Bill Paxton would have been 69 years old today. As a lover of both films and eccentric Texans, I still miss Bill Paxton.
Today’s scene that I love comes from Twister and it features Bill Paxton showing off some wonderful chemistry with Helen Hunt. One of the great things about Bill Paxton is that he was equally at home in both big blockbusters like Twister and Titanic and low-budget indies like Near Dark. He was an artist who also happened to be a star.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!
This week, season one concludes with a two-part episode.
Episodes 1.24 and 1.25 “Thoroughbreds”
(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on May 1st and 8th, 1985)
For their last assignment of the first season, Jonathan and Mark are sent to work at a stable owned by the wealthy Mr. Armstong (Stephen Elliott). Lizzy MacGill (a young Helen Hunt) is the daughter of one of Amrstrong’s employees (Noble Willingham) and has practically grown up at the stables. She loves horses and, as the first episode progresses, she also falls in love with Mr. Armstrong’s spoiled son, Garth (John Hammond).
Garth falls in love with Lizzie as well, learning how to be both a better horseman and just a better man from his interactions with her. Despite his father’s threat to disown him, Garth breaks off his engagement to Ms. Richy McSnobby Snob (that may not have been her actual name) and he elopes with Lizzie.
Yay!
Except …. Lizzie has cancer and she doesn’t know it! The test comes back on the exact same day that she runs off with Garth. Part one ends with two fathers in tears, though each for different reasons.
At the start of Part Two, Jonathan tracks down Lizzie and informs her of her diagnosis. Without telling Garth what’s going on, she returns home and is informed that 1) she must start chemotherapy immediately and 2) she’s pregnant. Her doctor (Richard Bull) tells Lizzie that she’ll have to have an abortion if she wants to start treatment. Lizzie runs from the hospital.
As for Garth, he naturally wants to know what’s going on. Lizzie lies to him and tells him that she only wanted him for his father’s money and since he’s now cut-off, they might as well just call off the marriage as well. Heart-broken, Garth decides to marry RIchy McSnobby Snob.
Worst ending ever, right? Well, don’t worry, it’s not over yet. Jonathan and Mark crash the wedding (and Jonathan tells a lie to get into the church, which I thought was a no-no for angels) and Jonathan causes A FIRE TO BREAK OUT IN THE CHURCH’S BASEMENT! Again, this does not seem like good angel behavior. Anyway, all the smoke gives Garth time to realize that he actually does love Lizzie and, after Mark informs him about why Lizzie actually left him, Garth rushes back to Lizzie and they go to the local Justice of the Peace to get married. Fortunately, Jonathan is able to convince Mr. Elliott to come to that wedding as well.
The episode ends with a flashforward, in which we see Lizzie and Garth’s toddler son playing outside while an apparently healthy Lizzie watches.
Yay!
It’s not a bad way to end the first season, though I do think the story could have just as easily been told in one episode as opposed to two. (The first episode especially feels padded out.) Helen Hunt and John Hammond made for a perfectly adorable couple and their chemistry ensured that the show’s signature mix of sentimentality and melodrama never felt too cloying. All in all, this was a good ending to a fairly strong first season.
Next week, season 2 begins!
Tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker is an early example of found footage horror.
Jerry Rulack (played by the star of Midnight Express, Brad Davis, in one of his final performances) is a smarmy TV host who, along with his camera crew, goes from nightclub to nightclub and asks the clubgoers, “Why are you here?” Eventually, Jerry runs into a rich girl named Donette (Helen Hunt), who turns the question around and leaves Jerry to wonder why he’s there. Donette and her friends are rich, decadent, and ultimately dangerous. Eventually, Jerry discovers that there is a price to pay for asking too many stupid questions. Brad Davis does an adequate Geraldo Rivera impersonation while Helen Hunt seems to be having fun playing someone who literally cares about nothing. As the Hitchhiker, Page Fletcher is wonderfully judgmental while introducing Jerry and later while considering his fate.
This episode originally aired on March 10th, 1987.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1991’s Murder In New Hampshire: The Pamela Smart Story! It can be viewed on YouTube!
When Pamela Wojas (Helen Hunt) first became engaged to Gregg Smart (Hank Stratton), she thought that they would never get older or settle down to a conventional life. She thought that Gregg would always have long hair and that they would spend the rest of their lives following Van Halen around the country. But then Gregg got a job with a New Hampshire insurance company and he cut his hair. And then Pam failed in her attempts to get hired by the local news station and instead, she ended up accepting a job as the part-time media director at a local high school.
