Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today it's all Time Cops. It's not the movie Time Cop, it's another Time Cop movie. This is one where you know, there are different ways you get into a piece of B cinema. Sometimes you watch a trailer and it really grabs you. Sometimes you just hear the pitch and it gets the hooks in. But for me, this movie transfers to the Return of Jack Death. It lured me in with one of the best B movie posters I've ever seen.
I can't remember how I first came across this. How did we get started on the transfer train? You were talking about transfers and then I found this poster.
I think, yeah, a couple of things came together. I think I got a preview of a Full Moon Entertainment streaming channel in order to watch shock Waves, and then forgot to unsubscribe, and you know, so I had it for a month, and then we were talking about Full Moon Entertainment and the question was raised, I think by Seth are all the films in the Full Moon Entertainment Catalog or they are they all essentially Evil Bong and Ginger dead Man. And I was like, no, no, no, no,
you know there's some early stuff. I think there's some good stuff in there, maybe the Transfer movies. I haven't seen them yet. And then the next thing I knew, I had a bout of insomnia. So I fired up Transfers one and started watching it.
Okay, that's right. So you were talking about Transfers one and you were pitching me on the concept, which which sounded quite enticing, sort of similar. It sounded like a cross between Time Coop and there's a series of video games. I've never played one, but the games are called Assassin's Creed and the premise of them is that you don't physically, in your body go back in time, but you can send your mind back in time to inhabit the body of one of your ancestors. Is that right?
I think that's how it works. Yeah. I'm not really versed in those games.
Either, Okay, And so that's one of the basic plot mechanics of Trancers, right, that it has a drug based time travel mechanism where you can send your brain, or at least your consciousness back into the body of one of your long dead relatives.
Correct. Yeah, Roughly speaking, if we're going to lean into what's going on, there are seemingly two methods of time travel in the film. There's the genetic ancestral drug technique to move consciousness and a physical time travel technique with severe limitation. So there is a continuation or survival of consciousness in these films akin to reincarnation, as well as
a consciousness based model of time. And it seemed to indicate that time is largely an illusion created by conscious and can be manipulated through pharmacology and manipulated to such a degree that then physical time travel is possible as well.
That's right. Transfers too gets deep. This is I remember when I first signed up for Netflix many many years ago. It was interesting because, like, you would tell it what movies you liked, and then it would start suggesting its own, Like Netflix curated thematic subgenres for you. And I remember one of the little categories that curated for me based on the movies that I had liked previously was mind bending thrillers. And so I think this is technically a mind bending thriller.
Yes, it bends the mind.
It's a little bit. Yeah, it bends it in multiple directions. But I got to come back to this poster. So you were telling me about trancers, and then I looked up the poster but ended up seeing the poster for transfers to the Return of Jack Death. This thing is beautiful. It belongs in the Eufisia. It's so it's got a painting of the main guy in the movie. But I was not familiar with this guy. I guess his name is Jack Death, right like mega death, not like the
actual word death. And then the painting he looks like Elaine's boss from Seinfeld, you know, the guy with the like very smooth, slickback white hair and the dark eyebrows, and he's looking kind of like Sam the Eagle, looking kind of stern and handsome with a strong jawline. But he's got a long coat on. It's almost like, you know, he's like a flasher creep, but inside the coat it's not his body. It's like a galaxy full of stars. And then there are a couple of people standing with him,
two women each holding guns. One of them is Helen Hunt, kind of smiling in a mild way, holding a shotgun and wearing the mom jean'siest mom jeans that have ever been created. Oh and they're also like standing on the surface of Mars, which doesn't correlate to anything that happened in the movie. Right. Do you know why in this poster Jack Death has a galaxy inside his coat?
Well, I mean, there's nothing in the film to indicate why this would be, but I guess if we lean into it, he's a you know, he's from the future, so he is. He has a sci fi nature to him. And if you can, I don't know, you're spending time and space. That's about as much as I can come up with.
Okay, So I guess one thing we should acknowledge is that this is yet another episode where we're covering a sequel without having covered the original film. And I think, Rob, you're going to sort of do recap duty for us, Yeah, to tell us about the first Transfers movie. But we do not apologize for doing this. In fact, I think some of my favorite episodes of Weird House Cinema have been where we covered a sequel without covering the original. I don't know why that often works out so well.
Something about it is kind of liberating, But I feel like it's something we're going to keep doing, and we maybe even need like a dedicated word for like the seq velocity episodes.
Or yeah, because I think one of the reasons that it works is that when you're dealing with sequels, especially sequels of this caliber, you know, in sequels of genre films, there are at least one of two things are likely to be happening here. So on one level, a sequel is a chance to move beyond the establishing setting and origin stories and get into the meat of a new, fresh story, provided, however, that you don't have to then
reset heaven and Earth to make a sequel work. So I would say that a great example of this is Blade two, where Giama do Toro did not have to deal with any of like the origin story of Blade for the most part, and just got to get into just run right into a new adventure with only minor resetting.
It's kind of like getting to start a movie in the second act.
Yeah. Probably, I love this film, obviously, But a bad example of this would be Highlander two, where everything was wrapped up in Highlander one, so in order to do a equal they really had to reset having an Earth and inject a whole bunch of new material.
Yeah, there are a lot of sequels that have to essentially undo the previous film in some way in order to exist, and on certain occasions that can be a kind of like bold and gutsy and admirable move. This is a widely hated movie, but one one that does this in a way that I think could have been great is Alien three. Alien three. I mean, I guess I'm not gonna spoil anything for a movie that's been out this long. Alien three begins by killing most of
the characters that survived Aliens. Yeah, and and love characters, yeah, beloved characters that all die right at the beginning, actually off screen. It's just like it happens in between the films, and a lot of people like this, but something about me always kind of appreciated like this could be the setup to a real powerful gut punch of a third Alien movie. Unfortunately, Alien three is it's one of those movies that is it's hard to say it's bad because
I think it's essentially an unf finished film. We don't we didn't ever get to see what Alien three would have been.
Yeah, so so many great aspects to it, I mean, has a wonderful cast.
Pete Posselway, Charles S. Dutton. Yeah, it's got an amazing cast.
And Dance as a oh arly likable human being, which or at least a more relatable human being than he tends to play. I don't I don't remember all the wrinkles in his character, but he wasn't a complete bastard desire.
Call Charles Dance is just wonderful. Yeah, it has a great cast, has in a way a strong setup. It's just yeah, like I said, it's basically an unfinished film that was nevertheless released and kind of really suffers for that. It's sort of held together by duct tape and paper clips. But that was all a tangent to say. There are some cases where it feels like it can be really strong. Most of the time, when your sequel has to undo the previous film, it's just really irritating.
How do you feel about Halloween one Halloween two? Because Halloween One ends with like Donald Pleasant is like finally we have killed him, and then Halloween two begins with oh wait, my bad, I'm sorry I missed him, or he's not dead.
You know, I mean Halloween two is not the worst slasher movie and not the worst slasher sequel. Like it's a pretty competently executed slasher horror movie. But yeah, it's it's totally unnecessary, and it's quite clear that it was just just kind of a cash grab. It's like the first movie was really successful, we got to do another one. I mean, I don't think it doesn't feel it like Carpenter didn't even direct it. I think he co wrote the screenplay if I'm not mistaken, but I could be
wrong about that. But whoever was all the creative forces behind it. It is a competently made horror movie, but their heart wasn't really in it.
Yeah, so yeah. The next thing about sequels is definitely the rehash and redo area of sequel making it in its worst case, you have a like direct to video cash in that is intentional, it just complete, letely lacking
of the originality of the first film. But you also see this this reverse and that's when you have particularly a lower budget or an indie picture that does really well, and then the sequel is a chance to essentially redo it, hopefully with improvements to the budget, cast, script, et cetera. I think prime examples of this would be Evil Dead Too and Fantasm Too, both of which benefited from larger
budgets and are both kinds of sequel slash remakes. I know fans are torn on some of the issues regarding these, and there are arguments about like what's better Phantasm War or Phantasm Too, But undeniably these are cases where the filmmakers got to go back and spend a lot more money, maybe with a lot more you know, caveats attached to how they use that money, but still they got to explore the same dream with more cash.
I don't know if the same is true of Phantasm two because I haven't seen it, but certainly with Evil Dead two there's a big difference, not just in in budget, not just in the resources they had to work with, but in the tone of the movie. Whereas the first Evil Dead movie is like a is like a dark, straight, gross horror movie, the second one is a comedy essentially.
Yeah, yeah, so you get to tweak the tone even in cases, and then sometimes I can think it can have great results.
But now, how does this apply to transwers, Because if I'm not mistaken, I think the first one actually got a theatrical release, and this one, I don't know, but it feels extremely straight to video.
