Trancers

 

I don’t know when I first saw this movie.  I would guess I saw it in 1986 or 1987 on the local indie station before Fox took over it’s programming.  I do know I liked it & as low budget local stations seem to like to do, they gave me the opportunity to see it five times in a month.  I eventually saw Trancers II & Trancers III, but somehow never saw the original again even though I recommended it on a regular basis.

This movie is straight forward enough.  A criminal from the future comes to the present to kill the ancestors of political enemies so they’ll never be born, so they send a cop back in time after him. In this movie time travel works by sending your mind back in time into an ancestors body & possessing it (I guess like Quantum Leap, though this does pre-date that). Oh, & the criminal can turn people into zombies. Oh, & it takes place at Christmas & the love interest in it is Helen Hunt about ten years before Mad About You. Anyway, this movie is just about perfect. It doesn’t try to be anything more than it is. It’s a low budget time traveling cop 1980s action flick & if that doesn’t sound awesome, I’m not sure what does.