Ghosts of Mars (2001) Revisited – Horror Movie Review

There’s always a last time for everything, whether you know it’s the last time or not. A last time you talk to a good friend, last day of school, or even last time you pet the family dog. That comes to life in our pop culture world too. The last time a band releases an album, the final video game in a beloved series, or the last movie by a beloved director. I see a lot of similarities in two of those, the friend and director and in the case of John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars, they are one in the same. The master of horror’s movies have always been my favorite and while he would have one final theatrical movie 9 years after this came out, Ghosts of Mars is the final movie that feels like a Carpenter movie, and even that is fleeting. It was like saying goodbye to a long-time friend who was still somewhat who you remember but not who you grew up with. All of that is ok and happens and doesn’t negate the journey you took together but sometimes it’s harder when you don’t know it’s the last time. Let’s take a look at Ghosts of Mars one last time.

I say last time because I hadn’t watched this movie in at least 15 years and had only seen it in theaters the once before that. Having John Carpenter’s Vampires and John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars, and Escape from LA being my only theatrical adventures with the director was strange as a kid because I wanted to love them so much just as I had loved his other classics growing up. The Big Trouble in Little Chinas, Halloweens, and Escape from New Yorks of the world along with nearly a dozen others had all been a part of my childhood and are still ranked highly in my list of all time favorites. It gave me a sense of false joy watching those two later entries for the first time in theaters where I swear, I liked them more than I actually do. Escape from LA isn’t as bad as its reputation and Vampires is far less enjoyable than I remember but something strange happened with this one. I actually liked it more than I remembered. Maybe it was stigma of it being considered his worst or my own personal very low expectations but like that last encounter with an old friend, there were still glimpses of the old maverick director in there.

Let’s start with what this movie isnt though. One rumor that floated around forever was that this was originally conceived as the third Snake Plissken movie Escape from Earth and when you look at some of the scenes and even musical cues, you could see it. James Desolation Williams acting like a temu Snake doesn’t help to sway those rumors either, but Carpenter later said that while he had never heard that rumor, and it was a fun idea, that was never the case. What Carpenter wanted to do was make it a comically over the top and excessive action movie like a Commando or Tango and Cash. You can see some of this too with the scenes of weapons being handed out or long shootout walks between trains and buildings or buildings and trains with my favorite example being the macho bad guy getting high and cutting off his own finger. In a dumb action spectacle, these things may have worked but the rest of the movie takes itself far too seriously, even with the ending line of dialogue trying its best to convey the former.

The movie is a horror action movie that falls flat on any attempts at comedy and part of that is because the script just doesn’t hold up. You might miss your Carpenter regulars that typically show up, apart from the recently departed Peter Jason, God bless him, but nobody could have saved the script. Carpenter wrote it with Larry Sulkis who doesn’t have any other major credits. He is a producer with uncredited writing on Village of the Damned and uncredited directing on Body Bags. Clearly there is some sort of Carpenter connection here but whatever the two came up with in addition to what the final product was just doesn’t mesh well. Although the first draft was apparently part musical with Ice Cube rapping at parts and I can’t decide if that is way worse or infinitely better.

The actors delivering these lines is another story with Ice Cube giving his bad boy character all the language that can be mustered and Natasha Henstridge looking more bored than almost any leading actress I can think of. She wasn’t the first choice either with Michelle Yeoh, Franka Potente, and Famke Janssen all being considered first and even Hole lead singer Courtney Love being cast but dropping out. We also got Robert Carradine with Peter Jason, Pam Grier, Clea Duval, and a young Jason Statham who was originally supposed to be Desolation Williams, but the studio wanted Ice Cubes admittedly bigger star power. While that was probably the right call at the time, Statham would be known for these types of characters and would have ended up being the better choice. That cast along with the script was one thing but when you add in Henstridge being less than pleased about the movie and having issues with Carpenter and the director becoming less and less motivated, even allegedly coming on set and saying this is the biggest piece of crap ever, this wasn’t going to be successful. Henstridge is fine in the action scenes but seems very bored telling the flashbacks and when she wanted carpenter to direct her more, he claimed there were basketball games to watch. It seems this wasn’t going to work from the start.

