Ghosts of Mars (2001) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Sometimes you just feel that everything has been done before, and there's nothing new in the world. But if you want to make a breakthrough in film, there is still one world left to conquer: Mars.

Unfortunately, John Carpenter wasn't the man to break the Martian curse. This movie is so bad that it is even below average by Martian standards.

What would have been so bad about telling the story as a straight narrative?

Frankly, though, I have to admit that the clumsy structure didn't really matter. If it had been a nice simple chronological narrative, it would still have been a poor movie. 

The plot: Mars is a self-governing colony of earthlings. A police detachment has to travel to an outlying mining colony to pick up a dangerous criminal. Once there, they realize that the mining operation accidentally opened a passageway which awakened the ancient race of Mars. The ghosts of these ancient beings have taken over the bodies of the miners, and have transformed them into a road company version of "Mad Max: the Musical". And I'm not really kidding. The monster-ghosts march in rhythmic steps, while grunting along with Mitch. Just imagine if KISS had been a marching band, and you'll have the idea. 

Oh, yeah, I forgot. They are also martial arts wizards. Mars. Martial arts. Get the connection?

The battle scenes and kung-fu fights are all backed by heavy metal music, which means Carpenter himself seems to have been possessed - by the ghost of Dario Argento.

A debacle, as poorly acted as it is scripted, this movie is absolutely no better than a grade-b straight-to-vid in any way, despite the $28 million dollar budget. 

I generally feel that the greatest blame for a film has to fall on the shoulders of the director, and certainly Carpenter is directly responsible for virtually every aspect of this film including the script and the score.

But in this case, he is not the main culprit. He created this mess, but someone else, I suppose an executive at Screen Gems, decided to throw 28 million of his company's dollars into bringing this project to fruition, and that's the person to blame for this one, because there was nothing in the concept or the script which indicated that it had any merit, either commercial or artistic. They pay those executives to know the difference between a real movie and a Michael Paré movie, because that distinction is the difference between approving a $30 million budget and a $1 million budget. Any one of us would have seen that this was a Paré movie, but that exec did not.