🎅⏳ Jack Deth’s Christmas in Los Angeles: How Trancers Mixed Santa, Punk Style and Time Travel
My Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ☆ ☆ 3.2/5
A trench coat from the 23rd century.
A punk rock girl in an elf suit.
A mall Santa who is not on the nice list.
And a cop named Deth who just wants to get the job done.
Welcome to our Trancers Review. This is one of those movies that lived on the bottom shelf of every video store in America. You rented it because the box looked cool. You remembered it because Tim Thomerson made a cheap little science fiction picture feel like a lot more.
Like every Kilroy review, this Trancers Review is spoiler free. I will cover the premise, the famous mall Santa setup, and the people who made it. How Jack Deth’s mission ends stays in 1985.
Trancers Review: A Time Cop Who Forgot to Check the Calendar
Here is the pitch. Take a hardboiled detective in the Humphrey Bogart mold. Drop him into a Blade Runner future. Send him back to Los Angeles during the Christmas season. Then let him chase a psychic madman through shopping malls, nightclubs, and dive bars.
That is Trancers in a nutshell. It is goofy. It is cheap. It is also a lot of fun.
Director Charles Band made it fast and lean. The whole movie runs just 76 minutes. That is about the length of a long lunch break at the shop, and it never overstays its welcome.
The Story Setup
The story starts in the 23rd century in Angel City, the future name for Los Angeles. Trooper Jack Deth is a tired, retired cop who gets called back for one more job.
His target is Martin Whistler, a criminal with psychic powers. Whistler can turn people into Trancers. These are mindless killers who look perfectly normal until they snap.
Whistler escapes in the strangest way possible. He sends his mind back through his own family tree. He lands in the body of his ancestor, a Los Angeles detective in 1985.
Jack follows him the same way. He wakes up in the body of his own ancestor, a journalist named Phil Dethton. Phil had a date the night before with a punk rock girl named Leena, and now Jack is stuck explaining things.
Whistler is going after the ancestors of the people who will one day run Angel City. Jack has to protect the last one left. That ancestor is Hap Ashby, a washed up former baseball player.
That is the setup. I will leave the rest for you to discover with a bowl of popcorn and a cold soda.
The Cast of Trancers
This is a small cast packed with familiar faces. Here is who shows up and where you may know them from.
Tim Thomerson plays Trooper Jack Deth and his ancestor Phil Dethton. He had already appeared in the war film Uncommon Valor.
Helen Hunt plays Leena. As a young actress she had appeared in the thriller Rollercoaster.
Michael Stefani plays Martin Whistler and his 1985 host, Detective Weisling.
Art LaFleur plays McNulty, Jack’s boss in the future. Baseball fans later knew him from Field of Dreams, filmed right here in Iowa.
Biff Manard plays Hap Ashby.
Richard Herd plays Chairman Spencer. Science fiction fans know him from the miniseries V.
Telma Hopkins plays Ruthie Raines, the Engineer. She first found fame singing with Tony Orlando and Dawn.
Anne Seymour plays Chairman Margaret Ashe. Her long career goes back to All the King’s Men, and her final film was Field of Dreams, shot right here in Iowa.
Peter Schrum plays Santa Claus.
Barbara Perry plays Mrs. Santa Claus.
Richard Erdman plays the Drunken Wise Man. Classic film fans remember him from Stalag 17.
Wiley Harker plays the Dapper Old Man.
Miguel Fernandes plays Officer Lopez.
Tim Thomerson Is Jack Deth
Let me say this plainly. Tim Thomerson is the reason Trancers works.
He plays Jack Deth like a private eye who wandered out of an old black and white movie. He mutters. He smirks. He delivers every line like he has heard it all before.
The joke is that Jack takes himself dead seriously in a world that looks ridiculous to him. He walks into 1985 like it is a foreign country. Thomerson plays it completely straight, and that is what makes it funny.
Thomerson had a background in stand up comedy, and his timing shows. He knows when to let a line hang and when to throw it away. Few low budget leading men of the era had that kind of control.
The role stuck to him for years. He came back as Jack Deth again and again in the sequels. When an actor owns a character like that, you know he found something special.
Christmas in 1985 Los Angeles
Here is something a lot of folks forget. Trancers is a Christmas movie.
Most of the story takes place in December 1985. In the future scenes, Angel City celebrates Christmas in July. So Jack goes from one holiday season straight into another.