Pam spearheaded the school’s anti-drug campaign and ended up working closely with two students in particular, Billy Flynn (Chad Allen) and Cecelia Pierce (Riff Reagan). Billy and Pam bonded over their shared love of Van Halen and soon, they were having an affair. Was Pam just trying to relive her youth or was she already setting up Billy to murder her husband?
Based on the true story that also inspired Gus Van Sant’s To Die For, Murder In New Hampshire jumps back and forth through time. The film opens with Gregg being shot and killed by Billy and one of his friends. It then cuts to a courtroom, where a prosecutor (Howard Hesseman) tells the jury that Gregg was murdered on the orders of his own wife. A very conservatively and modestly-dressed Pam sits in the courtroom and provides quite a contrast to the far more wild and hedonistic Pam who we see in the film’s frequent flashbacks. While Gregg settles comfortably into life as a suburban insurance agent, Pam continually tries to hold onto her past. While Gregg wins awards for selling the most insurance, Pam tells Billy that Gregg beats her and that he’s dangerous.
It’s difficult to watch Murder In New Hampshire without comparing it To Die For. They both tell the same story and they even use the same flashback structure. But if To Die For presented Nicole Kidman as being a soulless killer who was driven by her obsession with being a star, Murder In New Hampshire suggests that Pam’s main motivation was that she just couldn’t handle the idea of settling down and living a conventional, suburban life. As well, To Die For presented Joaquin Phoenix’s gunman as being someone who was essentially incapable of thinking for himself. In Murder In New Hampshire, Billy is far more active character. Though he is undoubtedly manipulated by Pam, Billy is still portrayed as someone who made his own decision to get involved in Pam’s schemes. If To Die For is a stylized satire of the true crime genre, Murder In New Hampshire is the epitome of what was being satirized.
That said, Murder In New Hampshire is a good example of the true crime genre, largely due to Helen Hunt’s wonderful performance as Pam Smart. Hunt plays Pam as someone who has never grown up and who is so scared of being required to that she’ll even resort to murder to pull it off. While Murder In New Hampshire never quite escapes the shadow of To Die For, it’s still an effective film when taken on its own terms.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1983’s Quarterback Princess. It can be viewed on YouTube!
Quarterback Princess begins with Ralph Maida (Don Murray) dropping in on the coach of a high school football team in the small town of Minnvile, Oregon. Ralph explains that he and his family are going to be relocating to the town from Canada. His eldest child wants to play football and Ralph is curious as to when the team will be holding the tryouts. The coach asks what position Ralph’s son plays. Ralph explains that Tami is his daughter and she plays quarterback. After an awkward moment of silence, the coach explains that he’ll have to talk to the school board.
Yes, Quarterback Princess is one of those films. It’s an only girl on the team film, in which an athletic teenager has to convince not only her male teammates but also all of the stodgy old people that she can play just as well as the boys. On the one hand, films (and shows, as Degrassi had an entire storyline about Jane trying to get on the school’s football team) like this are usually entertaining because it’s fun to watch a girl succeed while all of the men sputter with outrage until the team starts winning. On the other hand, they’re always a little bit difficult for me to relate to because I would honestly have no interest in doing what Tami’s doing and it’s hard for me to understand why anyone else would either. I mean, seriously why would anyone want to live in Oregon when Montana’s just a short drive away?
Quarterback Princess is based on a true story. In real life, Tami Maida was 14 year old when she joined her high school football team as their quarterback. That season, the team had a record of 7-1 and they won the state championship. Tami was also elected Homecoming Queen that seem year. The parts of the movie that seem like the type of thing that only a screenwriter could come up actually happened. Helen Hunt, who was 20 years old at the time, plays Tami. When I watched the film, I thought Hunt did a good job in the scenes off field but I thought she was a bit unconvincing when she was actually playing the game and throwing the ball. Fortunately, I did some research before I actually wrote this review and I discovered that Tami served as Helen Hunt’s stand-in during the film and, in most of the game scenes, that actually is Tami throwing the ball and running around the field. That shows you how much I know about football.
Quarterback Princes is definitely a made-for-television production. These are the only high school football players in existence who neither drink nor curse. For that matter, the coaches are surprisingly nice as well. That said, it isn’t bad. The best scenes are the ones that feature Tami and her family adjusting to Tami’s sudden fame. Daphne Zuniga gives a sympathetic performance as Tami’s sister, who is not particularly happy about how Tami’s sudden fame has changed everyone’s lives. The always likable John Stockwell plays Tami’s boyfriend and the two of them are a believable couple. Noel Black, who also directed Pretty Poison, does a good job of keeping the action moving at a steady pace. Probably the worse thing you can say about this film is that it was a bit predictable but, in this case, all of the predictable stuff actually happened so what can you do?
