The Eric Roberts Horror Collection: The Dead Want Women (dir by Charles Band)

Posted on October 20, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2012’s The Dead Want Women opens in 1927.

At her luxurious Hollywood mansion, silent film star Rose Pettigrew (Jean Louise O’Sullivan) is throwing a party to celebrate the release of her new film. While her guests gossip about whether or not the coming of sound is going to end Rose’s career (since Rose’s voice does not fit her sultry image), Rose and three of her friends — cowboy star Sonny (Eric Roberts), scarred leading man Eric Burke (Robert Zachar), and overweight comedian Tubby (Nihilist Gelo) — slip into Rose’s underground dungeon and have an orgy with two flappers. Tubby has just murdered one of the flappers when Rose’s lawyer interrupts the orgy and announces that 1) Rose’s new film is a flop, 2) audiences love the new talkie, 3) the studio will no longer be producing silent films, and 4) Rose no longer has a contract with the studio. The shocked Rose shoots all of her friends and then slits her own throat in front of her horrified guests.

The film then jumps forward to 2012. Two real estate agents, Reese (Jessica Morris) and Danni (Arianna Medix), are getting the long-abandoned mansion ready for a prospecting buyer. They clean the mansion. They find Rose’s old necklace (which fell from her neck when she slit her throat), and they have a bottle of wine. Reese explains who Rose was while Danni says that she hates silent films. That night, the ghosts of Sonny, Eric, Tubby, and one of the flappers suddenly appear, looking to haunt the two real estate agent and ultimately drag them to Hell with all the other tormented spirits of silent Hollywood!

The Dead Want Women attempts to be a campy throwback to the old haunted house films of the 40s and the 50s, just with a lot more gore and nudity. Unfortunately, the film itself is rather slow. The 1927 opening drags on forever and, at one point, I actually groaned when Rose told her weaselly agent to repeat what he had just told her because it literally took five minutes for him to say it beforehand. As a lover of old Hollywood and film history, I appreciated the fact that the film used the coming of sound as the impetus for the haunting and I also liked the fact that the lecherous Tubby was obviously based on Fatty Arbuckle but otherwise, there really wasn’t much to The Dead Want Women. It was a standard Charles Band ghost story, with the emphasis more on boobs than scares.

On the plus side, Eric Roberts was an effectively evil cowboy ghost and some of the rotting flash makeup that was used on the ghosts was properly icky. But otherwise, this is a pretty forgettable film. Sorry, The Dead Want Women. You are not ready for your close-up.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Charles Band Edition

Posted on October 4, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.

This October, I am going to be using our 4 Shots From 4 Films feature to pay tribute to some of my favorite horror directors, in alphabetical order! That’s right, we’re going from Argento to Zombie in one month!

Today’s director is Charles Band, the legendary founder of Full Moon Pictures!

4 Shots From 4 Charles Band Films

Meridian: Kiss of the Beast (1990, dir by Charles Band, DP: Marc Ahlberg)

The Creeps (1997, dir by Charles Band, DP: Adolfo Bartoli)

Puppet Master: The Legacy (2003, dir by Charles Band, DP: Marc Ahlberg)

Evil Bong 888: Infinity High (2022, dir by Charles Band, DP: Alex Nicolaou)

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Dolls (dir by Stuart Gordon)

Posted on October 7, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Sitting out of the middle of nowhere, there’s a house. And in this house, there lives an old man and an old woman. They appear to be very friendly, the type who will happily open up their home to anyone needing a place to stay and have a cup of coffee. They make dolls for a living. They make the type of dolls that smirk at you whenever you trip and that glare at you whenever you say that you don’t care about toys. They’re living dolls and they’re actually kind of vicious. Don’t get on their bad side.

That is exactly the mistake that a few people make when they arrive at the house on one stormy night. Two punk rock girls with exaggerated British accents make the mistake of trying to find something to steal. Uh-oh, here come the dolls! A self-centered man and his wife make the mistake of not caring about their daughter. The dolls aren’t going to stand for that! Seriously, the dolls may be cute but if they don’t like you, you are doomed!

The dolls, however, do like the daughter. And they appear to be willing to tolerate Ralph, the goofy traveling salesman who made the mistake of picking up the two punk rock girls while they were hitchhiking. Will the dolls continue to like the daughter and Ralph or will they eventually turn on everyone in the house? They may be small but again, you seriously do not want to get these dolls mad.

First released in 1986, Dolls is a seriously strange movie from director Stuart Gordon and producer Charles Band. There’s a lot of good things to be said for Dolls. The house is atmospheric. The dolls are truly creepy. The acting really isn’t that bad, though I do think most viewers won’t necessarily miss the two punks girls. The movie does take the characters and the dolls in some unexpected directions. But the movie’s tone is all over the place. It starts out as a broad comedy before then turning into a surprisingly violent and bloody horror film and then it turns into this strangely macabre family drama. The movie can’t seem to decide whether it wants you touch your heart or scar your soul. Imagine Home Alone if the movie kept all the heart-warming stuff but then had the kid brutally kill the burglars and laugh while stuffing their corpses in a furnace and you have some idea of what the tone of Dolls is like.

It’s an odd film but it’s hard not to like. Stuart Gordon’s direction is energetic and, since the movie only has a running time of 77 minutes, the whole thing feels like an extra weird episode of Tales From The Crypt or The Twilight Zone. Even the film’s mix of humor and disturbing violence feels strangely appropriate, as if the film itself is an adaptation of a particularly grisly fairy tale.

Watch Dolls and you’ll never look at a toy the same way again!

Arcade (1993, directed by Albert Pyun)

Posted on October 21, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

Alex (Megan Ward) is a suburban teen still trying to come to terms with the suicide of her mother. She and her friend, Nick (Peter Billingsley), spend all of their time hanging out at the local video arcade, Dante’s Inferno. (Symbolic name alert!) Also hanging out at Dante’s Inferno is a man (John de Lancie) who is desperate to find people willing to play what he says is the next step in the evolution of gaming. The game, which is simply called “Arcade,” is a virtual reality simulator and soon, all the teens want to play it!

Unfortunately, there’s a problem with Arcade. It was partially programmed with the brain cells of a child who had been beaten to death by his mother. Don’t ask why anyone thought this was a good idea because this is a Charles Band production so you know no one would explain even if they could. The child wants either friends or revenge so, as a result, the game is stealing the souls of the people who play it and transporting them to the virtual reality world.

Realizing that all of her friends will soon be gone, Alex enters the virtual reality world to save them and thwart Arcade! She’ll have to defeat skulls, serpents, and every other CGI challenge that the game can throw at her.

If you remember this film, it’s probably because you’re like me and you saw it on HBO when you were kid. Though the film has an R-rating because of some awkwardly deployed bad language, the film really is a teen boy fantasy, one in which you can enter the world of your favorite video game and save the world with Megan Ward, a hot girl who loves video games just as much as you do. When it was released, Arcade’s special effects were pretty impressive. If you watch the movie today, it’s obvious that the actors have just been superimposed against a virtual background. Watching the film today, I had the same feeling that I had when I recently hooked up my old Xbox 360 and played a few games. It was more primitive than I remembered but that rush of nostalgia was enjoyable for a few hours.. Arcade features an energetic cast (including Seth Green and AJ Langer in supporting roles) and Dante’s Inferno was the coolest arcade I’ve ever seen. It was a hundred times better than the one from Joysicks.

One final note: If you needed any more evidence that Disney is evil, they actually sued Charles Band because they claimed Arcade was too similar to Tron! As a result, Band, working with Peter Billingsley, actually had to redesign a good deal of the CGI before the film could be released. Disney was right about Arcade being a goof on Tron but who cares? I doubt anyone has ever said, “I’ve seen Arcade, I don’t need to see Tron.” Chill out, Disney. There’s room for at everyone at the arcade.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: End of the World (dir by Charles Band)

Posted on October 4, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1977 film End of the World has got a great opening scene. An obviously distraught priest (played by none other than Christopher Lee!) steps into an isolated diner. He tells the counterman that he needs to use the phone. The counterman says, “Sure, father.” And then suddenly, everything in the dinner starts blowing up. The phone, the coffee, the pinball machine, everything explodes. The counterman ends up trying to unsuccessfully throw himself through a window. The priest, looking rather confused, steps outside of the diner and he runs into …. his exact double! Christopher Lee meets Christopher Lee!

