by The Fluffer
John Carpenter is one of the most beloved film directors of all time, creator of a slew of movies with devoted fan bases: The Thing, Dark Star, They Live, Halloween, Christine, Assault on Precinct 13, In the Mouth of Madness, The Fog, Escape from New York, Big Trouble in Little China, etc etc. He doesn’t need anyone to speak up for him, not really, but we’re going to give a little love to one of his least admired works, 2001’s Ghosts of Mars, aka the film that made him quit directing (aside from The Ward).
This is a scifi/horror/Western mash up, set in the year 2176 on the planet Mars (which has been terraformed) and focuses on a squad of police who are sent to escort a prisoner from a mining community, only to discover an outbreak of space zombie-alien-ghost-thingies.
The movie – which wasn’t cheap to make – was a critical and commercial flop, and, more surprisingly, even though John Carpenter is John Carpenter, its cult status has been very slow in coming.
We don’t know why that is – hesitation about Natasha Henstridge in a role originally meant for Courtney Love? Awkwardness with the film’s (arguably) pro drug stance? Disliking movies set on Mars (this was the era of Red Planet and Mission to Mars)?
We think Ghosts of Mars is great. There’s a typically pumping Carpenter soundtrack (part synth, part metal), a clever use of flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks, Pam Grier as a predatory lesbian officer straight out of her ‘70s oeuvre, only more clothed, cool use of fades and wipes, Ice Cube channelling Snake Plissken as a bad ass criminal who gets caught up in events, Jason Statham with hair sexually harassing Henstridge, Joanna Cassidy as a crazed coward, a powerful sense of menace, some bright tough talking dialogue, a train on Mars, a wonderful bantering relationship between Ice Cube and Henstridge, lots of decapitations, the villains being clearly inspired by Indians from old Westerns (this ranks with Assault on Precinct 13 as probably Carpenter’s most Western like movie), people constantly saying “let’s get out of here”, Robert Carradine getting his head sliced off.
Yes, the characters make annoyingly dumb choices towards the end, but the villains are genuinely scary and hard to kill, the film looks amazing, and we love the idea of Henstridge and Ice Cube going off into the sunset together as part of a never-ending battle against the ghost-zombie-alien things.
As mentioned, the film tanked commercially and critically, prompting Carpenter to hang up his viewfinder, focus on music and take cheques for all those bad remakes of his classics made in the 2000s. He came out of retirement for The Ward, which we do not classify as top rank Carpenter – nor is Memoirs of the Invisible Man, Escape from LA or Starman [great movie that it is]. But Ghosts of Mars? Absolutely.
