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yendiJohn Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars. 2001. Directed by John Carpenter. Written by Carpenter and Larry Sulkis. Distributed by Sony.
No, it's not a theme week here. I just picked two shitty John Carpenter movies in a row, that's all. And believe me, John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars is a very crappy movie, one that hopefully represents the nadir of his career*.
But the amazing thing about this movie is that it could have been worse.
You see, the saving grace of the film is the cast. And the lead, Natasha Henstridge (of Species fame) does a fine job. But she was an emergency replacement for the originally-cast lead: Courtney Love. Nothing screams "action heroine" like "Courtney Love." Well, assuming you drop the final "e" in "heroine."
Anyway, back to the movie. Quick plot summary: Carpenter plagiarizes his own Assault on Precinct 13**, swipes the "hardened criminal is the only hope for a bunch of folks on another planet" routine from Pitch Black, and runs it through the Generic Flashback Framing Sequence Machine to shake things up a bit.
Want a slightly more detailed description? Okay. A group of Martian cops head out to a small Martian town to pick up a hardened criminal namedRiddick Desolation Williams***. When they get to the town, they find that almost everyone has been killed in horrible, nasty, messy ways, and there are decapitated bodies everywhere. Quicker than you can say, "hey, Pam Grier's character is wandering off on her own," the group discovers that there are still plenty of people alive. For a value of "alive" that includes "possessed by evil Martian spirits and turned into ravenous killing machines", that is.
The assaults take up most of the rest of the movie, as the characters (a mix of cops and convicts) get picked off one-by-one, get possessed, argue, make out, and eventually end up in a showdown on a train. Along the way, we meet "Big Papa Mars," who is the head bad guy****. He looks suspiciously like Marilyn Manson, but instead of dating Evan Rachel Wood, he just stands there, yells, and throws sharp objects. Eventually, we're left with two survivors, the Plucky Cop andRiddick Desolation Williams. Just as the flashbacks end, the main Martian base gets invaded. As we fade to the credits, our two survivors prepare to fight.
See? Don't you wish I'd stuck with my original summary?
The possessed folks in this movie simply aren't terrifying. They're inarticulate, brutal, and efficient, to be fair. Alas, that makes them no different than the villains in Assault on Precinct 13, and other than some body piercing, screaming, and gratuitously gory killings, there's not much of a difference. What Assault had going for it, though, was an impending sense of doom and a generally creepy vibe to the nature of the assault itself. Carpenter throws that all away in favor of non-stop action, and it's an awful, awful idea, undercutting any potential that the Martians have of being scary in the least.
As I said, the cast here is surprisingly good, and they do their best to save the film. But no matter how many solid folks you put here -- and the cast here includes Henstridge, Ice Cube, Jason Statham, Clea DuVall, Pam Grier, and Joanna Cassidy -- when you've got a script with nary an original moment in it*****, there's nothing they can do other than avoid making it worse. Carpenter (along with Larry Sulkis, who the IMDB claims went uncredited for Village of the Damned******) wrote the script himself, so he can't even blame whatever hack handed him the script.
Making things worse, Carpenter had the bright idea to hire Anthrax to do the score. I like their music well enough, but it doesn't exactly help with the mood. Carpenter would have been better off going back to the well and ripping off his Assault on Precinct 13 music, which was tailor-made for this plotline.
There are a few good fight sequences, but nothing good enough to justify sitting through the movie. Ditto the f/x, which are decent enough, but far from impressive enough to save the film.
The saddest thing about John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars is that it's the worst of the big three 2000-01 Mars films. Sucking more than Mission to Mars and Red Planet takes a lot. Carpenter's lack of vision, talent, and even anything resembling effort over the last fifteen years is a minor tragedy. Crap like this from an unknown director would simply end up debuting on the Sci-Fi Channel, but seeing Carpenter's name attached to it is disgraceful.
*Because if next year's Psychopath, his first big-screen project in seven years, sucks more than this movie, he might as well just retire.
**There's a disturbing trend of great '70s directors doing this as their talent seeps away. For another example, check out Mel Brooks as he swipes the "camera crashes through the window" gag from High Anxiety for the vastly inferior Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
***His brothers are named Devastation Williams, Clusterfuck Williams, and Jesus Fucking Christ What a Mess Williams. The parents still wonder where they went wrong.
****We know his name because he's listed in the credits. Like all the possessed Martians, all he does is scream.
*****Okay, we do get the Mars is Matriarchy thing going on, but other than hamfisted attempts to equate female rule with lesbianism (complete with girl-on-girl sexual harassment) it never goes anywhere.
******To be fair, I wouldn't want credit for that, either.
No, it's not a theme week here. I just picked two shitty John Carpenter movies in a row, that's all. And believe me, John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars is a very crappy movie, one that hopefully represents the nadir of his career*.
But the amazing thing about this movie is that it could have been worse.
You see, the saving grace of the film is the cast. And the lead, Natasha Henstridge (of Species fame) does a fine job. But she was an emergency replacement for the originally-cast lead: Courtney Love. Nothing screams "action heroine" like "Courtney Love." Well, assuming you drop the final "e" in "heroine."
Anyway, back to the movie. Quick plot summary: Carpenter plagiarizes his own Assault on Precinct 13**, swipes the "hardened criminal is the only hope for a bunch of folks on another planet" routine from Pitch Black, and runs it through the Generic Flashback Framing Sequence Machine to shake things up a bit.
Want a slightly more detailed description? Okay. A group of Martian cops head out to a small Martian town to pick up a hardened criminal named
The assaults take up most of the rest of the movie, as the characters (a mix of cops and convicts) get picked off one-by-one, get possessed, argue, make out, and eventually end up in a showdown on a train. Along the way, we meet "Big Papa Mars," who is the head bad guy****. He looks suspiciously like Marilyn Manson, but instead of dating Evan Rachel Wood, he just stands there, yells, and throws sharp objects. Eventually, we're left with two survivors, the Plucky Cop and
See? Don't you wish I'd stuck with my original summary?
The possessed folks in this movie simply aren't terrifying. They're inarticulate, brutal, and efficient, to be fair. Alas, that makes them no different than the villains in Assault on Precinct 13, and other than some body piercing, screaming, and gratuitously gory killings, there's not much of a difference. What Assault had going for it, though, was an impending sense of doom and a generally creepy vibe to the nature of the assault itself. Carpenter throws that all away in favor of non-stop action, and it's an awful, awful idea, undercutting any potential that the Martians have of being scary in the least.
As I said, the cast here is surprisingly good, and they do their best to save the film. But no matter how many solid folks you put here -- and the cast here includes Henstridge, Ice Cube, Jason Statham, Clea DuVall, Pam Grier, and Joanna Cassidy -- when you've got a script with nary an original moment in it*****, there's nothing they can do other than avoid making it worse. Carpenter (along with Larry Sulkis, who the IMDB claims went uncredited for Village of the Damned******) wrote the script himself, so he can't even blame whatever hack handed him the script.
Making things worse, Carpenter had the bright idea to hire Anthrax to do the score. I like their music well enough, but it doesn't exactly help with the mood. Carpenter would have been better off going back to the well and ripping off his Assault on Precinct 13 music, which was tailor-made for this plotline.
There are a few good fight sequences, but nothing good enough to justify sitting through the movie. Ditto the f/x, which are decent enough, but far from impressive enough to save the film.
The saddest thing about John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars is that it's the worst of the big three 2000-01 Mars films. Sucking more than Mission to Mars and Red Planet takes a lot. Carpenter's lack of vision, talent, and even anything resembling effort over the last fifteen years is a minor tragedy. Crap like this from an unknown director would simply end up debuting on the Sci-Fi Channel, but seeing Carpenter's name attached to it is disgraceful.
*Because if next year's Psychopath, his first big-screen project in seven years, sucks more than this movie, he might as well just retire.
**There's a disturbing trend of great '70s directors doing this as their talent seeps away. For another example, check out Mel Brooks as he swipes the "camera crashes through the window" gag from High Anxiety for the vastly inferior Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
***His brothers are named Devastation Williams, Clusterfuck Williams, and Jesus Fucking Christ What a Mess Williams. The parents still wonder where they went wrong.
****We know his name because he's listed in the credits. Like all the possessed Martians, all he does is scream.
*****Okay, we do get the Mars is Matriarchy thing going on, but other than hamfisted attempts to equate female rule with lesbianism (complete with girl-on-girl sexual harassment) it never goes anywhere.
******To be fair, I wouldn't want credit for that, either.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-25 03:18 am (UTC)But it's not about or set on Mars; not really. It could as easily be set in the American West (where the protagonists battled the restless spirits of Indians) or Australia (where the protagonists battled the restless spirits of aborigines) as on Mars. And if Carpenter had set the movie in either of those places, at least he could have made some sort of valid political point with it.
There was a moment when the movie was on the verge of redeeming itself for me. Henstridge and Cube's characters had figured out that the Martians couldn't be killed, but also how to drive them out of a human body, and I thought, "Okay, now, they're going to pull this all together somehow to save the planet for humanity.
Then they set off a nuke, opting to blow shit up instead of implementing the real solution which was clearly close at hand. Argh! Stupid!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-25 04:16 am (UTC)...they're neat, too.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-25 07:33 am (UTC)It's not as if he's incapable of doing... ok, in the past he has been capable of doing much better himself.
His refusal to admit that it's a remake of AoP13 is also weird.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-25 12:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-26 04:09 am (UTC)No more bad Carpenter. Mercy!
You are driving me straight back into the arms of Val Lewton (http://www.amazon.com/Fearing-Dark-Val-Lewton-Career/dp/0786417099/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-2150845-3234366?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1177560418&sr=8-1), you are you are.