Halloween Horrors 2025: Harriett Branch on 1984’s “Trancers”

What can I say? I’m a dirty bastard.

When I decided to present our contributors with a list of 45 possible themes to choose from for this year’s Halloween Horrors series, I knew that some of the series’ regular contributors were more likely to pick certain themes and topics than others. I couldn’t make this that easy for them! No, sirree! Which is why I created the various fake titles for each possible theme. However, I knew that even this may not be enough for some of our more clever contributors. So, I made some of those fake titles deliberately misleading.

I had hoped that the fake title “I’m With the Band” would lead someone to assume the theme had something to do with music, just as much as I had hoped it would distract them from the other fake title that actually was related to film soundtracks and scores. That one will show up later in this series. However, as I’ve widely publicized my life-long infatuation with the films of producer/director Charles Band (well, most many of them) over the years, I knew someone would see through my charade. Okay, so a few people saw through my charade. 

In welcoming longtime friend and returning contributor Harriett Branch back to our (mostly) annual Halloween event, I also remind both readers and contributors alike of the true goal of this year’s series: to make our contributors watch something that they might not normally consider. In doing so, the hope is that you, the reader, will consider doing the same this Halloween season. Hell, it might even be one of the films featured during this year’s series. As evidenced by the following entry, it would seem as though Harriett met that goal, even if she didn’t exactly “love” her particular choice of film.

At least she didn’t go with Band’s 2006’s “mummy alien meets nyphomaniacs” film, Petrified. She may have quit the series completely! Can’t say I’d blame her either. 

When I signed up for this year’s Halloween Horrors, I thought I knew what I was going to write about. But I was wrong.

Our illustrious host took it upon himself to create new themes to choose from, making things interesting. I picked “I’m with the Band”, thinking it may have something to do with music horror films (Trick or Treat, Black Roses), but knowing him like I do, I thought it must have something to do with Charles Band.

I was right.

To say I’m not a huge Charles Band fan is putting it lightly. Oh, sure, I’ve seen Puppet Master and a few of its sequels, but that’s about it. I know he is a prolific filmmaker and producer, but a lot of what he puts out, I’m just not interested in watching. That made this year’s Horror & Sons’ Halloween Horrors a good challenge. I like to watch and discover films I’ve never seen before and since that was the case with Charles Band, it seemed a perfect fit.

So here we go.

Let’s time travel forward to 2247. Trooper Jack Deth (the always welcome Tim Thomerson) is a cop in the futuristic Angel City tasked with finding a bad guy by the name of Whistler. Whistler has found a way to take over people’s minds and turn them into “trancers,” a type of zombified ghoul willing to do Whistler’s bidding. Whistler has time traveled to 1985, and the Angel City police council want Jack to follow him there and save their ancestors from certain death. Jack accepts and, with incredibly believable technology, is sent back in time.

Once transported, Jack discovers he is in his own ancestor’s body, and is in the company of Lena, his ancestor’s girlfriend, played by a very young Helen Hunt. Lena has a job as a photographer in the local mall, taking pictures of kids with Santa Claus. Jack follows her to work and, lo and behold, Santa is a trancer! Jack immediately takes out Santa right in the middle of the mall, leaving a jolly old scorch mark. Then, we find out that Whistler is there and is in the body of the police chief! The chase is on as Jack and Lena attempt escaping in that ultimate location of “evil” in the 80’s, a tanning salon. Some of the chase scenes involve the use of that very futuristic-looking motor scooter, the Honda Elite. I wondered if Honda paid the filmmakers to feature the scooter because it is used a lot as our heroes attempt to escape Whistler and his police minions.

Jack and Lena eventually track down the police council’s ancestor, Hap Ashby, with the use of an old baseball card. Unfortunately, he is a down-on-his-luck bum living on Skid Row. They take him to a safe place away from Whistler, but they are eventually found and the most anti-climactic climax transpires on the roof of the building. With the help of Hap, Jack is able to send Whistler back to the future and save the day.

The beginning of the film takes advantage of the hype of the day of The Terminator and the sci-fi futuristic sets of Blade Runner with lots of unnecessary neon and cheesy laser ray guns. When Jack time travels back to 1980’s Los Angeles, the film hasn’t aged well. We are definitely more advanced in the 40 years since then, but that portion might have well been made in the 70’s. I honestly didn’t hate Trancers. The pacing was nice and the story kept up, and it felt like a nice nostalgia trip seeing fashions and styles from the 80’s, like the linebacker shoulder pads. It even made me curious about the several sequels that came after it. I might watch those, but overall, I feel like Trancers did not age well, and I may have seen it too late to genuinely appreciate it. And that is the biggest horror of all.