Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.

Strange the way these things time out. I spent this afternoon over at the recording studio where the final touches are being placed on the soundtrack for GHOSTS OF MARS, listening to cuts from it. With guest guitarists like Buckethead and Robin from GUNS 'N' ROSES and Steve Vai, the score has a surprisingly dense, knotted texture to it, driving and wild. It's great stuff, and I can't wait to see the film to see how those tracks are used.

Doesn't help that I got a call from one of our favorite people here at the Labs the other night. She'd just seen a screening of GHOSTS OF MARS and loved it. LOVED it. She's as big a Carpenter fan as I am, so take that as you will, but her description of the film had me chomping at the bit to see the thing, and I'm hoping something comes together soon.

When this e-mail showed up today, I was hoping it was going to be a great review, but it's not. It's actually fairly scathing. The author is one of those guys who works for a big media company and sees everything, and this reads like the review of a guy who just plain wasn't interested in anything Carpenter had to offer. He says he's a big fan, and I'll take him at his word. I know that the word from inside Carpenter's camp is that they're very happy with the film, something I take as a good sign. I'm going to go ahead and post it, since the whole point of AICN is to offer differing opinions on film, but I'm going to keep hope alive and make up my own mind when I see this film at the earliest possible convenience. There's strong reactions, both pro and con, leaking out now, and it'll be interesting to see the film no matter what.

And to answer the last line of the reviewer's comments, Harry's head was cut from the film. We mentioned that a month or so ago here on the site, after I had the unpleasant job of informing Harry of that fact and then listening to him cry like a little girl for about six hours.

Check it out...

I had the unfortunate opportunity of catching an advance screening of the uninspired drivel known as Ghosts of Mars.

This is, by far, Carpenter's worst work - A totally compromised, hacked, and, above all, shitty film that could very well end Carpenter's future as a bankable director. I rank many of his films as some of the best genre work in cinematic history. Halloween, The Thing, The Fog, Starman, Prince of Darkness, and Escape from New York are all unflinching, groundbreaking pieces of film that made him a force in both the commercial and critical arena. He WAS a huge inspiration and the spark that initially lit my interest in genre filmmaking. He WAS one of my all time favorite filmmakers - a true inspiration. Things change.

This film offers absolutely nothing - a clever idea executed in the worst possible way. If Carpenter had opted to focus on atmosphere and horror, he might have had something. Instead he chose to make an action picture with some of the worst cut sequences in recent memory. Static cameras shot poorly choreographed, bland sequences with wide lenses and little (if any) coverage.

The script is tired and boring. The plot centers around Martians that possess human colonists for no apparent reason. We are never clued in to any sort of back story as to what these Martians are all about or how or why they enjoy inhabiting and killing humans - you would think they would try to keep the humans alive for future possession. Not so, they just kill to kill.

When you scratch the surface of this script you only find more surface. In short, it is crap.

The effects were far and few between. We see some decent makeup, but nothing original or overly creative. The CG smoke, which represents the ghosts when they were not inhabiting human hosts, is completely ineffective - totally amateur.

Carpenter should not even be attempting to make action films in an era when people like Steven Norrington, James Cameron, Peter Jackson (I saw the breathtaking 20 minutes of LOTR on the big screen) and The Wachowski brothers can seamlessly meld brilliantly staged action with CG - Carpenter is simply embarrassing himself.

Ice Cube turns in a nothing performance. It is sad to see after he proved his acting chops in Three Kings - he put himself back quite a bit by taking on this job. His monotone delivery of bad lines does not fare well on screen.

The only bright spot is the beaming and beautiful Natasha Henstridge. She makes the best of the material - she is not only a believable action star, but she reminds us here of why she caused such a stir in Species - her eyes burn right through the celluloid. She is an underused and underappreciated treasure. Absolutely stunning. (And for all of you that are curious - no, she does not take off her clothes)

Ghosts of Mars should be avoided like anal fissures.

Old Swelly

PS - Though there were many heads on sticks - I didn't see Harry's anywhere - maybe I missed it during one of many yawns.