This week, Chris and Joel travel back to 1984 (or forward to 2247, depending on your perspective) to introduce John Carpenter's shape-shifting alien to the cult sci-fi action movie Trancers.

Directed by Charles Band and starring Tim Thomerson and a young Helen Hunt, Trancers follows Jack Deth, a hard-boiled cop from the future who travels back in time to 1980s Los Angeles to hunt down a psychic criminal capable of turning ordinary people into murderous zombies.

We discuss the film's wonderfully strange mythology, its inventive low-budget filmmaking, the appeal of Jack Deth as an unlikely action hero, and whether any of its time-travel mechanics actually make sense. Along the way, we explore the film's many sequels, the mysteries of the Trancers themselves, and the pleasures of a film that doesn't feel obliged to explain everything.

Then we ask the important question: what if Jack Deth wasn't hunting a psychic criminal, but an alien creature capable of perfectly imitating anyone it encounters? Could the Thing take Whistler's place, and would Jack Deth stand a chance against it?

Expect time travel, body horror, questionable science and an alarming amount of discussion about Trancers 2.

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Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

This week on Just The Thing, we tackle one of John Carpenter's most beloved cult classics as we drop the creature from The Thing into the world of They Live. What happens when an alien species hiding in plain sight encounters a shapeshifter that could already be one of them?

Joel and Chris revisit Carpenter's razor-sharp satire on consumerism, capitalism, and media manipulation, discussing why They Live remains as relevant today as it was in 1988. Along the way, they celebrate the film's unique blend of sci-fi, horror, and action, unpack its iconic moments, and debate whether Nada's sunglasses would be enough to expose The Thing before it was too late.

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Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

This week on Just The Thing, we're heading into the low-budget wasteland of early '90s straight-to-video sci-fi as we drop John Carpenter's shapeshifting nightmare into Circuitry Man and its bonkers sequel, Circuitry Man II: Plughead Rewired.

Joel and Chris explore these forgotten cyberpunk curios, discussing killer cyborgs, brain-addling biochips, post-apocalyptic world-building, and why low-budget sci-fi so often punches well above its weight. Along the way, they celebrate the weird charm of direct-to-video cinema and ask the question that really matters: what happens when a creature that can become anyone encounters a world obsessed with replacing humanity with technology?

Come with us on a journey back to a time when the choice of which movie to rent was based solely on an imaginative VHS cover.

Find us on social media https://linktr.ee/justthethingpod

Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio