Keanen's Film Blog

The first three Trancers show a fall from greatness as legendary hero Jack Deth moves into retirement. Trancers 4 and 5 were shot back-to-back and pick up where the trilogy left off. I divide the series like so because of the radical shift the latter films represent, not just in Trancers but in moving pictures on the whole.

The whole outsourcing situation with lower budgets and broken dreams is par for the course with Chuck Band’s later work. This was the start of that. With Trancers 4, the audience got an interesting medieval experience. Whether or not it was good for business, I don’t know.

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In moving pictures, dark fantasy usually sucks. (With the exception of Hellraiser and The Witcher.) “Evil is good” is a tough sell for American Christian audiences, who have historically made up the bulk of Hollywood’s market. Anime can get away with a lot more, but in terms of American movies, there is not much to pick from.

Let’s consider for a moment that Groundhog Day is dark fantasy in disguise. It’s a “what if?” movie, and such movies are usually explainable if you assume the protagonist has demonic powers. Bill Murray is the spirit of Satan, doing ritual suicides and resurrecting repeatedly. He lusts after his naive muse, bending time to subjugate her to his will. The man is unstoppable, and at the climax he takes the titular pagan sacrificial animal with him to the grave, only to resurrect and claim vengeance again.

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It’s based on a book, but there’s nothing literary about the end product. It’s a political metaphor, but the metaphor falls apart whenever something has to blow up. There are some great visuals, but after two hours you won’t care. Without a proper story, none of it matters.

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In romance fiction, there is very little that could be considered conflict. Therefore, S&M is sometimes used as seasoning for an otherwise bland dish. Take out everything but the seasoning and you have Hellraiser.

This is one of those movies I watched in my college apartment before I realized the value of headphones. If you had passed my door late one night, you might have heard a mix of screams, rattling chains, and raspy moaning. A neighbor complained of me playing World of Warcraft. (A less lascivious assumption than could have been made.)

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Funky Forest: The First Contact is not an easy film to discuss. While some films are off-color, this film is slightly out of its mind. It is difficult to describe a plot that precisely summarizes any of it, let alone draw conclusions of what the film is “about”.

The charm of Funky Fores is that, in its live-action Japanese multi-director anthology form, there are a lot of things that are hard to fully comprehend. Yet, at the film’s core there is genuine emotion and character. It is something you feel more than understand, at times tasting with your mind rather than seeing with your eyes.

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