Again, that’s a great opening and it’s really not a surprise that the rest of the film can’t live up to it. Once the two Christopher Lees disappear into the darkness, the focus of the story shifts to a scientist named Andrew (Kirk Scott) and his wife, Sylvia (Sue Lyon, who years previously played Lolita). Andrew spends a lot of time sitting in front of a boxy computer and staring at the screen. He’s picking up strange transmissions from space and he’s trying to translate them. Andrew goes home. He and his wife got a party. Andrew sits in front of the computer a while longer. Andrew goes home. Andrew goes to work. Andrew keeps staring at the computer….

“Wait,” you’re saying at this point, “isn’t this is a Christopher Lee movie?”

Yes, it is. Christopher Lee is indeed top-billed and he’s hardly in the movie at all. I’d like to think that, when asked why by an intrepid reporter why he agreed to star in End of the World, Lee laughed and replied, “For the money, of course.” But, according to Lee’s autobiography, he did the film because he was told that he would be appearing with a cast of distinguished actors like Jose Ferrer, Dean Jagger, and John Carradine. Now, Dean Jagger does have a small cameo in the film but Ferrer and Carradine are nowhere to be seen. Either they left the production or someone lied to Sir Christopher!

Anyway, back to the plot. Eventually, Andrew figures out that the space transmissions are predicting natural disasters. We don’t actually see any of these disasters because, after all, this is the end of the world on a very low budget. But we are assured that the disasters are happening. Andrew and Sylvia discover that the transmissions are coming from a convent in the middle of the desert. Andrew and Sylvia go to investigate and they discover that the nuns are….

ALIENS!

Now, this is actually a pretty good twist and there are some vaguely humorous scenes of the the nuns working in a space lab. It turns out that the nuns (and one of the Christopher Lees) are stranded on this planet because their spaceship broke down. They don’t really like Earth, considering it to be an ugly and polluted place. They’re planning on ending the world but they need to leave before the whole place blows up. They demand that Andrew help them fix their transporter and they’re going to hold Sylvia hostage until he does so….

It’s all a bit silly but, as you’re watching the film, you can’t help but wish that it had been even sillier. I mean, alien nuns and Father Christopher Lee? That sounds like the makings of a certain type of classic! But, unfortunately, the film never fully embraces the full potential of its absurdity. It takes forever for Andrew and Sylvia to actually reach that convent and even the alien nuns become rather passé after a few minutes. Christopher Lee is fun to watch as always and his character’s irritation with being stuck on Earth was obviously mirrored by Lee’s irritation with being in the film. And, despite all else, let’s give credit where credit it is due — the title lives up to its promise. The world may end in a pile of stock footage but an end is an end.

Anyway, this one is pretty much for Christopher Lee completists only. Watch the opening and then fast forward to the end.

I Want My R-TV: Spellcaster (1992, directed by Rafal Zielinski)

Posted on October 24, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

Give Charles Band a castle and a D-List celebrity and he’ll give you a movie!

In Spellcaster, which Band produced in 1988 but didn’t release until 1992, the castle is in Italy and there’s not one but three D-list celebrities. British DJ Richard Blade plays Rex, who is a VJ on R-TV, a cable station that only shows music videos. (A music station that actually plays music? Imagine that!) Bunty Bailey, who was the hot girl in Aha’s Take Me On video, is Cassandra, an alcoholic rock star. Finally, Adam Ant is Signor Diablo, who owns the castle.

The plot of the movie is that R-TV is hosting a contest where the winners get to go to Diablo’s castle and not only meet Rex and Cassandra but also search for a million dollar check. The contest winners are a snooty British woman, a sex-obsessed Italian, a sexy French woman, an overweight New Yorker, a blonde vegan, and a brother and a sister who could really use the money. They are a collection of clichés and none of them are very interesting, sympathetic, or smart. Not even the Italian notices that their host is named Mr. Devil.

The search for the money is a bust because the guests keep dying. For instance, the overweight New Yorker eats a stuffed pig, turns into a pig himself, and then gets shot by the snooty British woman, who just happened to bring a rifle with her because all snooty Brits enjoy hunting. Another person ends up getting eaten by a chair that has a lion’s head carved into it. When the lion comes to life and chomps down its jaws, the teeth are obviously foam rubber. It all has to do with Signor Diablo’s crystal ball, where he’s building a collection of souls.