The holiday touches are everywhere. There is a punk rock version of Jingle Bells in a nightclub scene. There are decorated trees, holiday shoppers, and a couple of colorful street characters with a Christmas flavor.
Los Angeles at Christmas has always looked a little strange to us Midwest folks. Palm trees with tinsel. Sunshine on December afternoons. No snow drifts piled up against the hardware store. Trancers leans into that odd mix and makes it part of the fun.
Back home in Southwest Iowa, a December night means ice on the windshield and Christmas lights fighting the wind. Watching Jack Deth stomp through a sunny Los Angeles Christmas feels like a vacation with a laser gun.
The Mall Santa Sequence
Now we get to the scene everybody remembers.
Leena works at a shopping mall during the holiday rush, helping out with the mall Santa. Jack tags along as she heads to work. Then he realizes the jolly old man in the red suit is a Trancer.
What follows is one of the great oddball moments in 1980s genre movies. Santa turns monstrous, and Jack has to fight him in the middle of the mall. Horrified kids watch the whole thing unfold.
The scene is shocking, silly, and darkly funny all at once. It perfectly captures the tone of the whole movie. Trancers never asks you to take it too seriously, but it commits to every bizarre idea it has.
The movie was shot around Los Angeles, and the mall scenes have a lived in, everyday feel. The holiday decorations and storefronts look like a genuine 1985 shopping trip.
For collectors of Christmas horror, this sequence alone earns Trancers a spot on the shelf. It belongs right next to the other killer Santa classics of the decade.
Helen Hunt’s Early Role
Long before she won an Oscar for As Good as It Gets, Helen Hunt was a punk rock girl helping a time traveling cop.
She was 21 when the movie was shot. Even then, you could tell she had something. She plays Leena with a quick wit and a lot of warmth.
Leena could have been a throwaway role. Plenty of 1980s action movies had a sidekick girlfriend who just screamed and ran. Hunt does more than that. She reacts to Jack’s strange behavior the way a real person would, with confusion, annoyance, and eventually loyalty.
Her punk style is a big part of the movie’s look. The spiky attitude and the bold outfits make her stand out against the gray world of the future. She brings color, literally and otherwise.
The chemistry between Hunt and Thomerson is the heart of the film. They bicker like an old married couple who just met. It works better than it has any right to.
Hunt came back to the role later. She and Thomerson reunited as Leena and Jack in the short Trancers: City of Lost Angels. She also returned for Trancers II.
John Carl Buechler’s Makeup Magic
Every Trancer needs a face that tells you something is very wrong. That job went to John Carl Buechler.
Buechler handled the special makeup effects through his company, Mechanical and Makeup Imageries. His crew on Trancers included Howard Berger, Everett Burrell, and Mitch Devane.
When a Trancer finally reveals itself, the face turns pale, twisted, and inhuman. On a budget this small, those transformations had to be quick and effective. Buechler’s team made them memorable.
The mall Santa is the showcase. Turning a cheerful Santa face into something sallow and snarling is a great piece of practical makeup. It is the kind of effect that made kids hide behind the couch during a late night VHS rental.
Buechler became a fixture of 1980s horror. He went on to direct Troll for Empire and later Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood. Howard Berger went on to become one of the biggest names in Hollywood makeup.
Watching Trancers today, you are seeing some of the early work of people who shaped horror makeup for decades.
Gene Winfield and the Blade Runner Connection
Here is a fun one for the car collectors who come through the shop.
Gene Winfield was a legendary custom car builder. He built the futuristic vehicles for Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, including the famous flying police cars called Spinners.
One of Winfield’s Blade Runner vehicles, a futuristic sedan, turns up again in Trancers. Winfield is listed in the credits records as an uncredited visual effects supervisor on the film.
That reuse tells you everything about how Empire made movies. Why build a new future car when one of the coolest movie cars ever made was available? The sedan instantly gives Angel City a Blade Runner look on a fraction of the budget.
Winfield’s career touched an amazing list of film and television projects. He worked on everything from Star Trek promotional cars to the 6000 SUX in RoboCop. He passed away in March 2025 at the age of 97.
For a car guy, spotting his work in Trancers is like finding a rare pressing in a dollar bin.
Empire Pictures and the Cult Video Boom
You cannot talk about Trancers without talking about Empire Pictures.