Yes, this one was straight to video, unlike the previous one. I couldn't find any information about the actual budget for Transwers too, so this one maybe cost as much, maybe cost more, but I doubt it. I think it costs less. It's certainly made at least one key upgrade, and that's in villain casting, which we'll get to in a bit. But they largely rehashed the plot of the first one,
except with additional complications and additional characters. But I feel like they brought almost everybody back, so you know, it's kind of like a cast reunion to a certain extent.
Okay, well, so if you're about to recap the first movie for us, the first thing I've got to know is it's called transfers to the Return of Jack Death. Where did he return from? Did he return from the future to the past or from the past to the future.
No, he doesn't return from anywhere. He returns to your TV screen basically. Okay, that's the only thing that returns to because there's talk of him returning to the future, but he does not return to the future. He doesn't return to the future until Transfers three.
So it just literally could have been called Transfers to Jack Death is in another movie.
Yeah yeah, all right, so previously on Transfers. Okay, So angel City of the twenty third century, it has a lot of problems. Most of Los Angeles is underwater and a psychic mastermind known as Whistler, who uses his psychic powers to turn other humans into transfers zombie like thralls. You know, these these are psychically controlled sleep ragents who can be triggered into a monstrous rampage. But luckily you
have some transfer hunters on the case. And there's none more excellent at singing trancers than old Jack Death.
Jack Death is sort of the Harley Stone of trancers.
Yeah, so he's a pro at taking them out. Pro it sings in those trancers. Meanwhile, the police actually have Whistler's body, They have the super bad guy's body, but they don't have his mind because Whistler, we find out, has used the time travel drug to send his consciousness back in time to nineteen eighty five, where his consciousness now inhabits his ancestors body and his ancestor in nineteen eighty five is a police detective, so complications.
Uh oh.
Now, while in the past, Whistler hasn't just been hiding, he's been hunting down and murdering the ancestors of his key enemies in the future members of the ruling Council of Angel City. So he's you know, he's basically running
a terminator game on his enemies here. So Jack Death has been hired by the one remaining member of the ruling Council to follow Whistler quote down the line, down the timeline by using the time travel drug, and Jack Death's consciousness emerges in his own nineteen eighty five ancestors body a reporter in in nineteen eighty five Los Angeles, but before he goes, he shoots Whistler's future body, his comentose body dead before he goes, So he's kind of like,
I'll go get him, but I'm not bringing him back alive. He's not coming back to this body. Too dangerous to live, all right, Okay, So where does Helen Hunt come in. She's kind of okay. Once in the past he meets up with this punk girl named Lena, and that is Helen Hunt, Okay, And so she's she's she's in it. She's gonna help him. She you know, she gets her eyes are open to the time Shenanigan's going on, so she's she's right there with him to help him to
fight the battle. They fall in love, et cetera, you know, as one would expect, and they hunt down the drunken, homeless former pro baseball player hap Ashby, who is the nineteen eighty five ancestor of the future ruler who is in jeopardy. So in this quest, death is aided by some high tech equipment that is also sent back through time and space to him, presumably via a different time
travel methods. So once you've had your consciousness zipped back, they can send you a small box like the size of a cigar box that has a few, you know, special tools that you can use.
Does this include the watch that allows you to stop time for ten seconds?
Yes, this includes the watch that gives you a long second if you push a button. The long second is just pausing time for a second, letting you do some bullet time stuff.
But heredibly.
Yeah, But he also has two doses of a serum that he can use if the serum is injected into somebody who is a conscious from the future occupying a body. Then it will kick that consciousness out and send it back to the future. So these two doses. One is to allow Jack death to return to the future for his consciousness to leave his ancestor's body. The other dose is to send Whistler out of his ancestor's body. But since Whistler is dead in the future, he'll just go
into oblivion. Okay, all right, So he defeats Whistler, but he faces a problem. Only one of the two consciousness booting doses survive the battle. He can only inject one of them. He can kill Whistler in the past and use the one dose to return himself, but that means killing the body that Whistler inhabits, which is an innocent man with a family. So instead he ejects Whistler's consciousness
into oblivion, thus sparing Whistler's ancestor, and remains behind. In nineteen eighty five to Mary Lena played by Helen Hunt and live in the twentieth century.
Happily ever After with in the nineteen eighties in southern California. Wow.
Perfectly serviceable movie, but I think in some in some ways a better movie, but ultimately I think Transfers two is more.
Fun I'm gonna guess that Transfers two is significantly funnier than the first movie.
Yes, it definitely leans into the comedy a little bit more without getting into like full blown yu you know, yuck a minute mode that you kind of see in the later full Full Moon Pictures releases. And we'll get into some of that in a bit here. But Transfers one did have a few laughs, and I'll mention one or two of them as we go.
Okay, so that's the previous movie. What's the elevator pitch on the second movie? Jack Death is back, Baby, Jack Death all over again. Yeah, I was trying to think. Okay, I've got an all pitch on the second movie, which is that, due to unforeseen trancers, Jack Death realizes that ooh, he had another wife in the future that he forgot to tell Helen Hunt about, and now she's back in the past, and so now he's faced with the dilemma must he choose between them or can he marry both women?
Let's hear that trailer audio.
My name's Jack Death. I'm a transfer hunter from the twenty first century.
It's been seven years since I went down the line at Old California.
Life's been good. I thought i'd send my last transfer, but nothing lasts forever.
Jack Transfers too, the Return of Jack Death, Jack twentieth cent She must be getting to you.
You have no idea. I actually haven't listened to this, but I imagine there's a really good in a world narrator in it.
Yeah, the trailer. I actually don't advise watching the trailer in full because the one that the official one that's uploaded by Full Moon, is like three minutes long and is basically a summary of the entire film. If let me shows you everything, and I know it's late. Not that spoilers are going to ruin your enjoyment of Transfers too, but you know, I think it's it's worth going into.
Fresh Oh wait a minute, then, should people not listen to this episode before they watch?
Oh no, they can do that.
That's far right.
I mean, I think everybody who's been listening to weird El Cinema, you know the deal. We're gonna you know, we're going to talk loosely about the movie. We're going to talk about the people in it, and then we'll get more into the plot. So if you need to jump out halfway through, you know where to jump out at. You know, if you need to go watch the movie and you want you don't want any spoilers, otherwise we're going to spoil pretty much everything. Well.
I greatly enjoyed transfers too, but I would not say a lot was hanging on the outcome of the plot for me.
Yeah, it's pretty predictable. You know what's going to happen, all right.
So who made this thing?
Well, Charles Band, of course he's the director. He has an original story credit on this. Born nineteen fifty one. We've discussed his bio before, but briefly, he's the man behind Empire International Pictures and then Full Moon Features, and he directs did some really awesome eighties and nineties sci fi and horror films, you know, lower budget, fair for sure, before going increasingly in the Evil Bong Ginger dead Man direction.
This is I believe our third Charles Band production, but our first film that he actually directed.
What were the other two? He was a producer on Robot.
Jocks, right, Robot Jocks and Arena.
Two absolutely glorious films. And I think there's a Robot Jocks tie in later on here.
Yeah. Yeah, So he has sixty eight directorial credits, and I'd say most, if not all, of it from recent decades is certainly of the Evil Bong sort. But this movie is from the era in which Band was still making films that seemed to aim to be more genre action entertainment without just being you know, abject horror comedy
and so forth. I'm talking stuff like nineteen eighty two's Parasite, which starred Demi Moore, metal Storm, The Destruction of Jared Sin from nineteen eighty three, which which I really enjoyed. That's a fun, sort of otherworldly post apocalyptic mashup thing. Nineteen ninety two's Doctor Mordred, which is kind of a Doctor Strange picture before we had a Doctor Strange picture, okay. And these films were not critical hits by any means.
I assume they made money of some sort since things kept going, but you know, many of them developed a following, and as a producer, Band played a role in bringing a lot of weird schlock to the screen, and I think like, ultimately as a producer is where he has
the most enduring value. You know, there's a lot of fun stuff going on in the Empire Pictures Days as well as the early Full Moon Days, and even though the evil Bong stuff is not for me, I recognize that that too seems to have its following, so fair enough.
Yeah, I think we're on the same page here, Like I love a good funny bee horror movie, but ones that lean too hard on that intentionally, that try to be too funny at a certain point, that kind of step over the line of intentionality, and the the silver loses its luster.
Yeah, or it certainly becomes harder to achieve perfection. You know. I can think of some horror comedies that are really good, and we'll probably mention one in a bit that I'm rather fond of. But yeah, I feel like it's just harder and harder to do. Whereas the sweet Spot is trying to It's trying and maybe not fully succeeding in making a serious horror sci fi film.