With the casting Adam Ant and Bunty Bailey, Spellcaster tried to be a horror movie for the MTV generation but it came out several years too late. By the time Spellcaster was released, grunge had taken over MTV and both Adam Ant and the Take Me On video seemed like relics from another age. The film itself is a mostly dull affair, one that will be best appreciated by people who are nostalgic for the type of bad movies that used to show up on late night cable.

Sci-Fi Review: Trancers: City of Lost Angels (2013, dir. Charles Band)

Posted on April 11, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

It took me since September 5th of 2015 to finally reach the very last film in this retrospective of the Trancers series, but I’m finally here. This is the lost sequel that was made…why am I explaining this? There is a title card right at the beginning that does it for me.

Yes, I do have The Evil Clergyman. I will get to it eventually. Pulse Pounders also has a sequel to The Dungeonmaster (1984) in it, but that doesn’t appear to have been released yet.

The movie begins with good old McNulty (Art LaFleur).

He is on his way to be briefed about a prisoner in jail who apparently does not like Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) who is still in the past. He is being briefed by The Warden of the jail…

played by actress Grace Zabriskie. Ah, the good old days when I could still play dumb. You of course know Grace from Norma Rae (1979), Galaxy of Terror (1981), An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), Leonard Part 6 (1987), Wild at Heart (1990), My Own Private Idaho (1991), Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Seinfeld, Big Love, and that little short-lived show called Twin Peaks. Oh how I wish I could have claimed I thought that was some late night cable series from the 90s like the TV Show Red Oaks having a character think The 400 Blows (1959) was porn. I still have the right to make a couple American Sniper rubber baby jokes in future posts. You can’t take that away from me! If you are thinking I’m padding out this review because the movie is really short, then you’d be right.

She takes him to every futuristic hallway from the 80’s to meet the vicious murderer named Edlin Shock (Velvet Rhodes). She only says two words in her time there: Jack Deth. He is the one who brought her in.

You can sort of see through the lousy VHS rip this DVD provides that she is being transferred because the movie has to have an excuse for the criminal to escape and they went with this one.

McNulty walks through a door that can conveniently close on him when needed, and she breaks free.

She has the cuffs off now that were holding her hands straight up for some reason. Just thought I’d tell you that, cause the movie never explains how that happened. Nor does it explain this.

That’s right! She somehow punctured and got through the ceiling. Even Zar in Rock’s Winning Workout Without Weights couldn’t do that!

The best he could do was bonk his head on the ceiling.

Rock’s Winning Workout Without Weights (1990)

If you’re thinking they might show her taking someone’s gun that could be used to make that hole, then…um…nope! The best we get is that as she kicked one of the soldiers, he appears to have shot upward once. Blink, and you’ll miss it.

Anyways, The Warden instantly knows she has reached the room where she can go back in time. So of course they go there and find Raines (Thelma Hopkins).

She tells him that Edlin forced her to send her down the line. McNulty orders Jack’s body brought out of the vault, and gets Raines to send him down the line. By that I mean Alyson Croft is back to play McNulty as a girl. She’s as good as ever in this. In fact, the majority of the film is made up of Tim Thomerson and Alyson Croft reminding us that they really did give the best performances in any of the Trancers movies.

We now cut to the past of 1986 Los Angeles so that Helen Hunt can make what is basically a cameo appearance as Lena Deth. We first see her throwing dishes.

She’s not too happy with the last three years of their time together. Jack tells her they have a great detective agency. However, they have zero clients despite a great newspaper ad that says, “Put your trust in Deth.” Sounds fine to me! A plumbing agency ran that kind of an ad in my city’s local newspaper back in the 50s.

Then again, this is the same paper that ran a story talking about dogs pissing on the paper while it sat on newsstands. They also wrote an apology for making a typo in a classified ad by making another typo in the apology. Maybe she’s right. By the way, I’m not kidding about the pissing thing. It’s a four paragraph story about how “canines criticize” the paper.

Meanwhile, back in the movie, she chews him out, he uses the long second to give a speech, but after kissing her, she storms off anyways. Now Jack sits down to watch…

what I assume is Peter Gunn? They did make a joke about that show in the first Trancers movie. I’m not knowledgable enough about 50s television. That’s when Alyson Croft, as McNulty’s ancestor, shows up to deliver the message that the crazy killer from the beginning is after him.

Along with that, she brings up the fact that it’s a lot easier to protect Jack if he comes back to the future. This is probably the best part of the movie cause they actually bother to bring this next part up. Jack says that if he left now, then Phillip Deth, his ancestor whose body he is in, could be picked off and thus erase his own existence. McNulty says that the bad lady likes to look the person she is going to kill in the eye. That means she’ll follow him back to the future if necessary. However, since they already built this nice apartment set, Jack stays and stops McNulty from shooting him with the back to the future dart. McNulty likes to do that suddenly to Jack. He did it in the first film thus interrupting Jack just before he was going to have sex.

Now a guy fixing the roof shows up because we are only working without about 24 minutes of footage here.

Of course Jack lets him go. Now a red herring shows up. Okay, I kid. She’s not a bird, but she is dressed in red!

If this is actress Velvet Rhodes, then they sure don’t tell you anywhere in the non-existent credits or on IMDb. If she was, then you’d think he would recognize her, but he doesn’t, and neither does McNulty. I don’t think it is. Although, he certainly is skeptical. It really doesn’t matter what happens here. You are watching this just to see Tim Thomerson and Alyson Croft do their thing. They really are good together.

Oh, and the way you know for sure it’s either red jacket lady or roof guy is that they make sure to tell you that McNulty is lucky he has a genetically aligned ancestor to go back into before sending him down the line. That way you know for sure it’s not the killer posing as McNulty.

After a little bit of drinking, a little bit of interrogating, and red herring changing her clothes, this happens.

Yep, roof guy was the one she took over.

A scuffle now ensues, and between Jack and McNulty,…

she and Jack are sent back to the future.

Now the fight continues in the future.

The fight goes to the roof, and she gets knocked off bringing the reason for this plot to exist to an end.

Jack and Raines talk a bit. Jack decides to go back to the past, but with one condition. Could she send him back three hours earlier? You know, that way this movie never actually happened. Of course she can so…

they can attempt to kiss,…

tell McNulty to piss off,…

and actually kiss.

Then this happens.

Thomerson runs across the screen holding some stuff while Helen Hunt dances. Classy, Full Moon Features.

Now you may be asking yourself a question right now. Where were the Trancers in this Trancers movie? You didn’t miss anything. They aren’t here. This is the one and only Trancers movie without any Trancers in it. No mind controlled zombie Trancers from the first one. No drug-induced/mind controlled ones from the second film. No super solider ones from the third one. No vampire ones from four and five. No meteor rock tied into a ray gun that zaps you in the eyes from Trancers 6 either. No Trancers whatsoever. Honestly, I’m glad. I needed a change.

What’s nice about this film is that it really doesn’t break the continuity with the actual Trancers II. If anything, it gives us an early glimpse into how Jack was trying to settle into living in the past. Also, how his and Lena’s relationship was already on the rocks. In the end though, I would only recommend this for real fans of the series.

At the end of this entire look back at the series, the only ones worth seeing are the first one, this one, and the actual second movie. Definitely skip the rest.

Film Review: Trancers II (1991, dir. Charles Band)

Posted on November 15, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Well, it sure took them a long time to get back to this series. Actually, they did shoot a sequel before this, but I’ll get to that one after I finish the main releases. This one picks up six years after the events of the first one. In that one we left Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) and Lena Deth (Helen Hunt) in the past of Los Angeles. We also got a short sequel bait at the end in the form of McNulty in his female ancestor’s little girl body. For this installment they appear to have gotten back just about every single person of consequence.

Jack and Lena Deth

Art LaFleur as McNulty in future

Biff Manard as Hap Ashby

Even Telma Hopkins returns as Raines and she was barely in the movie.

The setup here is that Hap Ashby got clean and made a bunch of money in commodity speculation. He needs it since he has taken up the hobby of collecting firetrucks. Jack and Lena live with Ashby on his estate. Whistler’s brother is in the past so that means more Trancers are on their way. McNulty is going to go back in time again into his ancestor along with a time machine. The idea is to bring Jack back to the future with Whistler’s brother in tow. Jack’s body in the future is unsuitable to come back to so he needs to return in his new body. There you go, sequel!

