TRANCERS 3 (1992)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*

I don't know if the producers of TRANCERS 3 wrote out the character of the hero's wife because the actress who'd played her, Helen Hunt, had just rocketed to the Big Time with the teleseries MAD ABOUT YOU-- with this installment marking Hunt's last contribution to the series. But irrespective of the precise reasons, Tim Thomerson's hero Jack Deth works much better when he's not happy, so the loss of a stable love-life was an improvement. 

Even before a new conflict begins, Deth is having marital trouble with Lena (Hunt). Then he gets his mental essence summoned back to his native time, the 23rd century, because yet another evil genius has started unleashing the zombies known as "Trancers," this time in the hoary old year of 2005. It's not clear to me as to what happens to the body Deth was occupying when his future-self vanishes, but I guess Lena views his leave-taking as desertion. When Deth makes it to 2005, he learns that in the meantime Lena divorced him and married someone else. She appears just long enough to tell the hero how happy she is, and then Deth's nicely pissed off for his next battle with evildoers.

This time the villain is the risibly named Colonel Daddy Muthuh (Andrew Robinson), so named because he's been both father and mother to all the soldiers under his command. Muthuh has some notion of conquering his timeline with his small army of super-strong zombies, though most of them just look like ordinary gym-rats, including a female fighter (Dawn Ann Billings). Robinson has a nice time chewing the scenery and up to this point essays the series' best villain.

Deth gets diverse help from Movie #2's character Alice (Megan Ward), a big alien goon he calls Godzilla, and a female Trancer-cop called T.J. (Melanie Smith). But Deth's the whole show here, even if it's pretty much a road-show in terms of its meager FX budget.