Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop  TRANCERS – Picked up a sort-of old fave and realised I’d inadvertently hit on a Christmas movie. Twenty-third century gumshoe Jack Deth slips ‘down the line’ to mid-eighties LA, where a sinister bad guy is messing with the future. A nice, solid B with all the era-specific turkey and trimmings, including a constant neon and palm trees vibe. One slight bit of trivia of interest only to me is that I always think ‘Trancers’ features a cameo from The Exploited as the band in the punk club, but when I watch it I realise it’s someone else. Being wrong sucks. Anyway, the ending feels rushed and a bit fumbled but doesn’t really make this anything other than an enjoyable romp.
THE MEATEATER – Every shoe salesman must dream of opening their own movie theatre – but not one that comes with its very own ‘Phantom Of The Opera’ clone, right? A cheapo indie from the late seventies that’s bad in a way you couldn’t carry off nowadays. If you dig that kind of thing, there’s plenty to like; inky shadow vibes, baffling edits and odd camera moves all have their magic. You could also overlook the flat acting and constantly bungled scenes in favour of quirks such as the avalanche of references to meat snacks (don’t expect cannibalism, this one’s in it for the hot dogs) and the fact that the cinema only ever plays a documentary about animals shagging and eating each other to a tranced-out audience who giggle like they’re in someone’s dream. It must all be a metaphor for… something. When the meat eater appears, he looks distressingly like Jimmy Saville! ‘Off’ enough to invite but not weird enough to excite; the creaky regionalism charms on a level with, say, something like ‘Toxic Zombies’, but doesn’t quite reach the sinister strangeness of Don Dohler’s similarly semi-competent ‘The Fiend’.
HIGH DESERT KILL – Some guys are on a desert hunting trip to commemorate their dearly departed best mate. After a while their macho antics start getting weird and a bit dangerous; an alien presence might be involved. ‘High Desert Kill’ is actually a late eighties TV movie that cribs from era mainstays in ways that are awkward and quite interesting. ‘Predator’ as a metaphor for grief? It just doesn’t happen. I guess the desert setting lays on a bit of atmosphere, and there are some nicely eerie stretches, particularly when they all start going a bit mad. A few lulls, although the TV flatness was less in evidence than expected, and in looks and tone it reminded me of a direct-to-video work from around the time more than anything else. Enjoyable. Chuck Connors always gets a thumbs up from me. |