| GHOSTS OF MARS |
 2001 – USA
Director: John Carpenter - Reviewed by Dan
Ghosts of Mars is your opportunity to spend the weekend with Uncle John. Hang out for a couple of hours in his bizarre, parallel-liberal universe in which matriarchy is promoted but the thrill of a slow-motion decapitation is exploited, where drugs are glorified and demonized simultaneously, and the good guys are just as bad as the bad guys and vice versa. Politics aside, Ghosts of Mars aims to be a gratuitously entertaining thrill-ride and it delivers. It's equal parts horror, sci-fi, comedy and cheese. There's a plot, and the rest of this paragraph is it: Earthlings are in the process of terra-forming Mars. It's 85% finished, and despite the fact that there are only 640,000 people living there, there are multiple colonial outposts as well as a central city that appears to be around the size of New York. Anyway, incorporeal creatures start possessing the colonists right when our heroine (Natasha Henstridge) is sent to transport a big bad criminal (Ice Cube) back to that New York-sized city. The incorporeal creatures allow for one of my favorite overused film techniques—the hand-held, first-person perspective of the killer/demon/psychotic as he stalks his victims, invariably accompanied by the heavy, rasping breathing of the psychotic/creature/undead/etc. Love it. John Carpenter is king of the B-movies. He's Ed Wood with talent (and a budget). While John Woo makes violent ballets that take themselves WAY too seriously, John Carpenter creates violent breakdances. During the action scenes, a sense of continuity is generally maintained, but when it's lacking, who cares? People moonwalking aren't really floating backwards, after all. What most impressed me was a machine-gun-toting "make-a-break-for-it" scene in which at least fifteen characters fling themselves into the fray. Scanning the crowd of "good-guys," I realized I knew each and every one of them (to some degree) and would feel some remorse when at least 1/3 or more of them got splattered in the ensuing three minutes of blood-spurting action. I think it's John Carpenter's greatest skill, this tenderizing. Stephen King is great at it, too. You're the one they soften up for the bloody blow of each character's exit (I hope it's clear to everyone that this is only entertaining when latex limbs and special effects are involved). Of these well-formed cutlets, er, characters, my hands-down favorite is the lesbian (?) scientist (you'll recognize her from Blade Runner) who actually calls it like the audience is thinking it, but rolls her eyes the entire time as if to say "like it really matters." Although this movie is gory, allegorical fun, I still appreciate the fact that John at least tries to make the science somewhat believable. An aside, if I were Marilyn Manson, I'd sue the make-up artists of Ghosts of Mars for exploiting my schtick, but these days, old Marilyn is probably desperate for media and grateful for every reference to him that anyone is willing to make. The ending is so ludicrously heart-warming I'm giving John a slice (a Moviepie slice, that is) just for giving us what we want, even at the expense of the film's "credibility". While Ghosts of Mars is the opposite of good, clean fun—if you've got the stomach for it—it's fun just the same. |
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John Carpenter reminds me of that gray-skinned uncle with whom your parents would never let you spend the weekend—the one who showed up to every fifth family gathering with nicotine stained fingers and a new girlfriend. You adored him and loved to listen to his left of liberal rants, but he drove your parents to drink.
