Trancers 6

• Directed by Jay Woelfel
• July 23, 2002

Jack Deth travels down the line into the body of his daughter to save the world from a new Trancer threat.

Trancers 6 starts rough and gets worse. Rather than handover a few bucks to Tim Thomerson to make at the minimum a cameo appearance they slap together a bunch of random bits of dialogue and footage along with what sounded like a bad impersonation for a few words to say “Hey look! Here’s Jack Deth” and then not have Thomerson.

We get the new and improved Jack Deth in the body of Josephine Forrest/Jo Deth (Zette Sullivan). Part of the joke in Trancers was that Thomerson played his future self as well as his past self while nobody else did. This time around ‘Jack’ inhibits the body of his daughter. If you couldn’t figure out that the little girl he met in Trancers 3 when he saw Leena was his daughter I can’t help you. I thought it was pretty obvious.

If you remember Jack Deth ended Trancers in the body of his ancestor Phil Dethton and proceeded on using another body with no thought to what he was doing. Here he ends the film in the body of his daughter. I guess this was to reboot/restart the series with a new performer. This time travel drug finally used again here can effectively make a person immortal. They just need to make another body subservient to theirs. Nobody ever points that out.

This feels super cheap. It makes that recent Hellboy movie look not only expensive but well directed. Trancers 6 is executed like a fan film and not a Trancers movie. I know what Full Moon Entertainment produces is cheap. The problem is this looks super cheap. Bad video effects are used for falling or Trancers disappearing. The cheap effects of the 80s movies came off far better than the graphics used here. This came out during the tail end of the heyday of first run syndication and takes every production hint from the shows that nobody watched.

You don’t need great acting, but you need good or okay acting and this just doesn’t got it. When your lead can’t deliver lines well you’re in some serious trouble. Zette Sullivan was/is a pretty face but a terrible actress. A quick look at her IMDB page indicates a thin resume filled largely with what sounds like softcore porn which requires no talent. Her stiffer-than-wood physicality is coupled with the delivery of a disinterested participant. Thomerson had a style and charisma that worked well with the film noir aesthetics of the original. He was just an entertaining performer to watch in anything. This actress has no presence or style.

Trancers are now formed via an energy weapon powered by a meteorite. First it was indeterminate origin though possibly caused by Whistler’s mental powers. Then it became a drug. Then it became a super soldier serum. Then it became vampires or something like them. Whatever constitutes a Trancer is very broad. They aren’t nearly as mindless or subservient as they were in the first movie, but much more in line with the fourth and fifth.

In Trancers Jack had just come from the outer planets which hinted at interstellar travel and the Solanoids which came and went in 4 and 5 confirmed that. This dives into it with aliens creating Trancers to insert in government positions even though they can impersonate people and effectively take up lives themselves in society. Why do they need possible loose ends?

I stepped away for a few minutes to make a cup of coffee and at no point did I rewind Trancers 6 to see what I missed. It was that boring I felt there was nothing that I should not have missed. Trancers 6 doesn’t have the fun of the first three movies. Not the humor or anything like that.

They try for a ticking clock with Jack’s body blurring in and out of existence but who cares? You never feel worried that he might fail or care about Jo or any of the characters because nobody can act. Trancers 6 is just not good. It’s an even blacker mark on the legacy of Trancers than 4 and 5. It would’ve been better if the people could act. Production values aside, it’s the poor performances and the lumbering script which harm this.

Skip Trancers 6. Probably skip the preceding two as well. It is slow and boring mostly because nobody can really act. This is not good.