“Tye Sheridan Is …. THE NIGHT CLERK!”
That’s not how The Night Clerk was advertised, though perhaps it should have been. This is one of those overheated melodramas that’s so sure that it’s making a bigger statement than it actually is that it becomes somewhat fascinating to watch. Usually, when we say that a film is fascinating to watch, we mean that it’s either fascinatingly good or fascinatingly bad. The Night Clerk is fascinatingly middle-of-the-road. It has opportunities to be good, largely due to the performances of Tye Sheridan and Ana de Armas. And it has opportunities to be bad, largely due to the direction and script of Michael Cristofer. Try as it might, the film never becomes truly good and yet it’s never truly bad, either. It’s just kind of there.
The title character is Bart Bromley (Tye Sheridan), a young man who has Asperger’s syndrome and who works as a night desk clerk at a hotel. He’s hidden cameras all over the hotel, so that he can observe the guests in their rooms. He even watches the guests when he returns to the home that he shares with his mother, Ethel (Helen Hunt). That’s undeniably creepy but we’re not supposed to hold that against Bart because he’s only watching the guests so that he can learn how to talk and communicate with other people.
(To be honest, the film is very lucky that Tye Sheridan was available to play Bart. As written, Bart is not a particularly sympathetic character. But Sheridan is such a likable actor and has such an appealing screen presence that you’re willing to overlook a lot of narrative inconsistencies where his character is concerned.)
Anyway, Bart ends up taking an interest in a guest named Karen (Jacque Gray) but, when Karen’s murdered, Bart becomes the number one suspect. Even though Bart knows that Karen was killed by a mysterious man who had a distinctive tattoo, he can’t reveal how he knows that information. When Bart is assigned to another hotel, he meets Andrea Riviera (Ana de Armas). Andrea seems to take an interest in Bart but is she sincere or is she somehow involved with the murderer herself?
Do I really need to answer that question for you?
And again, the film is lucky that Ana de Arams was available to play Andrea because Andrea is another character who wouldn’t be particularly sympathetic if she had been played by a less appealing performer. The film can never seem to make up its mind whether she’s a calculating femme fatale or a naive victim and it’s somewhat amazing that de Amas is able to give a good performance considering how badly Andrea is written.
The Night Clerk is one of those films that holds your interest while you watch it but it tends to fade from the memory as soon as it ends. Sheridan and de Armas are appealing actors but the film’s central mystery isn’t a particularly interesting one. When the mystery is finally solved, I was so underwhelmed that I kept waiting for another twist to suddenly pop up. Surely, I kept saying, it can’t be that simple. But yes, it is. Though the hotels are impressively trashy, the film itself has a rather flat, uninteresting look and director Michael Cristofer never really brings the story together. It’s a mess of a film but it does work as a testament to the talents of Tye Sheridan and Ana de Armas.
Truman Gates (Patrick Swayze) may have been raised in Appalachia but, now that he lives in Chicago, he’s left the old ways behind. He has a job working as a cop and his wife (Helen Hunt) is pregnant with their first child. When Truman’s younger brother, Gerald (Bill Paxton), shows up in town and asks for Truman’s help, Truman gets him a job as a truck driver. But, on his first night on the job, Gerald’s truck is hijacked by a Sicilian mobster named Joey Rosellini (Adam Baldwin) and Gerald is killed. Truman’s older brother, Briar (Liam Neeson), soon comes to Chicago and declares a blood feud on the mob.
Of the many action films that Patrick Swayze made between Dirty Dancing and Ghost, Roadhouse may be the best known but Next of Kin is the best. Next of Kin spends as much examining the family dynamics of Rosellini’s family as it does with Truman’s, suggesting that there is not much of a difference between the two groups. There’s even a scene where Joey’s uncle (played by Andreas Katsulas) tells Joey that the Sicily was the Appalachia of Italty. Next of Kin also has a better supporting cast than most of the films that Swayze made during this period. Along with Paxton and Neeson, the hillbillies are represented by actors like Ted Levine and Michael J. Pollard while Ben Stiller has an early role as Joey’s cousin. Patrick Swayze gives one of his better performances as Truman but the entire movie is stolen by Liam Neeson, who is a surprisingly believable hillbilly.
For our next film in this series of Back to School reviews, we take a look at 1985’s Girls Just Want To Have Fun!
And you know what?
It’s true — we do just want to have fun!