Before I continue, take a look at those screenshots. They do those close portrait shots of the actors a lot in this movie. My guess is not that they couldn’t get the actors in the same place all the time, but that they thought that might happen. As a result, they used that consistently throughout just in case the situation arose. Enter the Trancers!

That’s when one more actor makes a return. Not sure how, but seven years or so after the production of the original Trancers, they got Alyson Croft to reprise her role as McNulty’s ancestor. I think I enjoyed her performance in this movie the most. I love her entrance into the film. She shows up having some trouble riding a bike before falling over.

However, while McNulty may have trouble riding a bike, he apparently has no issues putting on makeup.

This is when one more little important piece of information is dropped on us. In the first film we found out that Jack’s wife was killed by a Trancer. However, in this one we find out that someone was sent back to shortly before she died. They sent her consciousness back in time so that this movie can have some funny scenes between Jack and his two wives.

This is Alice Stillwell played by Megan Ward. You see, while Jack got sent back into the body of Philip Deth shortly after having sex and McNulty ended up in a pretty and funny young girl, Jack’s wife ended up in the body of a mental patient. And not just a mental patient anywhere either.

That’s Whistler’s brother who goes by the name Dr. Wardo played by the late Richard Lynch. And he has a sidekick.

Honestly, if the credits hadn’t told me that was Jeffrey Combs, then I could have easily missed that fact. I really have no idea what Lynch and Combs are up to in this movie. It doesn’t matter. Jack needs to rescue his wife and kill Lynch. It’s that simple.

The long second makes a return! Jack makes good use of it to singe some Trancers. He then comforts three ladies who saw the Trancers disappear by telling them it’s okay because they’re biodegradable. The lines in this just aren’t as good as the first one. Alice also uses the long second to hide the time machine after she finds it. It’s not important why it’s near her. It’s for the same reasons why she is even in this movie. It’s convenient for the plot.

Meanwhile, Alyson Croft continues to be the funniest person in this movie, which is humorous considering Helen Hunt would go on to do Mad About You and Tim Thomerson was once a standup comedian.

Jack shows up and rescues Alice while they are moving her. There’s a short exchange where she says he’s the only man she’s slept with, she passes out, and he’s says it wasn’t that bad. Kinda funny, but nothing in this movie is as memorable as lines like “Beef? You mean like from a cow?” or “I’m from another time, another world. I don’t even know what you people eat for lunch.”, which were in the first film.

There’s some screwball stuff here between Jack, Lena, and Alice, but who really cares. Trancers show up, Ashby starts drinking again, and Alyson Croft continues to be funny.

Now our four Musketeers set out to take down Lynch and Combs. But first we get a cameo appearance by one of director Charles Band’s other movies.

I’ll probably review that eventually. The only really important plot point left here is that Jack is going to have to send Alice back in the time machine since otherwise she’ll die shortly after returning to her body. I say it’s time for highlights.

The good guys win in a final showdown with Lynch, Combs, and their henchmen. Jack sends Alice back to the future in the time machine after a parting kiss. McNulty returns to his body to inform Raines that Jack has a new home in the past. Then Jack and Lena kiss just like at the end of the first movie.

But unlike the end of the first movie, there’s no hint at a sequel here. However, they must have changed their minds because there are five more films in this franchise. This one was definitely a step down from the first. Honestly, I really only recommend it if you are a big fan of the first like I am. We’ll see what’s next for Jack Deth in Trancers III (1992).

Film Review: Trancers (1984, dir. Charles Band)

Posted on September 5, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Back in the 1990’s there was a show on TNT that would play cult films. I don’t remember the name of it, but it was like what TCM Underground is today. I’m pretty sure that’s where I first saw The Warriors (1979), and it introduced me to Trancers. I fell in love with it. I loved the music so much that even though there was no chance I could find it, I had my parents take me to all sorts of places trying to find the soundtrack. That never panned out. Although, the music is still so burned in my mind that when I watched the horrible Savage Island (1985) this year, I recognized the music. And sure enough, Mark Ryder and Phil Davies composed the music for that movie too. They ripped themselves off. But enough of my personal backstory.