So one of the most hilarious things of our entire Transfers journey. Last night, Rachel and I watched Transfers to the Return of Jack Death, but also ended up researching other Transfers movies throughout the evening, so of course, you had Transfers in nineteen eighty four, and then you had Transfers to the Return of Jack Death. This was nineteen ninety one, which, as we've talked about on the show before, nineteen ninety one is maybe the most eighties year that
ever happened. But it doesn't stop there. You've got Transfers three Death Lives in nineteen ninety two, Transfers four, Jack of Swords in ninety four, Transfers five Sudden Death d Etch Again in ninety four, and then Transfer six and Transfer six does not have a subtitle. It really should have. I think they should have kept going with the play on the word death, so it could have been Transfer six Death by Misadventure. I don't know, there's a lot of stuff you could do.
Yeah, I haven't seen Transfers three yet, but I want to actually have it q'ed up because I think I'm on board for that one. I'm less thrilled about the idea of Transfers four and five, because I understand those
are kind of notoriously bad ones. One was I think filmed in an East European castle, and some of the people involved in that one we're paid in money that couldn't leave the country if I read correctly, and the other is a Western, so you have like medieval transfers, Old West transfers, and then transfer six is it doesn't even have Jack death in it.
Well, it's got an old Western. So this is like going in the same arc as the Trimors sequels. Trimmers and transfers are kind of running parallel.
Yeah, I mean, they couldn't really do transfers in space because it's already sort I don't know. Maybe they could do transfers in space and.
That would explain the galaxy inside his coat.
That would maybe they go into space in three. I don't know, Like I say, I haven't seen three.
One thing I was really surprised by Transfers four and five, which are the ones you're saying are notoriously awful, were both apparently directed by David Nutter, who does tons of high profile TV work, including directing many Game of Thrones episodes that are some of the most memorable ones. I think he did the Red Wedding episode, and he did a bunch of X Files episodes that are like really well remembered. I think he directed Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose.
Yeah, he's a trusted hand in TV and presumably film direction as well. But I mean, yeah, these productions like Game of Thrones are essentially film productions.
Charles band or whoever owns this. Now, if you're looking for some amateur filmmakers to make transfers seven Death by Misadventure, I think, hey, we're your people. Get in touch.
Now. The writers on this one, I should point out that Danny Bilson and Paul Demio wrote the first These are also the guys who wrote Arena. We mentioned them briefly in that episode of Weirdhouse Cinema. Danny Bilson went on to write screenplays for The Rocketeer and The Five Bloods, which came out just last year I think, and I think was pretty acclaimed. That's a Spike Lee film. And then the writers on this picture. The screenwriter is credited
as Jackson Burr. Not a lot of information on him, but he was active from nineteen eighty nine through nineteen ninety four, did a number of screenplays for Full Moon and some other B movies. Most notably he did the screenplay for the Full Moon feature Subspecies.
All Right, I think we got to get into the cast because we've said the phrase Jack Death probably thirty five times already. Who plays Jack Death? Well, this is a glorious chuck roast of a man named Tim Thomerson.
Yes, Tim Thomerson, who I think it's safe to say is a B movie icon of sorts. He's still very much around act born nineteen forty six. I was looking him up because I hadn't really researched him before this. I just knew that he was in some Full Moon pictures, and you know, that was kind of as far as I knew. That was where he emerged from. But he actually started out as a stand up comic and was quite successful at it in the late seventies and very
early eighties. I mean he was shown up on late night talk shows and so forth.
Yeah, you shared a bit that you found on YouTube. I mean, a lot of seventies and eighties stand up comedy. I feel like it's like there's the really good stuff, and that's really good, and then almost everything else is just Drek. And I mean, I can't say that the video you shared was amazing, but maybe he was a little bit better than Drek. Yeah.
Yeah, I'm I'm I'm just ready for the worst when I look at pretty much any stand up comedy, but especially stand up comedy from years past, and for the most part, it seems like he had kind of a zany seventies guy kind of vibe. He had a big, bushy mustache and did some sort of like some like poststoner kind of humor. Yeah, kind of a watered down Robin Williams vibe as well, Like imagine a toned down Robin Williams who lifts, Yeah.
I would say surfer guy Robin Williams who does a lot of mouth sound effects and occasionally uses props.
Yeah. So Zip has kind of a zany entertainment origin, especially when you compare it to stuff like his role as Jack Death, who certainly has some comedic corners to it, and you see some of that comedic energy bleed through in his performance here. But for the most part, it's kind of a noir esque, hardened detective kind of a role, you know, and he has the face for it. He's, you know, ruggedly handsome kind of guy.
Oh exactly. I chose my Chuck Roast phrase very carefully because I think that sort of community. He's very ruggedly handsome, classically meaty noir guy, but with an extra little twist of absurdity.
I was kind of surprised that, like, he has this very you know, I don't know, like he has a like blondish whitish hair in this and he has his very like, very rugged features. And I looked it up to just see how old he was when they filmed this Transfers too, and he's forty five, so he's he's just three years older in this film than I am right now. So and he was, but he was thirty eight in the first Transfers and in that I would have assumed that he was like in his late forties.
So yeah, I think he was had a very cured look about him.
Yeah, he has a face that speaks of much tobacco and beach.
Yes, yes, they're very very sun dried. So his career trarectory again stand up comedy. But then he was doing a lot of TV work, popping up on stuff like Laverne and Shirley. And then he did a little film in nineteen eighty three called metal Storm the Director The Destruction of Jaredson that was directed by Charles Band And so the following year he did the first Transfers film.
Okay, well you've mentioned this a couple of times now, and I hear the elation in your voice. So maybe maybe I gotta watch Metal Storm.
Yeah, I need to watch it again, but I remember it'd be fun. But yeah, but the thing is once you're once you go to band camp, you're in band camp. So yeah. So he did Transfers and then the other Transfer films, with the exception of the sixth one. He also starred as doll Man. In the Dollman films, he played this character, Britt Bardo, who's like, it's like a
miniaturized human gimmick. I haven't actually seen any of those, but they were apparently successful enough in the Full Moon universe to do stuff like doll Man versus Demonic Toys.
Oh, don't they have a They've had different franchises that are all about killer toys. They've got puppet Master, Demonic Toys, doll Man. Am I missing some others?
I think technically when you get into like the Ginger dead Man stuff, like Ginger dead Man is like a small gingerbread cookie that that kills people consistency. But he was also in some other stuff. He was in Zone Troopers, Nemesis, Iron Eagle, Cherry two, thousand, which is a good one. He's also so in Near Dark, the excellent vampire film from Catherine Bigelow with Lance Hendrickson in it and Bill Paxton among others.
Yeah, that's one of the best vampire movies ever.
I think he plays a dad in that. I don't really remember Tim Thomerson in it.
Yeah, the main character's dad maybe. Yeah. So Rachel and I were discussing a theory last night that Tim Thomerson edits Wikipedia because we were drilling into the wikis for like to see what was going on with the Deep Transfer sequels after we finished the movie, and we came across some hilarious unsourced claims, like on the wiki for Trancers six, which, by the way, it doesn't have a subtitle, but the tagline on the poster is same attitude, different sects.
So I think it's that Jack Death this time comes back and inhabits the body of an ancestor who was female.
Yes, in fact, I could be wrong, but it might be his own daughter. I'm not sure what.
Yeah, would that makes sense?
It would still be his future. It will be his I did. Don't try and time travel in these movies work. It'll just it'll just hurt your brain.
Stop. Okay, But anyway, you get to the reception section of the wiki for Transfer six, it has one sentence in it. The reception section reads, reception for the film has been overall negative, mainly due to the lack of Tim Thomerson. And I thought about that scene in The Simpsons where where Homer's reading the list of suggestions to Roger Meyer, and he's like, whenever Poochie's not on screen, all the other characters should be asking, where's Poochy?
Where's Thomason? Yeah? He he is the center of this these pictures, it's hard to imagine one with that.
Oh, but we got to get to the real star power here. We've got a couple of stars in the sky of Transfers two. One is Richard Lynch, the other is Helen Hunt. This is this Academy Award winning actress.
That's right, the Helen Hunt born nineteen sixty three, very much active today, plays Lena Death in this because she's married to Jack Death at this point. Now, don't worry Helen Hunt fans. This was several years before her award winning role in As Good as It Gets. Her career
hadn't quite taken off yet. At the time of Transfers two, she had just done additional voices on Captain Planet, and afterwards she was in a really weird supernatural western with Bruce Dern called Into the bad Lands, which I remember being good. I saw it when I was a kid, but I remember liking that. But yeah, she hadn't hadn't
quite taken off yet. She'd come back for Transfers three in nineteen ninety two, but shortly after that I think she had moved beyond the orbit of full moon and was onto bigger and brighter things.
