Explosive
Summary
Ghosts of Mars may not be one of John Carpenter’s best films but it’s still a lot of fun with an early role from Jason Statham, plenty of action and a quick pace. The 4K is the best the film has ever looked with entertaining special features making it a worthy addition to your collection.
Plot: In the distant future, Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge, Species) is a headstrong police lieutenant protecting and serving the denizens of the angry red planet. But when she and her squad are tasked with apprehending the dangerous James “Desolation” Williams (Ice Cube, Anaconda), she soon discovers an even bigger threat. The region’s mining operation has unleashed a deadly army of Martian spirits with the power to take over human bodies — and they won’t rest until they wipe out all invaders of their planet!
Review: Essentially a remake of Assault on Precinct 13, Ghosts of Mars isn’t seen as one of John Carpenter’s best films, but I’ve always enjoyed it as it has some spectacular action scenes with regular explosions, plenty of violence and an awesome cast.
This is one of Jason Statham’s earlier roles (he even has hair) and his character Jericho spends most of the movie trying to get together with Natasha Henstridge. This is really her movie alongside Ice Cube as they try to escape a mining colony on Mars which has been taken over by Martians who use human bodies as hosts.
Ice Cube plays the awesomely named Desolation Williams and has a few choice lines, but admittedly some of the script is a little clunky; I especially hate the very end scene which is incredibly corny. The rest of the film is such fun that it’s hard not to just enjoy the ride as the cast are awesome even if Pam Grier is sadly wasted in a thankless role.
At around 90 minutes Ghosts of Mars is well paced and the action in the second half is what makes me keep coming back to this film.
Carpenter usually provides the scores to his movies and Ghosts of Mars is no different with pounding electric guitars that really elevate the action scenes.
The main villain is the awesomely named Big Daddy Mars who doesn’t do much except look mean and shout “AGGHHH” and it mostly works.
It was very much open for a sequel but due to its box office failure and the fact it burnt out Carpenter making him leave movies for a long time, it’s no wonder it never saw the light of day.
Interesting tidbit: this was initially called Escape from Mars and was going to be the third Snake Plissken film but due to Escape from L.A. not being a huge success the idea was scrapped and the lead was changed to Desolation Williams.
There is a new 4K which just came out and I had to pick it up as 1) Carpenter is my favourite director and b) I didn’t actually own this movie on any format before. I hadn’t watched it for a few years so it was nice to see it in 4K with remastered picture and sound. Most of the effects in the movie are solid however, there are some bluescreen moments which are hardly terrible and never took me out of the film.
Bonus Features for UHD/Blu-ray
DISC ONE (4K UHD):
- NEW 4K Transfer From The Original Film Negative
- Presented In Dolby Vision
- Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround And English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo
- Audio Commentary With Director John Carpenter And Actor Natasha Henstridge
DISC TWO (BLU-RAY):
- NEW 4K Transfer From The Original Film Negative
- Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround And English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo
- Audio Commentary With Director John Carpenter And Actor Natasha Henstridge
- NEW “Assault On Outpost 13: Scoring Ghosts Of Mars” – An Interview With Film Music Historian Daniel Schweiger
- “Red Desert Nights” – Making Ghosts Of Mars
- Scoring Ghosts Of Mars
- Ghosts of Mars Special Effects Deconstruction
- Original Theatrical Trailer
Although some of the special features are archival there is enough here to make this worth adding to your collection especially if you’re a Carpenter completist like me. The audio commentary with Carpenter and Henstridge is fascinating but my favourite feature has to be the Scoring Ghosts of Mars doc as I love hear about creating music scores.
Overall, Ghosts of Mars may be flawed, but I still have a great time with it mostly due to some awesome explosions, seeing Jason Statham with hair and some violent kills. The 4K looks and sounds faultless and I didn’t even need to use the subtitles which was amazing. This is definitely worth picking up as Shout! factory have done a fantastic job.