This is not Ben Hecht (9/5/01)
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Ghosts Of Mars. [John Carpenter, 2001.]
A greatest-hits medley in which one can discern variously elements of
Escape From New York, Carpenter’s remake of
The Thing,
Total Recall, the
Return/
Revenge of the Living Dead franchise [cf. in particular the third episode of the second series, the essay on piercing], and a novel of Mick Farren’s on which [I’ll just bet] he isn’t collecting royalties: Martian cops Pam Grier and Natasha Henstridge [agents, we gather, of a reigning matriarchy], dispatched to a mining outpost to bring back Serious Badass Ice Cube to stand trial for a host of offenses against public order and decorum, discover the town to be deserted and the few remaining inhabitants cowering in the jail and curiously disturbed. Cross-examining these survivors they presently shake loose from incarcerated science babe Joanna Cassidy a revised and amplified version of the tale of the curse of Tutankhamen: an ancient tomb unmarsed by excavation, a dire warning engraved above its entrance in an ancient tongue, an audible hiss as the seal is broken and a dimly-perceived gnatlike swarm of malevolent intelligences escapes Pandora’s box, and a subsequent epidemic of demonic possession whose victims adopt the mannerisms of the cannibals in old jungle movies — weird makeup, creative body piercing, hoisting totemic severed heads up on pikes and shaking them to the beat of savage tom-toms, cutting the faces of their enemies off and wearing them as masks, chanting in unknown tongues while industrial-strength Satanic metal throbs on the soundtrack, etc., etc. — The inhabitants of the town have not been killed, in other words, but transformed into characters in a Marilyn Manson video; and our heroes find themselves forthwith surrounded by an army of the undead and attempting to fight their way out against impossible odds to warn civilization of this alien menace — which means, of course, that they kick a lot of zombie ass, that the relationship which develops between Henstridge and Herr Cube [who isn’t getting any better at what he does, but does, let’s give him credit, do it very well] is buddy-movie male bonding, and that the chase is going to conclude with the protagonists trying to outrun a nuclear explosion.
The choreography is indifferent, and the effects [due to the limitations of Carpenter’s budget] minimal, but the subliminal message I read from the casting, that Ms. Henstridge is here commencing a series of blondezploitation movies in imitation of the career of the redoubtable Ms. Grier, is certainly an attractive one. Sign me up for the package tour.
____________Chicks rule (7/28/01)
