Trancers II: The Return of Jack Deth (1991)

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) returns to this time take on Whistler's brother (Richard Lynch) who is running a mental hospital and is trying to recruit numbers to take over the world, meanwhile Deth is aided by his deceased wife who is back as a 20 something woman who falls for Deth all over again, much to the dismay of Lena (Helen Hunt) Deth's current wife. Again the 3 star rating is out of sheer guilty pleasure, because in terms of technical quality and filmmaking this film is not very well made. The first action sequence in particular with the fork lifts are laughably bad, but again Trancers II is more entertaining than it is good. The film is literally all over the map, we have no idea what Richard Lynch wants to do, the love triangle is a cheesy sitcom and yet the mix of such somehow makes it work. Again, the movie is made with a weird vibe that makes the film work better than you would think. I can't imagine anyone who isn't immersed in nostalgia or who never rented these to get the appeal of the movie, but few movies work better than this at 2 am. * * * out of 4-(Good)

The original "Trancers" had a wit and spark to it which in turn made it one of the most inspired and enjoyable low-budget sci-fi sleepers from the 80s. This rather forced belated sequel tries a tad too hard to recapture the spirit of the first one with strictly middling results. Tim Thomerson still has the right cynical stuff as Jack Deth, who this time fights Whistler's brother E.D. Ward (smoothly played by Richard Lynch) who has started his own organization called Green World that's really a sinister front for a trancer farm. Alas, Charles Band's pedestrian direction and Jackson Barr's needlessly convoluted script both result in a very uneven on and off pace: The story really plods in the first two thirds and the initial action set pieces are blandly staged, but fortunately things pick up to a good degree in the pretty exciting last third. A worthy cast of familiar B-movie faces keeps it watchable enough: Martine Beswicke as the evil Nurse Trotter, a goateed Jeffrey Combs as Wardo's antsy assistant Dr. Pyle, Art LeFleur as Deth's hard-nosed boss McNulty, and Barbara Crampton as talk show host Sadie Brady. Helen Hunt is her usual sweet and charming self as the spunky Lena, the adorable Megan Ward adds some much-needed vitality as Jack's feisty first wife Alice Stillwell, Bill Manard is a hoot as reformed drunk Hap Ashby, Sonny Carl Davis contributes an amusing turn as wacky hospital orderly Rabbit, and late, great veteran character actor John Davis Chandler has a nifty bit part as a baseball-playing wino. However, the humor is hit or miss: A sizable amount of Jack's one-liners fall flat, although the squabbling between Lena and Alice does provide a few mildly funny moments. Both Adolfo Bartoli's slick cinematography and the moody synth score by Phil Davies and Mark Ryder are up to par. Acceptable, but it should have been so much better.

This actually started out with a good idea - essentially bringing Jack's wife back from the dead through time travel tricks, and bringing Whistler's protégé (in this case, his brother) to seek revenge and rebuild the Trancer army. But from there, the movie just suffers from a whole legion of little problems that are just noticeable enough, and they add up to just be annoying. First, while the drugs and the rebuilding the army make for a good sequel, the whole mental asylum/environmental front seem more appropriate for an episode of a TV series than a feature film. Second, the fact that Leena seemed to ignore the fact that Alice actually was Jack's wife who had died and instead treated her as just some woman he was cheating on her with was really bad writing. Third, could they have please not made Alice into a complete nympho, wanting to get into Jack's pants every other moment? Fourth, while a 9-year old girl sounding like a middle aged man is great comic relief, a 15-year old girl trying to sound like a middle aged man just sounds like a typical 15-year old girl. Finally (last one, I promise), what was the director's obsession with having practically every line be delivered right into the camera? Totally blew the storytelling.Still, it was a good effort, and it's not like the huge nosedive that the series took starting with Trancers IV.

Tim Thomerson once again did a great job playing Jack Deth. Helen Hunt was back for this one as well as Megan Ward who was very talented as Jack's first wife. This movie was a lot of fun to watch. It introduced the TCL Chamber. I loved this movie. The Jack Deth character deserves a lot of credit. The Trancers series must continue.