So Helen Hunt in this movie plays Jack Death's wife in the past, who is going to come into conflict when his wife from the future comes back to the past, right, and Helen Hunt is an exception good actress, and this is in many ways an exceptionally poorly written role, which is always a really enjoyable collision of forces when you
have like a great actor saying ridiculous lines. And some of my favorite parts of this movie were the scenes where Helen Hunt is just rattling off paragraph long lines about the mechanics of time travel and complaining about the fact that he has another wife that she didn't know about. So that's one of the real chef kiss things in this movie. And it's also different because she's a very down to earth good actor, unlike there are other actors
like who could be really great. But also we're in lots of B movies delivering ridiculous lines, like you know, I think Donald Pleasance, but somehow Donald Pleasance I think fits more into the B movie world when he's in it. Here it's just somebody who's clearly got like more screen presence than this movie demands, doing these lines that are absolutely absurd, but doing them, you know, doing the job yep. But also, oh my god, her costuming in this movie.
I guess it was part of the fashion in nineteen ninety one to have these like really high wasted, loose genes. But her mom jeans in this movie are just extraordinary. They explore previously unknown reaches of mom Jean Zenus. They're almost kind of like the mc hammer pants but jeans.
Yeah. Yeah, And like you said, she has some she has some real acting challenges in this film that she's you know, totally has the chops for, but she's put put in, particularly, she's put in some really challenging scenes with the very green actor Megan Ward. In this it's in some Bechdel flunking dialogue where it's just all about Jack Death. It's just two female characters talking exclusively about
the male character. And you know, Helen Hunt clearly has this screen presence in this talent, and Megan Ward is just not there yet.
That is funny almost any time, Well, it is like pouchy. Everybody should be saying where's pooci because in this movie, if Jack Death is not on screen, basically the other characters on screen are talking about where's Jack Death? Who's going to get to marry Jack Death?
Now, speaking of Megan Ward, she plays Alice Stillwell, who is Jack Death's first wife from the future. Born nineteen sixty nine, she was in Encino Man. She's done a lot of TV work, including some work on General Hospital. So she's not in the first Trancers, and I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she
grew as a performer after this. But yeah, she's green as grass in Transfers too, and has no help from the dialogue either, So it's it can't place all the blame on her by any means, But the result is she kind of ends up dragging down every scene she's in, except her scene with a character named Rabbit, which we'll get to in a bit.
Yeah, she gets through her lines, but she's pretty consistently kind of low energy, like not really amped up to the absurd level that the rest of like the older actors were going for.
She would have worked great in the humanoid like she has humanoid level energy, but the thing is in this everybody else has much higher levels of energy or intensity. Yeah, and speaking of intensity.
The legend in fact, this actor has real legends about him that I wasn't even aware of before we started researching for this. It's time to talk about Richard Lynch, our villain for the film.
Yes, Richard Lynch plays doctor Wardo, who the nature of this character is kind of confusing. We'll get into that in a bit. But Lynch was born in nineteen forty died in twenty twelve, a true B movie legend. With that, it was a huge upgrade for the Transfers franchise here because the chief villain, Whistler in the first film was played by this guy, Michael Stefani, who was fine. I mean, I'm not saying Stefani was bad, but he didn't have the smoldering intensity of Richard Lynch. Now, Lynch had a
really signature look. You know, he had to look up a picture of him if you don't remember him. Bright blonde hair, sharp nose, the scarred face. And I never knew the history on his on the scars that he had. In fact, I'd say a lot of the films I've seen him in, the picture quality is not really good enough to pick up on it all that much, you.
Know, right when you're watching like a like a YouTube rip of a check dub of Scanner Cop three, you don't really pick out the fine detail of his face as well.
Right. But something that's mentioned in the obits for him, including the New York Times Oh Bit for Richard Lynch, is that, according to Lynch, he suffered scarring in nineteen sixty seven after he set himself on fire while under the influence of LSD in New York Central Park.
This is one of those stories that I didn't know until yesterday, and I was like, how have I never read this before?
Yeah, yeah, it seems like the kind of thing I would have picked up on it sure enough if you look it up. On YouTube, you can find a scene from the documentary LSD Trip to Nowhere, and I think it's a no, it's Trip to Where LSD Trip to Where question Mark, a documentary from nineteen sixty eight, and it's just some rough interview footage of a young Richard Lynch whose you know, injuries are far more apparent in
this early footage. I don't know if he's you know, he still hasn't healed up from reconstructive surgery or what the exact details are, but he's talking about this experience and it's a it's a rough rough watch.
So he was appearing in basically an anti LSD scare film.
Yes, But anyways, it goes beyond Lynch's looks though, because he was a solid actor who brought just real menace to as many many villainous roles over the decades there. You know, there are a lot of character actors who had you know, odd looks to them, you know, and have particular features of their appearance that lend well to you know, to horror and sci fi. But but and some of them don't clearly don't have like the acting
chops to back it up. I think Lynch is one of those guys that clearly did have the acting chops.
Yeah, I agree. You know, one thing that's interesting is that I noticed later touches of this in his in his adult roles, but it's less there. It's more there in that early interview from the sixties when he's young, is that he has that kind of classic Transatlantic accent. He sounds a little bit like William F. Buckley when he talks.
Yeah. So his credits include such films as God Told Me To The the excellent weird Larry Cohen film, in which he plays an alien hymaphroditic Christ like being that has come to New York City. He's in The Seven Ups, which is, you know, not a genre piece, it's just like a crime movie. He was in The Ninth Configuration. He was in The Sword and the Sorcerer and the Barbarians. So he definitely got into the into the you know, the medieval fantasy type epics, you know, generally playing some
sort of evil sorcerer. He was in Scanner cop Oh. Yeah, he was in Necronomicon Book of the Dead. And he's one of many B movie and genre icons who Rob Zombie brought into some of his films. So you'll find him especially in the Lords of Salem.
I would say he also is in the B movie Hall of Fame for his participation in Warwielf.
Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, that's right, he's in that NOL. Yeah, now you know. Actually, now that I mentioned it, I can't recall if he actually got to complete his scenes for Lords of Salem. He might have, He might have been. That might have been towards the end of his life. It's possible that he's not in that at all. He may have just been originally part of the cast, now that I think about it, but I think he was in Rob Zombie's Halloween movie.
That sounds right. Yeah.
He also showed up on Star Trek, The Next Generation Murder she wrote, and Six Feet Under. So yeah, Richard Lynch was in a lot of things. He was in a lot of B movies, played a lot of bad guys and was just really good at it.
Does he ever play a good guy? I can't recall that ever happening. I've never seen a movie where he wasn't a villain.
I don't know. I mean, he had to have at some point, but I mean, and I think he could have done it. I mean, especially as he got older, you know, he could I could see him leaning into you know, because you see out of character photographs of him and he's just, you know, he's just this older dude with you know, with white hair at that point. But then again, if you're hiring Richard Lynch, you want the intensity, right.
Like, try to imagine this movie with Richard Lynch as as Jack Death and Tim Thomerson as the as the villain. That doesn't quite work, does it No?
And then also these films of this caliber, they're often painting in very you know, strict colors. You know, you want your villain streak, you want your hero streak, You're not necessarily looking for a really complex palette.
So a lot of Richard Lynch's screen time in Trancers Too is actually on screen. On screen, He'll be on a TV screen, like indoctrinating people, indoctrinating his transfer army with weird mantra. Or there's a great part later in the movie. It was one of my favorite parts actually, where he's on a TV show being given a softball interview by Barbara Crampton.
Yeah. Yeah. Another B movie name of note noted for a reanimator from Beyond Your Next Beyond the Gates and Lords of Salem as well. But there's some great scenes. Yeah, in this movie he plays a psychic madman cult leader, so there's plenty of Lynchian depth there for him to get into.
Oh, don't forget environmental terrorists. Yes, they had to throw that in as well. He's many things, too many people in this movie. And it's also funny how it made me think about how I'm not quite sure whether this is I wonder if there was like some event in the news that really put this in people's brains. But I really think in the early nineteen nineties there were a lot of movies about where the villains were eco terrorists.
Yeah, I think it was kind of maybe a safe place to go in some ways, but also perhaps revealed some anxieties about you know, environmental movements and you know the ramifications of or perceived ramifications of environmental movements.
So you do see it a lot weird.
All right. There are other humans in this movie, though, we should get to them.
Oh.
Yeah, we have Biff Maynard or perhaps diff Mannerd. He sometimes his name is apparently misspelled as Maynard, but anyway, he plays haf Ashby this actor was born nineteen forty three died twenty fourteen. He's reprising his role from the first film as as the one remaining ancestor of the Future Leader, who is a washed up professional baseball player.
Okay, yes, and he has to be kept alive or else the future Politician will not exist.
Yeah, okay, he's I wouldn't say he's a great actor, but he's a he's a decent enough actor. And he has given some wonky lines and reactions in this movie that are fabulous. So he's a treat.