In typical film noir fashion, we are introduced to Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) and the setup of the film in voiceover narration as he enters a diner at night. Deth is a cop in the future who just finished “singeing” Martin Whistler (Michael Stefani). Whistler uses psychic powers to enslave people and turn them into what are known as Trancers. Hence the title. There are two people in the diner. A man sitting at the counter and an old lady behind it. After ordering some coffee, he checks the guy using a special bracelet to see if he’s a Trancer. Nope, but watch out cause here comes the old lady.

After taking a knife to the leg, Deth defeats her and her body disappears in a burning red light. That’s how all the Trancers die. Then Deth’s superior McNulty (Art LaFleur) shows up. He tries to give Deth some lip about Trancer hunting being out of bounds for him. Deth does what Bogart would have done. He gets in his car, tosses his badge out the window, and drives off. McNulty tells us that Deth was a good cop till his wife was killed by a Trancer.

Cut to a shot of what was Los Angeles, but now called Lost Angeles because it’s underwater. Deth likes going diving out there. McNulty and some other cops show up to tell him that the council needs him. Deth says “fuck them”, but there’s one more bit of information. Whistler is still alive. That gets his attention and he goes to meet with the council.

The council was once made up of three people, but one of them and his children have disappeared. Here’s the deal. In the future, they have the ability to send you back in time, but you do it by possessing the body of one of your ancestors while your own body remains in the present. Whistler has “gone down the line” and killed off one of the ancestors of a council member. The remaining two council members ask Deth to go back in time to protect their ancestors and bring Whistler back to the present to stand trial. They have his body and are holding it for trial. Well, that is until they show Deth the body.

Interesting side note. The two council members are played by Anne Seymour and Richard Herd. Anne Seymour goes all the way back to All The King’s Men (1949). Richard Herd is famous for several things, but probably best known for being some sort of long lost brother to Karl Malden. They really look similar.

Deth is given a picture of Herd’s ancestor, a baseball card of Seymour’s ancestor, and two vials to be used to bring Deth and Whistler back to the future. Then Deth is injected and finds himself in the body of his ancestor Phillip Deth. Oh, they also sent him back with a special watch that gives him a “long second”. That’s what the film says stretches one second to ten, but in movie terms, it’s much much longer than ten seconds. What follows isn’t much plot wise. This movie is just a little over an hour long. But it’s the delivery that makes it fun. The funny lines. The references. The self aware B-Movie filmmaking. And of course, the boom mic popping in from the top of the screen here and there. So what’s first?

Deth kills Santa Claus. When Deth first arrived he was in an apartment with Lena (Helen Hunt). She works at the mall with Santa. When Santa gets that look on his face, then it means only one thing in this movie: he’s a Trancer. After singeing him, he explains to Lena who he is and why he’s there. This is when we find out that trancing only works on “squids”. Earlier we also learned that dry hair is for squids. That’s why Deth put some stuff in his hair to slick it back. We also get one of my favorite lines ever.

Now it’s on to the tanning salon where Herd’s ancestor works. This is where the movie references The Lady In The Lake (1947).

This is also one of a couple of reference the film makes to itself. In the future, it’s July. In the present of the film, it’s Christmas, but it looks like they shot it in July. Well, anyways, too bad for Herd because his ancestor is already a Trancer. He tries to kill Deth by putting him in a tanning booth to burn him to death. Luckily, Lena comes to his rescue, but Whistler is waiting in the parking lot. You see while Deth’s ancestor is just some guy, Whistler’s ancestor is a cop and apparently his men are now Trancers.

Thank goodness for that long second. But enough of what little action there is in this movie because it’s time for a long sequence of jokes. I can’t post them all, but this is probably my favorite.

Now Deth is taken by Lena to a punk rock concert where the band is playing the worst version of Jingle Bells I’ve ever heard. But Deth does get to deck some guy who tries to harass Lena. And then three guys show up to fight Deth unsuccessfully.

The guy in the middle puts Kid N’ Play to shame. After doing some hilarious dancing to the bad music, Deth almost gets laid. Well, I should be more specific. Jack Deth almost gets laid. Phillip Deth does get laid. McNulty shows up in the body of a little girl who happens to be his ancestor and brings Deth back to the present because obviously Herd is gone from the future. Deth convinces Seymour’s character that he can save her so she sends him back just in time to miss the sex.

