes, and thus budgets, have suffered a steady decline, to the point now where most of their features are shot on digital video by necessity; they can no longer afford filmstock. (And really, I’ve very little sympathy for them. When you spend years churning out video-shelf “product,” irrespective of quality, and insulting the fanbase who supported you for years, it should come as no surprise that the returns just aren’t where they once were.) So every time the idea of another Trancers feature has come up, the pre-production was stymied by one factor: Thomerson. Full Moon could no longer afford him.

So here’s the workaround they finally found:

You thought Thomerson’s cameo was small? This is Hunt’s.

In the future, Council member Jennings (James R. Hilton) is monitoring the past for the usual discrepancies, when he gets fragmentary images of a young girl being attacked with a knife. But not just any young girl — this one is Jack Deth’s ancestor, and thus if she dies, he’ll cease to exist. But not only that — she’s also his daughter!

See, if you remember the first movie, you’ll recall that time travel was accomplished by regressing one’s consciousness into the body of an ancestor. Jack Deth, 23rd century trancer hunter, was sent “down the line” into the body of his ancestor “Phil,” and managed to stick around for at least a couple of sequels, eventually marrying Leena (Helen Hunt). The daughter of that union, then, is also the future Jack Deth’s lineal ancestor. Got it? Good.

Seeing the danger, Jennings exchanges a few quick words with Deth on a monitor (they couldn’t even afford Thomerson for a one-day cameo, so Deth’s responses are all cobbled together from footage from the previous movies), teleports him (or rather, a gray-haired man in a trenchcoat who keeps his face averted from the camera so we won’t see how much he isn’t Tim Thomerson) into the chamber, and immediately sends him down the line…

There’s one like him in every office, ain’t there?

…to 2022, into the body of his daughter Josephine (Zette Sullivan), who will be playing the part of Jack Deth from here on out.

Now, you may have noticed by now that this movie shows a lot more respect for the original than any of the other sequels; the novel time travel idea, in particular, didn’t get any play whatsoever after the second installment. Director Jay Woelfel has gone on record as a fan of the original Trancers, and it shows; he honestly wants to make a movie which continues the endearing features of its inspiration, rather than just milking a franchise.

“But,” you ask, “does that mean that this is a good movie?”

Oh, ha, ha, ha. Very droll of you. Let me point you upwards to the credits, where the screenplay is attributed to one “Gene Yarbrough,” who in actuality is none other than C. Courtney Joyner. Joyner has eighteen produced screenplays to his credit. Of the five I’ve seen, none — exactly zero — have been any good, and I haven’t heard anything positive about the rest of them. He both wrote and directed Trancers 3, the single installment which went furthest in derailing all hope of returning to the likeable charm of the original; in fact, it’s the “innovations” of Trancers 3 which this movie must most studiously ignore. This is not the man you want restoring the franchise; hell, this is not a man who should be trusted near a copy of Final Draft.

Beakers full of colored liquid? But that must mean — there’s SCIENCE going on!

First up, we’ve got the humor. See, Josephine’s not only a girl — she’s a granola chick! That means she has carrot juice in the refrigerator, and a peacenik Datsun! Because that’s such a contrast from hard-drinkin’, hard-drivin’ Jack Deth! Haw! See Jack Deth try to put on nylons! See Jo Deth buy two hotdogs, much to the consternation of the hotdog vendor (Jere Jon) who knows she’s a vegetarian! Stop, my ribs! Fortunately, this stuff tapers off after the first twenty minutes, as the story moves away from the people that Jo already knows.

Then, we’ve got the mainspring of the plot. Jo not only works at a meteorologic institute, but she also does some amateur astronomy, along with her pro-astronomer mentor Dr. Malvern (Robert Donavan). And apparently the two of them saw a meteor shower that they weren’t supposed to see. (Yup, that’s the way to keep a secret: send it with big burning lights across the night sky.) So now her meteorologic bosses, the enigmatic Mr. Castle (Ben Bar) and his assistant Miss Shauna (Jennifer Capo), want her dead — and they’ve got trancers to do the job for ‘em!

So Jack/Jo tries to protect Dr. Malvern while shooting trancers left and right (I bet this was the cheapest part of the production, as there are scores of Full Moon fans who would line up for days on end to be a “real” trancer for free), and discovering Castle and Shauna’s plot, which is… really incoherent, as one would expect from Joyner.

They’ll let anybody open a Lasik clinic these days.

Between babbling some empowerment/NWO garbage, Shauna uses a beam emitter hooked up to a big-ass meteorite to zap the brains of the young homeless that she and her posse round up, turning them into trancers and letting them loose on the city for no good reason. But they also want Dr. Malvern to work with them, because in addition to being an astronomer, he’s apparently also a world-class chemist and physicist, and can thus fine-tune the meteorite’s effects. (Malvern’s apparently a throwback to the old days in which a “scientist” was assumed to have expert knowledge of chemistry, physics, biology, anthropology, and mechanical engineering.) Naturally, the old “take over the world” plot is advanced, though we’re so out of ideas by forty-minute minutes into the movie that having a homeless guitar player elected to public office is an integral part of their plan. Apparently we’re just making it up as we go by this point.

Inanities along the way multiply too fast to catalogue them here, but suffice it to say that what started out as a goodwill sequel to Trancers ends up showing only too clearly the fingerprints of the man who made Trancer 3, the movie in which a top-secret military lab is located under a strip club.

And now, a word about Zette Sullivan as Jo Deth: I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it. Not for a minute could I see the personality of Jack Deth in her mannerisms. Yeah, she was going out of her way to be gruff and tough, but the shade of Tim Thomerson was not on the set. Not that I fault her for that; she gave it the old college try, and I doubt there’s anyone who can come close to doing Jack Deth like Tim Thomerson. (Maybe it would help if they gave her a plastic laser gun the right size for her hand, rather than that huge-ass .44; I kept waiting for the recoil to break her waifish arm clean off.) Hopefully, if they keep this revival of the franchise going, Sullivan will be able to grow into the role and make it her own.

Power to da Trancers! Down with da Man!

There are touches of genuine admiration for the original around here, including the obligatory long-second watch. But really, folks — we’ve already had four different explanations for what trancers are and where they came from. Do we really need a fifth? (In case you’re wondering, it’s — that’s right — aliens!)