Trancers III (1992)

 "Only squids can be tranced!"

Oh yes. Not long after seeing the first two, I'm back, blogging the gloriously awful, straight-to-video, next instalment in the increasingly questionable adventures of Jack Deth.

Mind you, the first two films, while they were silly and they damn well knew it, wewre by no means bad films, quite the contraries. They were just B movies, and of the very best kind. 

But this one... well, Tim Thomerson is good, but it's just basically a slow paced yawn fest. On paper it seems ok- it's 1992, Jack is divorcing Lena so the studio can limit the appearances of the increasingly expensive Helen Hunt, and Jack finds himself in a future with humanity almost overwhelmed by trancers. His only hope is to hop back in time to 2005(!) and the trancers' origins as a creepy military drug injection programme.

Oh, and there's a very rubbish robot that looks sort of like a fish and really does look and sound terrible... but, this being low budget, it's not on screen much. Both cast and setting are visibly very cheap indeed. And, well, naff all happens.

There are bright spots. Andrew Robinson, as the villainous Colonel Mutha, chews the scenery with aplomb. Thomerson is always watchable. But, well... I may have watched one Trancers sequel too far.

Hellraiser (1987)

"Come to Daddy!”

I've never, aside from the Motorhead song, had any previous experience of the Hellraiser franchise. I haven’t read the novels, nothing. I’ve been missing out; this is right up there with the best horror films of the decade.

One big surprise is how good the camerawork is, the film being not only written but also directed- very well indeed- by Clive Barker himself. And the S&M torture demon aesthetic is very visual, translating well to film and effectively realised. It reminds me of a cross between Nurgle and Slaanesh in Warhammer, a contemporary phenomenon. What was in the zeitgeist on 1987?

And the very Eightiesness of not only the hair and clothes but also the choice of shots has aged in a good way; this is a horror film shot like a Siouxie and the Banshees video.

The performances are generally very good, as they needed to be, but I’d single out Andrew Robinson in particular (later Garak in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) for a subtle and nuanced performance. The characterisation is both unusually strong and unusually central for a horror film. It’s a film, I think, about sex, pain and the terrors of temptation. Our two adulterers both face bad ends, although Frank’s is as hellish as his initial stop motion awakening. And all because of a kind of Rubik’s Cube. Why did it take me so long to discover this film?