When Deth can’t find an episode of Peter Gunn on TV, he sees Whistler on the news saying he is going to institute some sort of program to “keep track of the homeless and protect the innocent.” Deth knows this means the ancestor he’s looking for is on “skid row”. This guy is named Hap Ashby (Biff Manard) and he used to be a pitcher. Now he’s a drunk. After consulting the three wise men, I mean the three homeless guys who call themselves the three kings, they then know where to look for Ashby.

The remainder of the film is quite short. They find Ashby. There’s a motorcycle chase. They harass Ashby about taking a shower and cleaning up. Then they set a trap for Whistler so we can have our climax.

Whistler tries to throw her over the side of the building. Deth uses the long second and catches her after getting to the ground before she does. I love that during the slow motion sequence of the long second, the movie cuts not once, but twice to Ashby drinking.

I also love that Ashby puts his pitching to good use to knock Whistler off the roof. By that I mean Whistler is hit by something, climbs out onto the ledge to dangle, then is hit again so he can fall. Seriously, you can basically see him climb out there on his own. It’s pretty funny.

With one of his vials to send people back to the future broken, he uses the remaining one to send Whistler back to nothingness and Deth remains in the past. He decides to stay with Lena since them being together is how he came into existence in the first place. The End.

Well, not really because we get one final shot of McNulty as a little girl and there happens to be six more films in the Trancers franchise. It’s fair to say that I’m not very familiar with them so they’re going to be new to me too.

Guilty (Horror) Pleasure #23: Meridian (dir by Charles Band)

Posted on October 11, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

You know how there are certain films that you just know you shouldn’t like but yet, you do? These are the films that you know you should reject but yet, right when you’re on the verge of condemning them, you suddenly realize that you’d rather watch them for a second or a third time.

For me, Meridian is one of those films.

Meridian presents a twisted take on the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale. Catherine (Sherilyn Fenn) and Gina (played by an actress who is credited simply as being “Charlie”) are recent art school graduates who have moved to Italy. Gina has come to Italy to work in art restoration while Catherine has inherited her father’s castle! That right — Catherine owns her very own castle!

I wish I owned a castle in Italy. In fact, the first person to buy me a castle in Italy (preferably one in Southern Italy) will get a special shout out from me on this site. Get to it!

Anyway, Catherine is pretty happy to be living in her very own castle. Not only does she have a lot of servants but one of them happens to be her childhood nanny (Hilary Mason) who, for reasons that don’t become clear until late in the film, is still very protective of Catherine. Catherine was a little apprehensive about moving into the castle because, when she was little, she used to see the ghost of a dead girl wandering about. However, with her nanny there to protect her and Gina visiting for the weekend, what is there to worry about?

However, one morning, Catherine and Gina discover that a traveling circus has been set up near the castle. Catherine finds herself intrigued by the leader of the circus, the mysterious Lawrence (Malcolm Jamieson). She invites Lawrence and all the performers to have dinner at the castle. With the help of magic, wine, and drugs, the dinner turns into an orgy with a nearly unconscious Catherine being taken by Lawrence’s twin brother, Oliver (Jamieson again). While atop of Catherine, Oliver reverts to his true form, as seen above…

Naturally, it all has to do with family curses and ghosts and all the rest. The morning after, Catherine wakes up with little memory of what happened. The performers are gone and Gina soon leaves the castle. Left with only her servants, Catherine starts to see the ghost of that dead girl again. And, of course, both Oliver and Lawrence show up once again. At no point does the plot make any sense but, then again, life is usually kinda messy so why should movies be any different?

So, look — there’s a lot of negative things that I could say about Meridian. Catherine is not a strong heroine, the film’s overly complicated plot is full of holes, and some of the acting is inconsistent. But yet, oddly enough, those flaws ultimately work to Meridian‘s advantage. It really is one of the most dream-like films that I’ve ever seen and often times it truly does come across like not only a fantasy but a fantasy that you might not want the world to know about. (Which, I think, would make it the epitome of a guilty pleasure…hmmm…) Working with what was undoubtedly a small budget, Charles Band tells his story with a lot of atmosphere and haunting imagery. Taking place in a beautiful country and featuring a beautiful cast, Meridian is a lot better than one might otherwise expect.

Meridian was first released in 1990. The version I saw was included as part The Midnight Horror DVD Collection, along with the original Prom Night and 6 other films, none of which were as good as either Meridian or Prom Night.