Overlooked Movies -- Trancers

Tagline: Jack Deth is back -- and he hasn't even been here before.

Trancers is a dandy little B-movie that spawned quite a few sequels (I stopped watching with Trancers III, but I think there were more).  It's a hardboiled detective time travel movie.  Irresistible?  Sure.  Add to that Tim Thomerson doing a fine job as the trenchcoated star and voiceover guy and Helen Hunt being Helen Hunt (I like Helen Hunt).  It's a great combination.

The plot? Okay, here we go. Thomerson is Jack Deth (great name, right?), a police trooper in the far future (2247) who's after a guy named Whistler, who uses the power of his mind to turn people into zombies who serve him.  He evades capture by means of a drug that enables him to travel back to 1985 and inhabit the body of one of his ancestors, leaving his 2247 body behind (hey, it could work).  Deth finds out what's happened and destroys Whistler's body so he can't return to it.  Then Deth goes to 1985 to get Whistler.  Many complications ensue, including the fact that Whistler's ancestor happens to be a high-ranking cop and that Deth's ancestor is a reporter whose girlfriend is Helen Hunt.  Who'd go back to the future if his girlfriend was Helen Hunt?

If you watched the trailer posted below, you know that the special effects are cheap, and in fact the whole production is cheap, but Trancers is one of those B-movies that overcomes its flaws and brings the fun.  There's a reason there are so many sequels (which, let's face it, aren't as good as this one, although Trancers III isn't bad).  Check it out.