John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars Review

by Edward Johnson-Ott (ejohnsonott AT prodigy DOT net)
August 25th, 2001
John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars (2001)
Ice Cube, Natasha Henstridge, Jason Statham, Pam Grier, Clea Duvall, Joanna Cassidy, Liam Waite, Wanda DeJesus, Duane Davis, Lobo Sebastian, Rodney A. Grant, Robert Carradine, Peter Jason. Music by John Carpenter. Written by Larry Sulkis and John Carpenter. Directed by John Carpenter. 98 minutes.
Rated R, 1 star (out of five stars)

Review by Ed Johnson-Ott, NUVO Newsweekly
www.nuvo.net
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Beware of movies with the director's name in the title. Take "John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars" (please). If the Carpenter brand name wasn't superglued to the title, this embarrassment would surely have bypassed theaters entirely and gone straight to its proper home on the USA Network.

And I would have been spared a headache.

The latest from the director of "Starman," "Halloween" and "Escape from New York" is a lousy western all gussied up to look like a futuristic horror flick. The production is set on Mars in 2176, where humanity looks for relief from the overpopulation strangling their home world. Six hundred and forty thousand people in a matriarchal society live and work at outposts all over the red planet, terra-forming to make it more hospitable for future generations.

A matriarchal society. Terra-forming. Sounds pretty intriguing, eh? Well, don't get your hopes up.

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