Oh yeah, he's great. And you know, his names sort of reads like a sentence somehow, it's like Biff Menard. I don't know, it works, And he spends most of the movie getting back on the sauce gradually.
Yes, we also, oh, you know we were talking about in the Humanoid how oh we have a bond girl in this one, Well, move over Humanoid, because we don't just have a bond girl in this one. We have a double bond girl.
Oh that's right, Martin Beswick, Right.
That's right. She plays Nurse Trotter. It's just a you know, sort of a secondary villain role. But she was born nineteen forty one still around as of this recording. She was in From Russia with Love in nineteen sixty three and Thunderball in nineteen sixty five.
I was actually so She and Jeffrey Colms another B movie icon. Man. This cast list is gigantic. They are sort of a team in this movie. They don't do much like physical attacking. I mean, I guess they do a little bit, but mostly what they do is sit side by side and kind of give the main characters the side, like look at them, almost as if to give them withering looks an issue, like a self esteem annihilating, deprecating comment about them.
Yeah, yeah, yes, I wouldn't say either. I mean, she definitely gets to bust out some side I Jeffrey Combs, who again another B B movie icon, the reanimator himself. He doesn't have a lot to do in this. He just basically sits around with the goateeeyeh, kind of asks Lynch's character what he should do, you know, follows orders, and also confers with the nurse.
Here.
Yeah, his goatee and his shady glare do most of the acting.
All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna largely skip over the McNulty's here, But basically you have an old McNulty and a girl MacNulty. Old MacNulty is played by this actor, Art Lafleur born nineteen forty three. You may have seen him. He played the babe in The Sandlot. He was in the Blob, he was in Cobra, he was in Field of Dreams. He was even in a Key and Peel sketch.
Huh, he's got slight notes of Buddy Hackett.
Right, yeah. And then Alison Croft plays Girl Nulty. We'll get into the distinction here. She's born in nineteen seventy five. Went on to appear on Mad Men and Shameless.
I feel like this is the biggest cast list we have ever plowed through in a movie.
I mean, it's like there's something interesting about all of them, or in the case of the next guy, he's just such a delight on screen. Talking about Sonny Carl Davis playing Rabbit.
Tell me about Rabbit, all right.
I couldn't find anything about when he was born, but I think he's still around. Davis has been in a bunch of films, including a bit part in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. But the first place I saw him was in the excellent nineteen eighty six horror comedy Terror Vision, in which he plays kind of a creepy satellite TV repair guy.
I'm trying to Oh, I think I know who. He was in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He's the guy who gets Judge Reinhold fired from his job by complaining about his he didn't like his food at the restaurant.
You remember this, I don't.
He's like, I think I just want my money back. Yeah, it's it's him. It's a memorable performance because sunny Carl Davis has he sticks in you.
He was also in Film and Louise and I Think get a part in the Urbs. But in this he plays Rabbit, a deranged orderly at the sort of mental institution. We'll get into that in a bit, but he has some cheesy comedic lines that he manages to bring to life delightfully. And the character Rabbit would apparently go on to be a staple of the Evil Bong franchise and
related Full Moon pictures. I'm not sure how they brought him back, or you know, if it's just basically the little cameos, but essentially he's played Rabbit nine times.
I get the feeling that what Dick Miller is to the Roger Korman universe, Sonny Carl Davis is to the full Moon universe.
Yeah, but he's great in this.
I ended up really loving Rabbit. Yeah, I love Rabbit too. One of the many surprises of the film, This fiscile, balding man with eyelids that open like eight meters wide is also apparently the heart throb of the hospital staff, like all the ladies are Gogaffer Rabbit. Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but okay.
All right, let's see real quick. We should mention Telma Hopkins. She plays Commander Reins in the Future. She's reprising a role from Trancers one. She was part of Tony Orlando and Dawn, that musical act. But she also did a fair amount of TV and film work. She was on Family Matters.
And I realized I was trying to think where did I recognize her from? But she plays Aunt Rachel on Family Matters. Okay, but yeah, so she's like the commander of the future cops in the future in There are a couple of scenes in this I guess the bookends of the film that are in the future and she's sort of like recapping what's going on, explaining the plot
and giving people orders. And there's a very funny scene at the very beginning where she's telling a dyspeptic art Lafleur that he must go back into the past and he complains mightily.
Yeah. I also remember her character is one of Jack Death's axes, so everything revolves around Jack.
Death, right, yes, when Jack Death is not on screen, everyone's asking where is Jack Death?
All right, real quick, I'll mention the music. Phil Davies and Mark Ryder did it. They also did the scores for Society and a few other films, and I think writer ended up working a bit more on his own for Transfers.
I'll say it.
You know, it's a decent score. It's invisible most of the time, you don't really think about it. But there were other parts of it that I kind of dug. You know. It's electronic, a bit sappy at times, but effective. I think Wardo's theme so when there's sort of like sinister stuff going on in the asylum, that's where I would notice the music and be like, all right, this is all right, I can dig this.
Yeah, I don't think I really noticed the music, except I noticed it a little bit right at the beginning, because so maybe we should get into the plot breakdown. Are you ready?
Let's do it.
We open on Jack Death and Helen Hunt. I accidentally just called her Helen Haunt cruising in his classic Yeah, exactly, cruising in his classic corvette. And by the way, Jack Death loves his corvette. This is very much a point to note in the film. Yes, and we get some moody, kind of sad music playing, and this was one of the only points where I really noticed the score. Like
I said, there's the dreamy electronic music. The Death's hair is blowing in the wind, and then we get narration and Jack Death tells us in voiceover, during the last six years, I spent a lot of time wandering this part of the California coast. It's tough knowing it's all going to be under the ocean after the Killer Quakes of twenty sixty three. My name is Jack Death. I'm a cop from the future Trancer detail and I didn't know it yet, but back up the line, my old supervisor,
MacNulty was on his way to see me. McNulty's a professional pain in the ass, but the Council has stuck with him because, like me, he had an ancestor in Old California. That's the only way to send someone's consciousness back in time over the genetic bridge. I hadn't learned about the TCL chamber yet. And then I guess it's really just starting to get very detailed for voiceover narration.
But I stopped because I was thinking this must present a very bizarre pattern of sort of discrimination and hiring of time cops in the future, right, Like you have to submit your family tree and details to see if they can find a relative of yours in Old California.
Yeah, it's they don't go in into it a lot. But like, like clearly the transfer, I mean, I guess the transfer's thing is it was isolated in time at one point, but then the trans then the transfers are moving around in time. Whistler and Whistler's brother are moving around in time, So that means the time. That means that your transfer cops have to become time cops. And yeah, there you go.
So anyway, we get this opening scene I was talking about where Commander Rains Telma Hopkins is explaining to McNulty how all the time travel stuff works, and this scene. I got to be honest and say I had to watch this twice. I did not follow this scene at all. The first time, I was like, what is going on? I guess you had a leg up because you'd seen the first movie, right, But if you haven't, this one just kind of rolls over you. It's like a wave.
But basically it's the stuff we've already talked about your consciousness. If you take a drug, your consciousness can go back in time to an ancestor. It seems mostly you can't travel back in time physically, at least not your whole body. But now there is a machine called the TCL Chamber that looks like a crappy version of the Apollo Command Module, and you can send that back in time empty though nobody can go in it, And then people can get in it in the past physically in their bodies and
go forward in time to the future. Got it?
Yeah? And if you don't get it, I just advise you to watch the movies because they do a little better job explaining it, I guess, or at least presenting it visually.
So Telma Hopkins is explaining that they need to send McNulty's consciousness back in time to possess the body of his ancestor, who at this point is a fifteen year old girl in California in nineteen ninety one to I think tell Jack Death about the TCL chamber that will allow him to get into it and travel back to the future. Is that right, that's right.
Yeah. In the last film, McNulty had to go back in time to do the same thing, and in that one it was like, you know, an eight to ten year old girl that he had to inhabit, which was one of the funnier part the legitimately funnier parts of Trancers one where this little girl showing up and she's talking like a like you know, like a like a like a tough, rough and tumble, you know, police commander from the future.
Is she smoking a cigar?
No, she's not smoking a cigar, but she's almost almost smoking a cigar.
Well, in this movie, McNulty's ancestor smokes a cigar, which I think is played for comedy. Yeah, I think partially on the basis of some of some gendered assumptions, but also I mean, I guess it is funny to see any like fifteen year old chomping on the cigar. Yeah, all right. So then Commander Rains explains more of the plot. Again, I did not understand any of this the first time
I had to go back. But so they've sent someone else back in time to the body of an ancestor, and this other person is Jack Death's wife in the future, Alice, who we learn is dead in the future. I can't I don't know if this was established in the first movie, but she has been murdered in the future.
It's weird when when we actually discuss it like this, this sounds like the most complicated movie plot of all.
