Trancers is an example of the low-budget science fiction that came out of Los Angeles in the early 1980s. Some of it, such as Night of the Comet, was made by the new independent companies like Atlantic; some by the venerable Roger Corman at his studio in Venice, California, a former lumber yard; and a lot of it, including Trancers, came from an independent outfit called Empire, run by Charles Band, the director of this film. Most of this stuff rips off of Alien or Star Wars. Trancers is a rip-off of Blade Runner with a substantial nod to The Terminator. In that sense, its taste is excellent - it has time-traveling cops and flying police cars - but its grasp is longer than its reach.