The fun in Girls Just Want To Have Fun is pretty much defined by dancing, which is okay with me because I love to dance. However, Girls Just Want To Have Fun had the misfortune to be made in the mid-80s. I have lost track of many 80s films that I’ve watched but I’m still always shocked at how undanceable most 80s music truly was. This film, of course, does contain a cover version of the famous song by Cyndi Lauper and that’s actually a pretty good 80s song. However, the rest of the music (and, by that, I mean the music that everyone in the movie is actually dancing to) is incredibly bland in the way that only music from the decade of We Built This City could be.
As for the film itself, it takes place in Chicago. Janey Glenn (Sarah Jessica Parker) is the newest student at the local Catholic girls school. Janey’s overprotective father (Ed Lauter) is in the army and Janey has lived all over the world. Despite that, Janey is not at all worldly. In fact, when she tries to introduce herself to her classmates, all she can get out is that she’s a gymnast and she loves to dance. (When we actually see Janey dancing or doing any sort of gymnastics, Sarah Jessica Parker’s hair always seems to fall in her face, which is certainly one way to hide a stunt double.)
Janey makes one friend at the school. Lynn (Helen Hunt, looking like a teenager but already sounding like a hung over 40 year-old) is about as wild as a girl can be in 1980s PG-rated film. That’s to say, she wears a leather skirt when she’s not in school and, when she babysits, she orders pizza and then allows the baby to sit on it. (Ewwwwwww! There’s a reason why babies wear diapers….) Lynne and Janey are automatically BFFs because they both love Dance TV!
That’s right — it’s DTV! I wonder what that’s supposed to be based on…
It turns out that DTV is having a contest to pick two new dancers! Disobeying her strict father, Janey sneaks out of the house and joins Lynn in auditioning! Lynn’s partner turns out to be so spastic that Lynn doesn’t make the semi-finals. Later, Lynn discovers that her partner was bribed by rich bitch Natalie Sands (Holly Gagnier). I’m not sure why Natalie felt the need to do that since Lynn wasn’t that impressive to begin with. She’s about as good a dancer as you would expect Helen Hunt to be.
However, Janey does make it to the semi-finals, where she’s partnered with Jeff. Jeff is tough and blue-collar and, at first, it doesn’t seem like he and Janey will get along. So, of course, they end up falling in love and, of course, Natalie’s father tries to force Jeff out of the contest by threatening to put his father out of work. Jeff, incidentally, is played by Lee Montgomery. Years before appearing in Girls Just Want To Have Fun, Montgomery played the little kid who gets crushed by a chimney at the end of Burnt Offerings. Burnt Offerings is a really crappy film but I watch it every time that it comes on TCM just so I can see that chimney crush Lee Montgomery. That said, Montgomery actually does a pretty good job of Jeff. You never quite buy him as a rebel without a cause but he still seems like an authentic and likable teenager. Jeff and Janey are a cute couple and that’s all that really matters.
Just as Janey has a best friend, Jeff also has a best friend. Drew Boreman (Jonathan Silverman) talks too much, tries to sell t-shirts from the trunk of his car, and there’s also a scene were he grabs a random girl’s breasts and makes a comment about using her nipples to tune a radio. Drew is annoying and, once you get over the fact that she’s being played by a young Helen Hunt, so is Lynn. Watching the movie, you kind of want to tell both of them to just calm down for a few minutes.
But you know who is not annoying? Jeff’s younger sister, Maggie, who is played by none other than a very young Shannen Doherty. Maggie was my favorite character because she alone seemed to understand how stupid everyone else in the film was. And she was willing to call them out on it.
ANYWAY — Girls Just Want To Have Fun is one of those movies where next to nothing actually happens. There is an extended sequence where our heroes destroy Natalie’s snooty party with the help of a bunch of punks and female body builders but otherwise, it’s remarkable how little actually happens. That said, some of the dancing is good (even if most of the music is totally bland in the way that only 80s music can be) and it’s interesting to see Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt when they were young. Sarah Jessica Parker actually gives a surprisingly likable performance here, even if it is often way too obvious that a body double is doing the majority of her dancing. That said, you really can’t get any further away from Carrie Bradshaw than Janey Glenn.
Girls Just Want To Have Fun is a time capsule of the decade in which it was made and that is definitely the main reason to watch it. Until time machines are a reality and we can experience the past firsthand, we’ll just have to keep getting our information from movies like this one.
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.
This was a little sad to watch. At least it didn’t make me feel even more depressed than I did after the scene in the transploitation “documentary” Let Me Die A Woman (1977) where a trans woman cuts off her own penis. Thanks, Ms. 45 (1981)! It probably didn’t help that I also watched Crackdown Mission (1988) where Godfrey Ho spliced a Pierre Kirby buddy cop movie into a Taiwanese remake of Ms. 45 either.
The last time we left Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson), he and Lena (Helen Hunt) had dealt with Trancers in early 1990’s Los Angeles. This movie picks up in 1992. And yes, Helen Hunt is in this. If memory serves, she did this as a favor to the filmmakers considering she was on Mad About You at this point. It opens with the usual voiceover from Jack and then we see a really sad commercial for the Jack Deth detective agency.
Yep, just like the first film, this one also has a part of it that takes place during the Christmas season. Then we see what happens when a guy who seems to barely speak English tries to rob a convenience store run by another guy who also seems to barely speak English.
It causes this guy to show up in a time machine. He’s there for Jack. Cut to Jack talking on the phone to Lena. Turns out they’re getting a divorce! Can’t really blame her. It’s either a guy who has futuristic zombies coming after him like this.
Or a guy who wants to hang a giant poster of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman in their apartment.
As Helen puts it.
I think she made the right choice.
After finding Jack, him and the reject from the third season of Star Trek: Enterprise travel into the future of 2352. There he finds that they were also able to get back Telma Hopkins as Cmdr. Rains…
and Megan Ward as Alice Stillwell.
This was three years before she would get her own show on NBC as well called Dark Skies. Unfortunately, that show didn’t succeed like the two other shows I remember them packaging with it: The Pretender and Profiler.
The gist here is that something happened in the past that led to a huge Trancer army overrunning the humans. You know what that means? Jack has to go back to the future to stop it. That means he has to go back to 2005. And by 2005, I mean we cut to a strip club.
Hey, I know that name! Thanks, Mötley Crüe!
I’ve got the screenshots, but there’s no menage a trois here, nor breaking any of Frenchies laws. However, this guy seems to like what he sees.
This scene introduces us to R.J. played by Melanie Smith.
She’s joined a special corps of people who are being enhanced to be able to Trance at will through the use of drugs. The guy I posted before decides to beat some people up before being shot to death. This scene only exists to introduce us to her and the whole drug thing. Well, that and since it has…
Travis McKenna as the bartender, it gives me an excuse to post one of my favorite scenes from Road House (1989).
I guess you could say that other guy was “too stupid to have a good time.” Now we are introduced to the villain of this movie and…
I guess this movie was an audition for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Melanie Smith would have a recurring role on the show, and that’s Andrew Robinson who would play Garak, the Cardassian tailor who was also a semi-retired dangerous spy and assassin. He really is the only good thing about this movie. Even through this stupid half assed sequel, he manages to show us exactly why he got hired to play that role. Funny that the previous Trancers movie had Jeffrey Combs in it who would also go on to play one of the most memorable characters from that show: Weyoun.
Anyways, after Jack goes back in time and shows us what being asked to make Trancers III was like…
by falling into a pile of trash, we get some pointless scenes till Jack shows up at Lena’s 2005 apartment.
And by 2005, I mean as seen from 1993. Making that girl wear that hat is cruel and unusual punishment. Turns out R.J. went to Lena because Lena has been writing about this Trancer core. It’s actually just an excuse to get her with Jack and let Tim and Helen say their goodbyes.
From this point till the final scenes of the movie can be summed as stalling for time by having pointless scenes with the villain, pointless fighting between his soldiers, and pointless conversations between Jack and R.J. The only thing worth mentioning here is that it’s not a good idea to pit a piete girl and against decent sized guy in a fight when they certainly don’t come across as martial artists. I say that because one of the scenes is like watching an ant try to beat up a beetle.
Well, eventually Jack and R.J. are captured. R.J. breaks Jack out, but starts to Trance because of the drugs, so she asks Jack to kill her, which he does. Then what must have been a joke happens. The fish head guy from earlier shows up out of nowhere to help Jack, but the second they turn to go through the door to fight the bad guys, this happens.
The guy freezes up leaving Jack to deal with them. And deal with them he does by gun, fist, and sword. I bet that was supposed to be a hint or inspiration for the next Trancers movie. Afterwards, it turns out fish head’s circuit board had malfunctioned, but came back to life as soon as the battle was done. Jack returns to the future future and goes before the council.
They give Jack a fancy new title, which Jack correctly knows is just an excuse so they can send him anywhere in time they please along with his new buddy. And that’s it! There’s no reason to see this. I remember stumbling across this at a video store when I was young. No wonder I basically forgot about it’s existence. Since it worked so well at the end of the Trancers II review. Here’s another shot of Thomerson giving a help me I’m stuck making Trancers movies face.
Through the Shattered Lens 