Oh yeah, I know. I was trying to think like it actually is super complicated. It just doesn't really feel like that in the movie because all this stuff you just like, you kind of don't catch it and it doesn't matter, and then you just keep watching. Yeah. But so she's dead in the future, but she wasn't dead
a few years ago in the future. So they sent somebody back in time but still to the future, just a few years before in the future before she died, to tell her that she has to go farther back in time to nineteen ninety one so she can I believe hunt trancers there, right, And oh my god, there's so many funny exchanges in this scene where it just
gets amazingly complicated. McNulty's like, I thought we killed Whistler and all the trancers in the past, and then Rains is like, but there's a new Whistler in the past and now he's made new trancers in the past.
Yeah, And I like, I didn't even realize Whistler was I thought there was just the one Whistler, so I'd never figured out if Richard Lynch's character in this is truly like Whistler's brother. Is it Whistler himself, his consciousness, some kind of escape. They're kind of all over the place briefly explaining who he is supposed to be.
Okay, I think I know the answer. Okay, I think the answer is that Richard Lynch is playing Whistler's brother, playing a guy named ed WARDO. Whistler, who is the brother. I think the guy in the first movie is named James Whistler, Is that right?
Possibly? I feel like I looked that up and I was. I also was confused when I started looking up his name in the first film. But I think I think yes, I think you're correct. This is supposed to be Whistler's brother. This is you know, I guess they all both both siblings had the psychic gift of creating trancers.
Uh, Because there's a scene later on where Helen Hunt and Jack Death are figuring it out in a very Doctor Akila type moment. They're like, oh, this Richard Lynch is is his name is E d Wardo. Wait a minute. You know Whistler had a brother named ed Wardo Whistler. It's him, you know, E ed Wardo. Huh I get it.
Yeah, all right, good enough for me.
Okay, but I was thinking about doctor Wardo throughout this movie as doctor Warrio. Okay, now we get a bunch more plot mechanics. There's so much explaining at the beginning of this. So they say, okay, Jack Death, he can't come back to the future of the normal serum way because his old body in the future is now They call it calcified, which I guess would mean it's like all made of bone. Now, I guess like he just can't come back. His body's bad.
Yeah, it looks bad. They show it on a slab and it's just all looking Yeah.
So he can only come back to the future in the TCL chamber in that lunar module thing, or not to the command module thing. They're sending that back for him, otherwise he'll be stuck in the past forever. And then we get introduced to this James Bond gadget we mentioned earlier, the long second watch, which slows time for like ten seconds so you can go into bullet time basically. Oh, and then there's a funny part where McNulty is like, hey, Rains,
aren't you and Jack Death? You know you were formerly in love but you split up. Why would you want him back? And the implication there is that, like, if you discovered your ex was stuck in the past, you just leave them stuck in the past. But she's like, look, I can't leave him stuck in the past just because we have a history. We have to think about the
future of the future. And oh, and they find out that Jack Death is going to get a seat on the Council, which is very important somehow, but it's not really explained, I don't think now.
The later someone says it's like becoming a king of the universe, So I guess it's really important.
I don't know. Jack Death doesn't come off as like a really terrible person, but I don't know if he seems like the best choice for a king of the universe.
I mean, he's anti establishment for the most part. You know, he's kind of a rogue cop. He doesn't need to be mayor of the city right exactly.
But one thing I noted when we were first watching this is that the exposition scene here at the beginning just sounds like a transcript of the pitch meeting. It's just somebody describing the like basically the concept of the movie. But then there was also a really funny part here I took a screen grab for you to look at, where while she's explaining everything to him, a technician and a lab coat comes up and just starts trying to undress MacNulty like reaches over to his coat, and MacNulty
is very irritated. But anyway, Okay, so the action starts when we go back to the past to nineteen ninety one, where Jack Death and Helen Hunt are driving around and they drive up to Happ's house. Remember, Halp is the guy who he originally had to go back in time to protect because he's the ancestor of a future politician.
And here I started noticing one of my favorite types of awkward cinematography, which is regular dialogue scenes where there's nothing particularly intense going on, where the camera is way too close to the actors. So, like, you know, a standard way of shooting dialogue between two characters today is alternating cuts between what are usually called over the shoulder shots, so you shoot from roughly, you know, over the shoulder of where the other person in the conversation would be.
You know, there are other choices you can make. You know, it's an open art form, but a lot of times this movie will be cutting back and forth between people talking, and it's cutting between what is basically just extreme close ups of people's faces while they're talking, and the effect is very funny. I could screencap many examples, but I just included one here for just Helen Hunt talking. I think she's talking about wanting to go house hunting, and it's like right up in her pores.
Yeah, it's one thing of it's Richard Lynch, because Richard Lynch is generally saying intense villain stuff and staring into your soul when they're doing these close ups. But this is a scene where they're just talking about sort of side character stuff about how she really wants to settle down and get a house and he doesn't feel ready.
Yeah, and then it cuts back to him and he's being kind of being a jerk about it. I don't want to spend a day with some pencil neck real estate agent going house hunting. But we're right up in his pores too, and they're just a mile wide, and it's wow, it's amazing. Another thing was so they get to Happ's house. Happ lives in this mansion which is a hideous property where he's restoring an antique fire truck, and I was wondering, is this something from the first movie?
Was happ in transfers one a fire truck enthusiast?
Happ in the first movie was a former pro baseball player that is now homeless, you know, than his you know, suffering from from alcoholism, and so in this they sobered him, sobered him up. And I don't remember it being explained why, but he's set up in this ugly mansion that's decorated like it's like something a stereotypical divorced, middle aged dad would dream up, where uh, you know, you're storing a
fire truck and there and everything. All the decoration inside the house is like fire trucks and baseball memorabilia and there's a big old bar in the center of everything.
Maximum Baseball. It's it's like the you know, the concept of a man cave, but it's this mansion.
A better description. Yeah, it's it's full man cave mansion. And it's just ridiculous.
He's got thirty six dart boards. Yeah.
So I don't know where Hap got this money. But they're living with Hap, uh like kind of like looking after him as parents.
I think, so yeah, yeah, which is especially funny. We'll get back to that in just a second. But uh, there's there was also a funny exchange. So they're like, why did why did Jack Death come back to Happ's house? What are they doing here? I thought that supposed to be on vacation or a honeymoon or something. But he's like, Hap, I had to come back because I had a funny feeling.
And then Haf goes, no, no, not trancers again, Jack, And then it cuts to not dialogue in the scene, but voiceover of Jack Death saying I'd been having a strange feeling, the feeling I get when there are trancers around.
Just to make it clear.
But then anyway, Lena Helen Hunt's character announces that she has to get Hap to bed. Why does Lena have to make Hap go to bed? It's like he's a child and there babysitting him just permanently.
I mean, he looks like he's in his late fifties or early sixties here. Yeah, and yet they refer to this a couple of times in the movie that they are still kind of grooming this guy to eventually procreate, to produce the offspring that the world depends on, like the ancestor that ends up being the ruler of the future. Apparently has not been produced yet by this specimen of a man here. So I'm not really sure how that's gonna work out. Yeah, but I think they could have
done an interesting sitcom with them essentially raising Hap. You know, I don't know, Meet the Deaths, Death Family matters.
I don't know very good. Yes, I would watch that sitcom, But.
This is the life they've created for them, but that life is about to be turned upside down by trancers.
Oh wait, if it was the sitcom Richard Lynch would become the erkle of it. He'd be like the nerdy next door neighbor who keeps showing up and he's like, look, I've figured out how to create trancers.
Oh man, it would be the most intense. Did I do that ever? Yeah, Richard Lynch staring like straight into your bones.
Did I do that? But then we cut to the next morning, and there's several things going on at the same time. One of them, I guess, is a conversation between Helen Hunt and Jack Death about house hunting. We sort of mentioned that already, but also there's just an immediate tranfer attack. Landscaping company shows up. The camera lingers ominously on a guy with a shovel who's working in the yard. So it's like, wow, I wonder what's gonna happen.
You think he's going to be a trancer. And then hap goes out to be like, hey, you know, good job digging on the lawn, and the guy immediately like his face wargs out and he gets these gross forked lightning veins coming down his cheeks, and also there's just random dirt on his forehead and some kind of dark liquid dripping out of his eyes. Yeah.
They at this point a transfer has been triggered out of their like sleeper cell mode and they're just full on maniacal attack mode. And then one of the interesting things is if the transfer is then killed with like a laser gun or in the first film or in this you know, just shot with normal munitions. Once they hit the ground, they will disintegrate and leave like a smoking outline of their body on the ground.
Yeah, they turn into red lasers and descending great. Yeah.
Yeah, And it's totally unexplained. Why why would this happen? I guess it has to do maybe I don't know, the psychic powers or somehow linked they create the transfers or linked to this idea of consciousness and time and I don't know.
