Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) is back in 2353. After wiping out the Trancers, he has been working for the council and fixing the time line. He is alone again. He gets new gadgets. His new mission sends him to a medieval world which is ruled by Trancers called Nobles. They are literally sucking the life out of normal people.

This sci-fi franchise is trying to go medieval. This B-movie is trying to jump into another B-movie genre. At times, I do wonder if this is trying to be a satire of the original. When Deth goes into slow-motion, I almost thought that it's making fun of itself. Medieval could be done well but this is not it. There is no excitement or thrills. There is no tension in the story. At least, Tim Thomerson is back. Otherwise, there is nothing here.

I've watched too many movies in my time. I mean, here I am, commenting on Trancers 4 - TRANCERS 4! - and I bet this review will be read by a grand total of about six people, the same six people who rented this silly little movie when it came out.

For the uninitiated, Trancers started life as a futuristic film noir series. Well, to be brutally honest, it started life as tacky B-movie trash with noir ambitions. The lead character, Jack Deth (like Death, geddit?) was played by lovable genre grump Tim Thomerson, who has achieved a semi-legendary status on the order of Bruce Campbell's. Are either of these men really titans of the entertainment industry? Nah. They're weirdos and underdogs. And that's why we love them.

Trancers 4 departs from the series' usual detective theme and plants Jack Deth in a medieval fantasy world populated by energy-draining vampires. Purists have cried foul over this, but what the hell - Full Moon had a sweet deal, filming on the cheap in Romania, and they wanted to re-use their forest and castle locations from "Subspecies." So, comic book writer Peter David was called upon to plunk Deth right into the middle of an old "Doctor Who" plot involving tyrants, rebels, swordplay, and lots of running around in the woods. The connection to "Who" is strengthened by the endearingly absurd special effects (or, better put, special defects).

The rebel characters are woodenly acted, the bad guys ham it up like loons, the fight scenes are listless, the plot makes no sense - oh, I could go on and on - and yet this movie is still boss, precisely because it's cheap and crass and ballsy and not in the least bit mainstream. This is the kind of movie you could make in a weekend with your friends, and it's all the better for its crudity. It's just so much fun - I mean, c'mon, Deth dunks some guy's head into a bowl of popcorn! He turns an android's head into a bedside lamp! He talks and acts tough, but he's clearly WAY TOO OLD to threaten anybody!

It rules. It just rules.

Tim Thomerson is terrific as the returning Jack Deth, yet he is surrounded by Shakespearean rejects who wouldn't even last five minutes in a Dumas novel. The pains of carrying this film way heavy on the character of Deth as he must talk in this film with characters like Prospero and Caliban. Caliban is the lead villain in this film where his kind of Trancers are vampiric who suck the lifeforce from the humans on the planet(when the humans turn white they're in the "safe zone", but if the color reaches blue then red during an uncontrollable feeding it's "uh oh"). Jack Deth had become a time cop, traveling through the boundaries of time and space, working for Stephen Macht who finds "rifts" and anomalies in certain times. So Deth goes where he is needed because if there's a mess needing cleaning, Jack's the man for the job. On route for another job, this creature who manifests itself on board Jack's time ship causes an accidental crash onto this medieval planet which looks like a small patch of area with a castle. Caliban is shown here by Clabe Hartley to be a towering presence who strikes fear in everyone under his rule. Humans can not stop him and his great power outmatches anyone who dares face him. Yep, Jack Deth winds up in this place and now poses a threat to Caliban. That's about as easy as the convoluted, confusing film gets. There's this old wizard whose prophesies spelled out Deth's arrival to the planet not to mention his artistic rendering was put on paper by the old timer hooded as if just coming from "Star Wars:Episode 1". Deth seems to represented in this film as a savior for the people, but if anyone saw how he handled a sword against Caliban might try thinking twice. It's hard to watch really. To be honest, Deth is perfectly suited for the urban sci-fi waters of LA, but in a sword and sorcery adventure, he looks out of place. Thomerson still makes this nonsense fun to watch and his face down with whomever comes at him is always thrilling. The dialog is really horrendous{I believe one character in the castle says finding Jack Deth will be like "looking for a needle in a haystack"..I kid you not},especially when Deth and Stacie Randal's "first" Lyra have a spat about how they act to each other. I'm pretty sure Thomerson would probably enjoy starring in a couple of higher quality pictures, but is seemingly stuck in poopers like this film where his charisma has to take up the slack.