The effects for the movies are two sides of the same coin and are typical of movies during this time. The digital effects are pretty bad from the random drug thing that comes out of a pendant near the beginning to the computerized Mars base and even the ghosts themselves looking like something that would fight Jason and his argonauts in a Harryhausen spectacle. Conversely, Greg Nicotero helped make the practical effects really fun, but you can tell the budget just wasn’t there. The makeup of the possessed warriors and blood as well as bodies hung up and heads on sticks look cool, but they also look kind of like the crew wandered into a Halloween maze and started filming. Some of the effects that are really cheap and easy to use actually work too from the miniature train, as cheesy as it looks, to the vision that the ghosts see when out of a body put out a charm that is hard to define. Much like nearly every aspect of the movie, I want to like it more than I do.

What happened here? I think it’s a combination of things. While Carpenter has always been a jack of all trades type with writing, directing, and doing the scores often, in his best works he had help too either within those categories or other departments. His scores were great, but they were at their best when Alan Howarth was by his side. His writing has flair, but nobody kept him grounded like Debra Hill. His direction and eye were always sharp but without the touch of Dean Cundey, it still falls flat. I’ve always maintained that he was my all-time favorite director but that his best works were always due to the friends and collaborators that shared his vision along the way. Without those specific elements, the movies just aren’t the same and leave you wanting more even if it’s the man’s own name that sits above the title in the marquee.

There are things though that do work. There is some tension in some of the scenes like when they first enter the desolate town that gives call backs to The Thing when they find the Norwegian camp. This is further enhanced by the cheeky line of who goes there which, intentionally or not, is a fun nod to maybe the director’s most beloved work as that’s the title of The Thing‘s source material. The tension continues when there is a continuous tap at the door, and we don’t know what is gonna be on the other side. Its things like that, little glimpses that give me pause to hate on the movie completely. With that tension comes some of the music we know and love from the maestro as parts of the score certainly illicit some of his best work but oddly this movie features a collaboration with his synth tracks and some of the best guitarists of the generation with the axe handlers of Anthrax, Guns n’ Roses, Buckethead, and Nine Inch Nails. Its truly a strange amalgamation that is shockingly one of the highlights of the movie.

Ghosts of Mars was a box office bomb, grossing only 14 million on its 28-million-dollar budget. Critics mostly hated it too with the strange exception of Roger Ebert who gave it 3 stars. It has since fallen into cult status which is very fitting of the director with maybe the most cult hits ever under his belt and has even recently received the 4K special edition love from Scream Factory. Its plot is very simple, as he was with most of his action horror blends, where a military group goes into a town to retrieve a prisoner and then is trapped by supernatural baddies and has to fight their way out. Told with flashbacks and even flashbacks inside of flashbacks, this could have been a sci-fi horror version of Kurosawa’s Rashomon but instead it has the look of a Sci-Fi Channel original and the feel of a bizarro Howard Hawks western, something Carpenter would no doubt enjoy. In fact, his career has an interesting bookend with this near the end and Assault on Precinct 13 at the start. He had projects before Assault and after Ghosts of Mars but everything sandwiched in between is really what made his career so special.

Ghosts of Mars, or John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars to use its Christian name, is an exercise in humility. Its not nearly as bad as I remember or its widely seen reputation, but it’s also not quite as good as its cult status would indicate. It was done by a genius frustrated and burnt out by Hollywood and wanting to make almost a parody of big budget action sci-fi movies. While it’s not my cup of tea I hope he is proud of it and its worth watching to see that the guy still had some of that creativity buried down deep. I said I won’t watch it again but when showing my kids and friends the works of one of the greats, I’ll throw it on to bookend a hell of a career and show off that there is always a part of someone in there, even if it is fleeting and hard to see. Give it another watch and let me know where you land on the director’s true last stand.

Two previous episodes of Revisited can be seen below. To see more of our shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals channel – and subscribe while you’re at it!

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