You may remember that I recently saw TRANCERS for the first time. Which of course means I haven’t seen any of the other TRANCERSes. And I’m a sucker for a long series of sequels. I’m not planning to watch them all in one chunk, but I don’t want to let them sit and fester, I thought I should get started. So I learned about the unusual fact that it took them seven years to get around to part two, but three years before that they filmed a TRANCERS short meant to be a segment in an anthology film called PULSE POUNDERS. The movie was never released, a casualty of Empire International Pictures going out of business.

I didn’t mention this before but after the black and white version of JOHNNY MNEMONIC came out, Charles Band released TRANCERS in black and white calling it TRANCERS NOIR. So he’s not one to miss out on a quickie library exploitation. When a copy of the PULSE POUNDERS segment turned up in 2013 he released it as a standalone on DVD even though it’s only about twenty minutes long and of rough transfer quality. These days you can get it as an extra on the TRANCERS blu-ray or just watch it on Tubi. The lost angels were found.

All of the principles return: directed by Charles Band (THE GINGERDEAD MAN), written by Danny Bilson & Paul De Meo (DA 5 BLOODS), makeup effects by John Carl Buechler (FROM BEYOND), Tim Thomerson (IRON EAGLE) returning as Jack Deth, Helen Hunt (KISS OF DEATH) as his young cool girlfriend Leena, Art LaFleur (CITY HEAT) as his boss McNulty in the future, Alyson Croft (MAID TO ORDER) as the little girl who McNulty possesses when he time travels to the ‘80s, Telma Hopkins (THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS) as Ruthie Raines, the future doctor who administers the time travel shots.

In Angel City in the future, McNulty is the only man they trust to oversee the transfer of a dangerous prisoner, Edlin Shock (Velvet Rhodes, “Hooker” [uncredited], BATMAN FOREVER). I’m not sure why – maybe they like the rope he ties around his fedora? He doesn’t do anything unusual for the transfer, just walks along, turns his back and then she just kicks some guards and escapes into the ceiling. Really a huge failure that everyone should be ashamed of, an absolute fiasco, I gotta assume none of these people will have jobs still by part 2.

It’s kind of a DEMOLITION MAN/Simon Phoenix situation because Jack Deth put Shock away and she wants revenge so bad she breaks into their time travel lab and goes after him in the past. The timeline is very confusing to me. McNulty says, “If she’s after Jack Deth, there’s only one place to look. Los Angeles, 1988.” It’s a weird thing to say, because in TRANCERS he travelled to 1985 and to make matters worse a title card in this one says we’re in 1986, but I think that was a typo, because Leena says they’ve been together for three years. But how did McNulty know Shock would choose 1988? Couldn’t she go to any time between 1985 and whenever Jack dies? Why specifically three years after he got there?

Well, just because they want the story to pick up after Jack has been living in the past for a while and gotten into a rut. He has a detective agency. Leena is still with him but mad at him, it’s kind of like Moonlighting. Actually she’s introduced in a full-on tantrum, throwing Jack’s papers and dishes and yelling at him. She explains it’s because he doesn’t do anything or try hard enough.

Remember how he has a watch that can slow one second down to last for ten seconds only for him? For some reason he uses that to interrupt and tell her she’s right about everything and let her go find someone better. He even makes a joke about their age gap (“You could do better than me, find some guy close to your own age, hell, there’s 300 years between us, Leena.”) But she thinks he used it to kiss her so she throws his watch down and smashes it. That’s a very consequential lovers’ spat – he no longer has his future technology! But she still spins it like she’s the reasonable one just waiting for Jack to grow up.

Right then McNulty shows up in the little girl body to warn him that Shock is trying to kill him. There are jokes about how she talks all hard boiled and drinks his whisky on account of she’s actually an adult man. They don’t know what body Shock is in, so Jack has to be suspicious of everyone he sees and there’s a red herring or two. No, actually just one. It’s either the guy who says he’s repairing the roof (actor not credited) or Carmen Le Fay (actor also not credited), a sexy lady who shows up at the agency in a red latex dress to hire him for a case.

For such a short running time they sure fit in an impressive amount of behavior and comments that just feel wrong. It’s like a succession of different cool things they had but they didn’t have time to figure out good ways to get there. Like they wrote the C down in pen and put A and B in pencil to replace later but never got around to it. For example at the beginning the warden (Grace Zabriskie, EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES) lists the number of people killed when Shock flipped out in the prison, McNulty says “Over what?,” and she says “A pack of cigarettes.” For about .0006 seconds it seems like a funny line but then I get distracted realizing the only reason why he’d ask “over what?” instead of “why’d she do that?” or something is if he knew the line he was setting up. So much of it is a little off like that.

And here’s one I really couldn’t make heads or tails of: when Carmen shows up at Jack’s door she suddenly faints. Why? I don’t know. It’s old timey. But he carries her into his office, sets her down on a chair, telling little McNulty to “get the whisky,” and without hesitation McNulty pours him a glass of whisky which he lovingly pours into Carmen’s mouth and it makes her snap out of it. It really acts like this is the accepted, obvious procedure for fainting that everyone knows and would follow immediately. I guess we could say it’s something they do in the future, but Carmen doesn’t seem surprised by it at all. So maybe they did it in 1988 too. I guess I just never came across it. I was too busy watching DIE HARD or whatever to learn first aid.

Carmen is wet from the rain so Jack lets her dry off, she comes out wearing a short robe, asks to lie down, he holds her hand and brings her to a fold-out bed, he tries to brush off her advances but then sits down and kisses her. This is eight minutes after his girlfriend of three years left him. But it’s weirder on her end. We assume she’s trying to seduce him to then kill him, but no, she’s the red herring! She’s sincerely trying to get with him. Women always throw themselves at Jack Deth. Maybe it’s some thing where men in the future have different pheromones that really help them hit the jackpot in the ‘80s? No, his ancestor was already with Leena. I guess it’s the power of Tim Thomerson.

Against Jack’s wishes, McNulty sends him back to the future, so we get to see him in his cartoony scarface look again as he has a scuffle with Shock in the futuristic police lab. I like that she just beats the shit out of him for a bit and he doesn’t even really fight back. My favorite is when she puts him on a gurney and rolls him into the wall. He defeats her by climbing up a ladder and squirting some “HAIR POMADE” (that’s all it says on the tube, no brand name) onto a rung so she slips when she comes after him. Doesn’t die or anything. Just falls and they arrest her again.

For some reason this gives Jack the inspiration to “do some good” in the ‘80s so he asks Ruthie to “send me back about three hours earlier” (than she sent McNulty) so he can make a nice meal for Leena to try to head her off before she dumps him. So it’s a love story.

One thing that’s funny about this as a TRANCERS sequel is that there are no trancers in it. And now I’m genuinely wondering if we’re done with the actual trancers, since didn’t the guy who controlled them die? Don’t tell me. I’ll find out. Anyway the only reference here is when Jack says of his Irish whisky, “stuff’ll make a trancer outta ya.”

This is a strange thing to exist, huh? A short sequel in an unrelated anthology would be odd, but kind of cool. Like if they put a little DISTRICT B13 movie in PARIS, JE T’AIME.  It also kinda feels like proof they could’ve made a Jack Deth syndicated TV show with him working as a detective. Not time traveling all the time, maybe just having some lasers or dealing with other time travelers. But Full Moon was in the home video business. They were too busy coming up with different small little guys to come up with cases for a detective show. But at least they did this one weird thing – I appreciate it.