But anyway, so this is going on. The transfer attack happens while Jack Death and Lena are talking about wanting well, Helen Hunt wants to buy a house, and Jack Death is being a jerk about it because he does not want to spend time touring homes. He's just h no, I don't want to.
Yeah. A lot of manchild elements in this movie.
Yes, And then they're talking about it. I guess they sort of make up and they're talking about their future and they're kissing, and then Jack Death suddenly perks up. His spidy senses are going and he's like trancers, and so the landscape or Trancer and his crew are trying to kill hap but Jack Death hilariously, it's like he riding in on a horse to save the day, but instead he drives up on them in a golf cart,
steering with one hand and shooting with the other. And this was maybe my biggest laugh out loud moment of the movie. Very very strong.
It's very great and played like a lot of stuff in this film. Most of the things of this film played seriously.
Yes, which makes it work much better.
Yeah.
So Jack Death defeats the trancers and it's like, oh, I thought we dealt with all the trancers. I wonder if there's a new Whistler in the past. But immediately McNulty arrives in his ancestor's body on a bicycle and there's a bunch more exposition explains all this stuff about time travel, basically rehashes a lot of what we learned earlier, explains about the TCL chamber. They end up setting up a tent in the yard to hide the time machine when it arrives from the future. I love it.
The very cheap move on the production. I like it.
I'm not sure exactly what the quality was. It's something about her line delivery. But Rachel and I kept noticing that the actress who plays McNulty's ancestor, who is good like, she's funny in this she has very all Garfield energy. I'm referring to an acts from a sketch and I think you should leave. It's the sketch with the intervention for Tim Robinson that's in the Garfield house, you know where she's saying like, yeah, but it's a total party house.
Yeah. I had to look this back up. That's fun It's a fun sketch, Yea. The actor I think you're referring to is Kate Burlant yea who she was born eighty seven, so she's actually younger than trancers.
One. Wow, she's very funny in that sketch. By the way, we quoted all the time, you kind of quote were for the rest of the movie. We're kind of like pointing all around and you know, like she says all Garfield as she points it out to her friends. It's like all trancers. But anyway, so we get a transition to this whole other plot. And this whole other plot
is unknown to Jack Death and Lena. Jack Death's wife from the future, Alice Stillwell, is also still in the past in the body of her ancestor, but she's trapped in this place run by Richard Lynch's people. It's this evil cult pseudo psychiatric hospital that is operated by New Slur's goons.
Yeah, and actually the plot element here is kind of fun. I thought, I thought this was pretty creative. Is that since you you just kind of, you know, quantum leap back in time to your ancestor in the time period you're going to. Well, she was sent back to eighty five, but as it turns out, her ancestor was in a mental institution at the time, so she instantly was was trapped in the institution, and I imagine it was I guess exasperated by her claiming or acting like she was
in herself. And then she wasn't able to get to her special watch with a long second, so she's just been lost this whole time.
Yeah, so it's a it's a major bummer. And then we meet we meet several characters here, so she's trapped in there. We meet Rabbit. Anything else we need to say about Rabbit, No, I mean, you know Rabbit. At this point, also we meet the villains Martin Beswick and what's his name, Jeffery Combs. They're just sitting around sort of looking judgmentally at everyone. Now, obviously this is not
a real psychiatric hospital provide care to its patients. It is basically a transfer factory that is being run by Richard Lynch, and they're playing TVs of him, creepy talking at the patients all night long. You know.
Yeah, we come to learn that basically his scheme here in the first film, we learned that you can't make a transfer out of like a strong willed person, right in order for Whistler or Whistler's brother to use their psychic power to turn you into this this zombie like thrall, you have to be kind of, you know, of a
weakened state mentally. And so this whole operation, this transfer factory of transfer farm, is about weakening people like mentally with pharmaceuticals, we find out later, so that then he can easily control them and easily manipulate them and create like a transfer army.
Yeah, exactly. So Alice stages an escape from this facility while the orderly rabbit is busy having a midnight rendezvous with another orderly who I guess is his girlfriend. They're like hanging out to drink vodka mixed with orange soda. Yeah, it just looks pretty gross. I don't know. Maybe that's a drink some people have. I don't know it was.
I mean, I guess it depends on the orange soda. Maybe you got a nice orange soda.
Oh yeah, I guess, I don't know. It looked like one of those, like really neon, you know, the traffic cone orange soda.
The perfect cocktail for drinking on the job in a broom closet at an unlicensed mental institution run by a cult leader.
Right, so they're planning, I guess, to drink on the job and do no good, but they get interrupted by Alice's breakout, and then everybody gives chase and then Alice eventually she escapes I think, actually multiple times, but at some point she discovers the time machine, the TCL chamber. It's in a barn somewhere, But then she is captured and taken back to Whistler House, and then we cut back to our main character is Jack Death McNulty or
magnulty in his ancestors body, Helen Hunt. They're all hanging around in this tent they've put up on the yard where they're supposed to receive the time machine. But there's a problem because it does and actually show up. They just get the door of it. So they obviously need to connect with Alice because she knows where the rest of the time machine is, and so they're standing around and then there's also just tons of This movie has a lot of scenes of characters explaining to each other
things that the audience already knows from previous explaining scenes. Yes, but one of the funny things is in the scene you get to see the characters react. So McNulty explains to Jack Death and Helen Hunt that his wife is back here in the present, and an incredulous Helen Hunt is like, you have a wife. I thought she was dead and he's like, no, honey, I can explain she's dead in the future, but now she's alive in the past,
which again was very funny. But they, yeah, they need her help to figure out where the time machine is, so they're trying to look into that. Meanwhile, Jack Death goes to investigate the landscaping company who sent trancers to HAPs house, and at first they deny knowing anything. They're like, no, I don't know. I think somebody stole our truck. That must have been them, not us. So we meet this red haired, burly guy with a beard, and then a
forklift operator named Ramone who has an awesome outfit. He has like this striped sort of like what do you call the two third length sleeve T shirt with stripes, and it's tucked into his pants with a belt, and he's got cool boots. And so I loved Ramone and his outfit and I really wanted him to stick around. But alas, like most other characters you meet, turns out to be a trancer.
Yeah. I'd say one of the big flaws in these films, and that didn't really take away from enjoyment, is that trancers are not really scary. They look kind of look kind of dumb, agreed.
But so the tranfers attack him. There's a great forklift fight scene where they like pin him to a bunch of two by fours with a forklift, but he uses his long second watch to sort of get around behind them and defeat the trancers.
Yep, yep, got to work in use of the gadget.
But eventually, after all this, they find out that the Transfer, the Evil Transfer Factory, hospital, and landscaping company I think, are actually all run by the same organization, which is Richard Lynch's organization, which is Green World, a sadistic environmentalist
transfer cult. And Helen Hunt does online research on her computer. Again, this is nineteen ninety one, so I don't know about this, but she's on her computer reading articles to discover that the director of the bad organization, the Green World, is one ed Wardo. And this is where they do the doctor Acula moment where they put everything together. But also she's describing the organization Green World, and she's like, they sell organic cookies, that kind of thing.
Yeah, and yeah. The more we learn about Wardo's operation, it's it's it's I ended up enjoying this this quite a bit. Well, having a nice cult leader madman situation and that VHS tape that they keep playing where he's like using this to mind warp the thralls. It's it's actually, it's really good. It has this this loop to it where he's saying things like you belong in a green world.
Oh yeah, yeah, And when he gets interviewed by Barbara Crampton on TV later, it's hilarious because he's saying these things that are just obviously evil, but she's like, oh, that's nice. He's like, you know, we bring people to our facility and we cleanse them.
Yeah. Those scenes with the there are two of them from that interview. Those are some of my, I think, my favorite parts of the film. And I think there's if there any DJs out there and you want some cool cryptic samples to put into your mix, look to this film and look to those scenes where Wardo is talking to the TV host, because there's there's some fun stuff in there.
There's also a getting ready to fight montage, not montage, I don't know what you call it. Like the scene in the movie where like the hero suits up. Often they'll like put on their gun belt or something, but in this movie, it's not putting on the gun belt. It's it's Jack Death slicking his hair back.
Yeah, that's one of the things as your Moves. They have that in the first film too, where the one of the first things he does when he inhabits his ancestors body is to find a nice like tin of palmate and start greasing back.
He's a dapper dan man, he is so Jack Death. Eventually, a bunch of stuff happens. Jack Fath eventually ends up rescuing his other wife from the future from the Green World facility. It's kind of funny. He like rescues her while she's on like a gurney, and he like just loads the whole thing into his corvette while she's still attached to it, and then he unstraps her later after like they escape from the bad guys. But then there's this hilarious dialogue when they talk things through. It's like,
are you who I think you are? Are you who I think you are? Still well? Alice b And then he goes, Welcome to old California, Alice, I'm your husband. Jack Death.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's so stupid, it's kind of sweet.