Charles Band formed Empire in 1983. He was tired of other distributors mishandling his movies, so he decided to run the show himself. Empire cranked out low budget horror, fantasy, and science fiction films at a furious pace.
Trancers was one of the company’s earliest films. It shared the Empire lineup with titles like Ghoulies, Re-Animator, Troll, From Beyond, and Dolls. Many of those movies became cult favorites on home video.
Home video was the key to the whole business. Before Trancers hit theaters, Empire had already landed a deal with Vestron Video for worldwide home video distribution. That deal helped make sure the movie lived on long after its short theatrical run.
For collectors, those old Vestron tapes are part of the fun. Plenty of folks first met Jack Deth on a VHS rental in the mid 1980s. The movie came to VHS and LaserDisc in 1985, then later to DVD and Blu-ray.
In 2022, Trancers got a two disc 4K Ultra HD collector’s edition. A black and white version followed in 2025. Not bad for a movie made for around $400,000.
Empire itself did not last. The company began to collapse in 1988 under heavy debt. Band started a new company called Full Moon later that year, and the Trancers sequels continued under that banner.
Jack Deth came back in Trancers II in 1991, followed by several more sequels into the 2000s. The little cop from Angel City outlived the studio that created him.
Behind the Scenes
Trancers was written by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo. Band said the idea grew from his love of Humphrey Bogart movies. You can feel that in every line Jack Deth mutters.
The movie reportedly caught the eye of James Cameron, who started recommending Bilson and De Meo for other projects. The writing team went on to bigger things in film and television.
Mac Ahlberg handled the cinematography. Ted Nicolaou edited the film. Phil Davies and Mark Ryder wrote the music.
Here is a bonus bit of trivia. A young Frank Darabont worked in the art department as an assistant. Years later, he would write and direct The Shawshank Redemption.
The movie was shot in Los Angeles, with a beach scene in nearby Malibu. It opened in the United Kingdom in November 1984. American audiences got it in 1985, sometimes under the title Future Cop.
Where It Stumbles
A 3.2 means Trancers has real problems. I love it, but I have to be honest.
The budget shows. Some of the future scenes look like they were shot in an empty warehouse with colored lights. The effects work hard, but they cannot hide how little money was in the bank.
The plot moves fast, sometimes too fast. Characters pop in and out without much setup. A few story ideas feel half explained, like the writers ran out of time or film.
Whistler is a fun villain on paper, but he does not get much depth. He is mostly a sneer in a detective’s suit. A stronger villain would have given Thomerson more to push against.
The action scenes are rough around the edges. Some fights feel staged, and the pacing can wobble between scenes.
None of these flaws ruin the fun. They just keep Trancers in the cult classic bin instead of the hall of fame.
Is Trancers Worth Watching?
If you love 1980s science fiction, absolutely. This is a perfect Saturday night rental, even if you are streaming it now instead of grabbing a tape.
If you collect Christmas horror, it is a must. The mall Santa scene alone is worth the price of admission.
If you are a Helen Hunt fan, you will enjoy seeing her this early in her career. She is charming and sharp, and she already has the screen presence that made her a star.
If you need big budgets and polished effects, you may want to skip it. Trancers is scrappy, and it wears that proudly.
At 76 minutes, there is very little risk. Even if it is not your cup of cocoa, you will be done before the cookies cool.
The Kilroy Verdict on Trancers
Trancers is a time capsule in more ways than one. It captures the wild energy of the 1980s video boom, when small studios could make strange little movies and find an audience on the rental shelf.
It is not a perfect movie. The budget is thin, the plot is rushed, and the villain needed more meat on the bone. But Tim Thomerson gives one of the great B movie lead performances. Helen Hunt adds warmth and wit. The mall Santa scene is pure holiday chaos.
Add John Carl Buechler’s makeup, a Blade Runner car from Gene Winfield, and the Empire Pictures legacy, and you have a cult favorite worth revisiting.
Final Thoughts 3.2/5
This one earns a 3.2 out of 5 from Kilroy. Wrapping up this Trancers Review, it is a scrappy, funny, and very strange Christmas movie in disguise. Tim Thomerson carries it on his trench coated shoulders, and Helen Hunt makes the ride a lot more fun.
“Tim Thomerson blasts through Christmas with deadpan cool in this scrappy time travel gem.”
ML Lamp, Kilroy Was Here Shop
He knows if you’ve been naughty or nice. Jack Deth just wants to know if you’re a Trancer.
