GHOSTS OF MARS (2001) Goddammit then, I'LL defend it! The bashing this movie's taken by fans comes as little surprise, since John Carpenter's movies have never been for everybody, and not even for everybody in his own fanbase. Carpenter fans have some pretty divergent opinions on which are his best and worst works; God knows enough longtime fans think In The Mouth Of Madness was a crock, and I myself always found The Fog and Escape From New York to be pretty overrated. Outside of a handful of films, you'll find no consensus on the quality of his works, and I for one wouldn't have that any other way. Its crashing, crushing failure at the box office comes as little surprise either, since the ad campaign was horrible, people are kinda burned out on ho-hum Mars flicks as it is, and people know by now that John Carpenter's name before a title does little to guarantee much widespread appeal. That having been said, while Ghosts Of Mars does not upset my Big Three favorite Carpenter flicks (Halloween, The Thing, and In The Mouth Of Madness) it does come a respectable, if humanly distant, fourth. I liked Vampires when it came out, but I have to admit, I haven't seen it again in the three years since its opening weekend; Ghosts Of Mars, I guarantee you, I'll be seeing again before it leaves the theaters. Clearly and deliberately recalling Assault On Precinct 13 (Carpenter even half-jokingly mentioning that all he ever does is remake his own movies), Ghosts Of Mars stars Natasha Henstridge as Ballard, a mildly drug-addled Mars colony cop assigned, along with her squad, to transport a prisoner. Among her squad is Pam Grier as the sexually aggressive lesbian leader, Jason Statham as a sexually aggressive heterosexual, one guy who barely registers, and Clea Duvall as the rookie. The prisoner they're moving is "Desolation" Williams, played by Ice Cube. Williams keeps beating murder charges by arguing self-defense. Anyway, when the train pulls into town, the squad finds the town deserted except for those locked in the jail...and soon they come under siege from the former colonists, who have been taken over by long-dormant Martian spirits who want to convince anybody trying to lay claim to their planet to leave them alone. (They probably thought that a big sign that said "Abandon all hope all ye who enter" wasn't gonna do it) Mars here is mostly terraformed, and admittedly, just how much isn't really all that clear ("84%" doesn't tell us much; it's mentioned early that the atmosphere isn't entirely breathable yet, but nobody seems to have a problem). What counts is that it looks and feels right; lots of red rock, of course, but most of what we see is the colony, and the colony looks suitably slapped-together and maintained on the fly. Ghosts Of Mars is atmospheric both during "loud" and "quiet" parts, and that's no mean feat, actually, since good atmosphere usually manages to go out the window during action scenes. If there's one BIG problem here, arguably, it has to be this movie's rather awkward flashback structure, and for sure, that's the problem that's gotten the most attention. Movies told in flashback are nothing new, of course. But this has several flashbacks within that big flashback, and at least one of those has a flashback inside that! I dunno; I never had any trouble following anything, and neither did the friend I saw this with, and certainly, people don't complain about this stuff in, say, Wuthering Heights. My only problem with it is that it's kind of cinematically awkward for Carpenter to provide us with filmed scenes of events that the narrator (Henstridge) was not witness to. Other than that, I don't see how anyone would have a problem following it. The only problem here which seriously bugged me was the casting of the two leads. Henstridge looks great in her underwear and a tank top, but doesn't bring much to the character, which must've seemed a little more interesting on paper than Henstridge lets come across. Courtney Love was originally cast in the role but had to drop out due to an ankle injury; while I cannot stand what might be described as Love's media whoring, she isn't half bad as an actor and might've made this role into one of Carpenter's most memorable protagonists. As it is, while Henstridge plays Ballard admirably straight (even when she's on drugs), she plays her pretty flat, too. The other lead, of course, is Ice Cube as "Desolation" Williams. I can't speak for his skills as a rapper (never been my bag), but as an actor, he doesn’t often demonstrate much range outside of his near-constant scowl. Occasionally he'll crack a smile, but 90% scowl and 10% smile does not make for much of a character. Unlike Ballard, I don't see how this character would've been very interesting on paper anyway, so Ice Cube is as helpless as anyone to bring some life to it. The supporting roles here are much more interesting. Grier is clearly having a lot of fun in her role, seemingly relishing the chance to play another gender-bending role in another Carpenter flick. Statham's role might be a little annoying in content, but this guy's voice is so distinct, resonant, and loaded with personality, I didn't care if he was reading out excerpts from the yellow pages, I just wanted him to keep talking. And wasn't I