‘Ghosts of Mars’ is still John Carpenter’s last theatrical film, and with good reason, as it’s a derivative rehash of his own work ‘Assault on Precinct 13’ (itself a take on ‘Rio Bravo’). Cheap, ugly and rarely fun, even on a B-movie level, the campness is intentional to be sure but that doesn’t always make for enjoyable entertainment.
Most people I talk to always give Carpenter’s lesser works a pass as if talking ill of ‘Ghost of Mars’ and ‘Escape from L.A.’ will somehow tarnish their opinion of his classics. I couldn’t be more of a fan of Carpenter’s with his ‘The Thing’ remake topping my list of best films ever, regardless of any genre. With ‘Halloween’, ‘Escape from New York’ and ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ under his belt, he doesn’t need to make apologies.
But that doesn’t mean that I have to watch ‘Ghosts of Mars’ and be happy about it. Clearly aiming for 70s B-movie pulp with ideal viewing being through the bug-splattered front window of a car at a drive-in while desperately trying to make a move on whatever poor soul got chumped into watching, instead I have to be up close and high-def personal which makes the constant underachievement of the film a hard genre pill to swallow.
I can’t quite tell if Carpenter is trying too hard or not trying at all with this oft-told tale of cops and criminals having to band together to rid a common enemy, this time the enemy being a bunch of aging Marilyn Manson zombie ghosts with a penchant for stabbing and murdering. The film takes place on almost exclusively one location, a desolate Mars mine i.e. a New Mexico mine tinted red with all the production value of a SegaCD game.
Genre heroine Natasha Henstridge (‘Species’ and, um, ‘Maximum Risk’) stars as Lt. Melanie Bellard who is at a hearing in the colony city of Chryse on Mars circa 2176. She’s being questioned as to why she’s the only one to return from her recent assignment of bringing murderer James ‘Desolation’ Williams (Ice Cube) back into custody.
The majority of the film is the flashback explanation (wait, wasn’t this same structure incorporated for recent horror war flick ‘Red Sands’? I guess even bad Carpenter still inspires).
Flashback starts off with Ballard and crew aboard a transport train to mining outpost Shining Canyon. These scenes attempt the usual pre-war banter of soldiers with the crew consisting of campy lesbian Braddock (Pam Grier), rookie Bashira (Clea Duvall) and rough-hewn Jericho (Jason Statham) who is constantly making a move on Ballard as it seems the matriarchy society of Mars doesn’t result in many straight women.
As they arrive, it becomes clear something’s wrong as they find the locals butchered and hung up and soon find themselves having to band together with Williams to fend off the Manson rejects who have been possessed by ‘red sand’ (‘Red Sands’ again?!) from the mine shafts.
This resuts in a handful of poorly put-together fight scenes that are both violent and goofily excessive. I suppose there is some camp value here but I couldn’t really appreciate it considering this film is quite possibly the nadir of a once great director’s career.
The heavy metal music and soundtrack, by Carpenter and joined by Anthrax and Buckethead, matches the film’s irritating tone and although the cast all prove game, no doubt hoping for a return to form for Carpenter, not much can be done with dialogue clunkers like “What happens if we blow up a nuclear power plant?...there’d be an explosion, right?” and “Maybe I’d sleep with you if you were the last man on Earth…but we’re on Mars”. Snap!
In fact, the tone, dialogue and production values almost reek of spoof so if you approach it as, say, ‘Carpenter Movie’, you may end up enjoying it much more than taking the film at face value.
Sony presents 'Ghosts of Mars' in a 1080p/AVC 2.35:1 encode. The film is eight-years old now and looks pretty good in high-def despite some grain issues. The biggest problem, here, is that the move to high-def really accentuates the cheap look of the film.
I’m not so sure a battered, handed-down VHS copy wouldn’t be the way to go. Matching the low-budget visuals is the cheap sound design which gets a lossless scrubbing with a new English Dolby TrueHD track.
The film starts off with an audio commentary that features director John Carpenter and actress Natasha Henstridge and this is a mostly love-fest – those expecting the fun gab-fest of the Carpenter/Kurt Russell tracks will be disappointed here.
It’s still worth a listen for fans of the director, though. Three featurettes round things out: ‘Video Diary’ which runs sixteen minutes, ‘Scoring Ghosts of Mars’ which runs six minutes and ‘Special Effects Deconstruction’ which also runs six minutes.
Eighties Carpenter was a force to be reckoned with and provided great genre entertainment time and time again from ‘The Fog’ to ‘They Live’ and all the modern classics in between. This is why I hold Carpenter’s work to higher standards and ‘Ghosts of Mars’ just doesn’t cut it.
Blu-ray specs are fine but are limited by the film’s original shoddy production value so I guess it all comes down to this: if a villain called ‘Big Daddy Mars’ is all you need to know to be talked into seeing the film, then sign up. If not, move it along folks, there’s nothing to see here.
Ghost of Mars [Blu-ray] is now available at Amazon . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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