It is It's again. It's it's such a man boy movie in so many ways, but but it's too dumb and good hearted to really offend.
Yeah. Well, A bunch of the middle section of the movie is concerned with basically two subplots. One is the time wives subplot, which is this marriage conflict because Helen Hunt, it seems, is not a fan of the fact that Jack Death now has two wives at the same time.
And Jack Death's reaction to the situation is just this kind of I don't know, he's kind of furrowing his eyebrows inexpressibly frustrated, but at the same time kind of passive with this like what am I supposed to do kind of attitude, and his future wife keeps kissing him and he's clearly into it, and Helen Hunt doesn't like this. I think it seems clear that Jack Death would like if he could to marry both women.
Yeah, I don't know. I was trying to think deep and hard about this and like maybe it's you know, it's kind of like Jack Death is unstuck in time, you know, like he's you know, it's not so much as like she was my wife and you are my wife now. It's like you were both my wives and different. I don't know. Once you start traveling around in time gets screwy.
There is a really great scene. This is one of the funny ones where Helen Hunt is like forced to deliver absolutely absurd dialogue there's a long one here where she has a scene with Jack Death and she's saying, I've had to handle a lot being married to someone from the future Jack, but two wives, And eventually there's also a confrontation between them where Alice from the future is telling Helen Hunt that, you know, basically she needs to step aside, and she's like, he needs me to
defeat Wardo. I am a tranfer Hunter. All you bring to the party is stuff for Jack to worry about. And so eventually Helen Hunt leaves, she's had enough of this time wives confusion, and as she's about to leave, Alice says to her, I'm sorry, Lena, but you should have known better than to get involved with a man from the future.
Again. Though, Helen Hunt is great in these scenes. Oh yeah, she's believable. Yes, in these scenes with all this ridiculous dialogue.
She I mean, she is a really good actress, and she sells it in a great way. She does not do a great job I think of convincingly portraying being in love with Jack Death.
Well yeah, maybe not maybe not that, but everything.
Else, I don't know. It's a tall order there. But then okay, so then There's another thing, which is that hap they keep talking about how he's getting back on quote the sauce, and so he begins drinking again, and as a result of drinking, he gets he gets baseball itis, like he becomes obsessed with playing baseball, and so he starts like he buys a bunch of liquor for a bunch of homeless guys and starts playing baseball with them, and they have to go find him and retrieve him.
Yeah. Yeah, it's it's ridiculous but kind of funny at times. I don't know, hard to decide where I stand on it, but they go for it.
So one of the best parts of the movie, as we mentioned, is when when ed Wardo goes on the Sadie Brady Show with Barbara Crampton and it's like this talk show where she's giving these I don't know, well, it's so many funny things about it. Number One, they're sitting in rolling office chairs with like you know, the
casters on the bottom. Another thing is that Richard, so she asks questions like what do you say to allegations that you know, Green World is kidnapping people and turning them into mindless zombies, And he's like many people have had their lives destroyed by pollution. In our detox centers, we cleanse and purify these individuals. We give them a new mission in life so they can help us cleanse
and purify the planet. It sounds legit, right, yeah. But so that's on TV and at some point Jack Death is watching that at the house, and then it cuts away from The Sadie Brady Show to show a trailer for Robot Jocks, except it's a movie called Crash and Burn. Yeah.
I believe this is This is a follow up to Robot Jocks that was directed by Charles Band came out in nineteen ninety, so he it's not just a subtle trailer, it's like a straight up here's the trailer. I think we mentioned this one in passing when we talked about Robot Jocks because this is the sequel that has Bill Moseley in it.
Oh okay, yeah, yeah yeah. Now I think from here on out, I think maybe our summary should become a little more cursory so has not to spoil everything. But they realize, of course that Richard Lynch is growing drugs from the future in his greenhouse, and these drugs are called scurb seventy eight. I don't know how you spell scurb. I tried skerb. What do you think sounds good to me?
These are the drugs he uses to make his transfer army, and eventually Helen Hunt, of course, is kidnapped by Richard Lynch and taken to Green World for let's say, in the parlance of Halloween three, final processing, and they have to stage a rescue mission. Everybody gets there to bust out Helen Hunt. Oh, and they also end up escaping with Rabbit, who takes their side, but who is tragically killed in the getaway. And when Rabbit died, I think
I cried out. I was like, no, you can't do that to Rabbit.
I mean, on one level, we know he's gonna be back in the Full Moon universe. But I also like to think that that in the future they will realize that Rabbit made the ultimate sacrifice to save them, and so Rabbit will. They'll be just massive statues of Rabbit smiling maniacally. Yeah, but this is all leading to the final battle, of course, the final showdown.
Right. They end up in the barn that is housing the time machine that can send the physical body back to the future because Alice from the future knew where that was. There's a big shootout final scene there. There's in a kind of fun way. I don't think this final battle is all that great, except the low tech saves the day. Like they end up sort of defeating the transfers with like a tractor and a pitchfork and things like that.
Yeah, for a final battle between time cops and a zombie thrall creating psychic Mastermind and his goons, it's pretty straightforward.
But then there's sort of time travel to the rescue at the end. They use the Dais Makina of time travel. Actually, you know what, to be fair, it's not a Day six macina because it's set up by the rest of the film. It's not like out of nowhere. They use the mechanics of time travel to resolve the character tension,
because what's it going to be? You know, Jack Death has two wives and he kind of wants it to be married to both wives, but ultimately he decides, no, I'm only going to stay married to Helen Hunt to my wife from the past, and I'm going to stay
here in the past. And Alice, his wife in the future, she's going to instead of seruming back into her original body in the future and then getting murdered, She's going to travel into the future in the TCL chamber in her nineteen ninety one body, so that she can't be murdered in the way that she originally would have been. Though that would seem to create a paradox because if she talks.
Yeah, something in this film creates a paradox.
Because if she travels back to the future in that body, how can that body become her ancestor?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yes, yes, this is the Transfers franchise. I think is very much a paradox free time travel system where yeah, again you have.
It's gonna be fine, It's.
All going to work out. I don't think too hard about it. In fact, I think I think he even says something to that effect at one point. He's like, it'll work out fine. Somebody has a question about time Travel's like, it's fine, it works.
It works. If you're wondering how they eat and breathe in other science facts, you know, it's it's transfers.
Just relax, all right, well that's Transfers too. I myself look forward to watching Transfers three, who knows what'll it'll it'll consist of.
I think we're going to go deep into the transfer sequels, and you know what, if they're worthy of discussion, we will discuss them.
Yeah. Otherwise maybe I'll mention it in passing. I don't know. We'll see. Now you may be wondering where can I see Transfers and Transfers too? For myself, Well, I will say that the full Moon Features channel is a great hookup in the department. You can subscribe to this on iPhone, Apple, TV, Android, Roku, Xbox one, all the things. Plus it's also a channel on Prime. That's how I ended up watching it. Full Moon is not a sponsor. I want to be clear
on that. I'm just telling you how you can potentially watch the movie. Transfers two is also highly available for digital renter purchase as well as on Blu Ray and Joe. Where did you watch this gym of a film?
Oh? I watched this on tub.
All right, so you can go to tub and watch it as well. At one point, Full Moon put out Transers the Ultimate Death Collection, which was a five disc set that did not include Transfer six because I guess it wasn't out yet. But one thing. Say what you will about Full Moon. They get the product out there, they make it available. They're even like remastering stuff. I noticed. So Full Moon fans are in luck.
Okay, if they want me on the hook for Transfer seven, I'm going to need some of the cast of Transfers two to return.
I think Helen Hunt should come back, you know why not? I mean, yeah, she didn't need to come back at this point, But what if they if they got a good enough screenplay together, which could happen you know, yeah, it could work. She could even be the main transfer We don't, I mean, I don't know what happens to her character. Again, I haven't seen three yet or the
subsequent films. But with time travel, anything as possible. You know, whatever you need in the Transfers universe verse can be provided by the multiple paradox free time travel systems in place.
What if one of her descendants becomes a villain in the future and then has to has to see them back into her body to be a villain in the past.
Sure, let's do it.
I think that's that's my pitch. If that wasn't already Transfers for Death and Taxes.
Yes, all right, obviously, we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Did you know have you seen the Transfers films? Did you watch the first any I would love to hear from someone who saw Transfers one in the theater? What was that like? Do you remember seeing these films in your video rental store?
What?
What are some death related titles you can imagine for sequels and TV sitcom spinoffs. We'd love for you to share all of that with us. In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of Weird House Cinema, you will find it every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. Friday is the day when we know we enjoy weird movies and we geek out on them excessively. The rest of the time, we're a science podcasts, so our core episodes of Stuff to Blow
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