just saying last week that just once I wanted to see a really FOOLISH Indian in a movie? Well, this has an Indian (didn't catch his name), but it's hard to say if he's foolish or not...I guess if he'd been smarter, he might not have gotten killed. Joanna Cassidy brings little to the film other than questionable narrative reliability and a not-really-necessary explanation of where the ghosts came from, but Duvall is nicely green as the rookie whose first assignment is enough to make her reconsider her career choice. Perhaps what most impressed me here were the action scenes. John Carpenter has long been, bar none, my favorite director. But he's never been much of a fight-scene director (note the snoozy Escape From New York, or the enjoyably, hilariously miscalculated They Live). While it's impossible to tell if this is going to be a skill of his that lasts into his future work, Ghosts Of Mars is the first of his movies to have fight scenes which are exciting enough to stand up to anything out there...at least, for its "school". No trendy wire-stunt stuff here, just a lot of good, old-fashioned, bone-crunching, limb-lopping, blood-spurting destruction - in other words, exactly what the entirely too tame action movies of today desperately need. This movie is REALLY violent for a big-screen American release these days. Somebody around here said something to the effect of "Thank God somebody still has the guts to make a rated R movie these days", and seeing all these good directors (Cameron, Woo, De Palma) start targeting teenagers (like everyfuckingbody else these days) with PG-13 movies only makes me that much more thankful that guys like Carpenter are still around. No lengthy, sobbing, bloodless death scenes full of heartbreak and sorrow here; people die messily and the carnage churns on. The action scenes also have a little thought put into them for plausibility, like when four surviving heroes, trying to back out of a structure into which the baddies are pouring in, can only shoot them by twos, while the other two reloads. When was the last time you saw somebody in a movie reload without the action coming to a dead stop? The villains aren't particularly articulate; they only talk in their incomprehensible Martian language, but they still make for fun villains. Self-mutilation junkies to the extreme (think Return Of The Living Dead 3, but much less sexy), they tattoo, pierce, and slash themselves as if they have no idea what pain is. Their leader (highly-billed Richard Cetrone, playing a role listed in the credits as "Big Daddy Mars") looks like a bulkier Marilyn Manson wearing one of GWAR's costumes. Actually, GWAR isn't a bad reference point for these possessed colonists; would a guy with a bear trap on his head and another with a nuclear vice grip for an arm really have looked much out of place here? The horde fights with crudely-built hand-to-hand weapons and some sort of razor-sharp flying discs (they were always moving too fast for me to tell if they were hubcaps, like in one episode of Knight Rider I'm ashamed to say I half-remember). All well and good by me; if you're going to hack off somebody's head, you might as well do it with something crude. The score is by Carpenter, Anthrax, and I heard once, Buckethead. It's hard to isolate Buckethead's contributions, if indeed he had any (he's not even credited), but Anthrax puts in eight tracks of what Carpenter called "psychotic metal". So far as metal goes, it's not that psychotic, but it's just what the movie needs; grinding, lumbering stuff, sticking to blues-based motifs which both Anthrax and Carpenter usually stick to. Not all of it's new either; at least one track, an instrumental version of "Killing Box", I know for damn sure they've done before. Still, Anthrax scoring a big-screen movie, how often do you hear that? I'm getting this soundtrack as soon as I find it. Again, Carpenter refuses to pander to the trendy teens, most of whom have never heard of Anthrax and would probably find them, uh, archaic, and would sooner go to a movie scored by Limp Bizkit or something. Ghosts Of Mars has a fun plot (written by Carpenter and Larry Sulkis...I liked the arguably pro-drug moment where narcotics are used to chase a ghost out of somebody's body, perhaps recalling a similarly themed aspect of The Faculty.) and a great ending too, as is usual for Carpenter, this one actually having the class to nod back to In The Mouth Of Madness, and any movie which dares to do that has to be doing something right. Will this eventually be heralded as a sort of hidden gem, the movie fans go to when the more obvious hits are watched to death? Hard to say, but I think time will be kinder to it than its initial reception is suggesting, and while it certainly isn't going to be remembered alongside Halloween, it may well be mentioned in the same breath as...well, dammit, the movies I'm thinking of aren't even Carpenter movies. I'm thinking of, say, Deep Rising. Time will tell. In the meantime, I'm considerably more pleased than I expected to be, and I'm happy to have finally seen a theatrically released genre movie this year I enjoyed enthusiastically without frequent hemming and hawing about its problems. BACK TO THE G's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE