A hybrid between Roy Ward Baker’s Quatermass and the Pit and the director’s own urban Western, Assault on Precinct 13 (itself modeled after Howard Hawks’s Rio Bravo), John Carpenter gives us a his highly undervalued sci-fi horror Western that–in its assessment of race history–can be feasibly argued to be Carpenter’s rendition of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.
In 2176, Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) is sent with a team of special agents to transfer James “Desolation” Williams (Ice Cube) from Shining Canyon to Chryse. However, the team is met by a ghost town, the result of a mining expedition in which the on-site workers where brutally slain by ghostly apparitions before the former return, much to the chagrin of Ballard and Co., as possessed tribesmen.
Carpenter begins by issuing us a very formable, fear-inducing antagonist in the form of ghosts which inhabit the bodies of the living. Once possessed, one cannot be killed for it will only increase the chances that the survivors will become prey to the recently freed entity, yet the possessed are too manic to attempt to contain. This ingenious premise lays the groundwork for the thesis of Carpenter’s film: race prejudice. As with Kubrick’s The Shining, the guilt of enacted genocide comes back to haunt the like-minded ancestors of the murderers of yesteryear. Arguably, Carpenter’s subtlety in presenting his deductively-dependent idea is the reason that the film is largely condemned by audiences. However, when one considers that the possessed literally “go tribal” and ready themselves for war in a manner very similar to that of Native Americans preparing themselves for battle, atop such poignant lines as “As far as they’re concerned, we are the invaders” from Ballard and “It’s about one thing–dominion. It’s not their planet anymore” from Desolation, it is implied that Mars, whose colonization is now at 640,000, was once host to an alien race which, upon the appearance of Earthlings, was unabashedly eradicated (much like the Indians).
On this note, though previously outlined that it is foolish to kill a possessed individual due to the fact that it avails the remaining humans to the threat of possession–just as the American colonists nonetheless killed the Native Americans which they depended upon for food, supplies, and knowledge of the area–the colonists in Ghosts of Mars slay their antagonists at will. In this regard, perhaps Ghosts of Mars garnered poor reviews because the viewing audience was, in T. S. Elitot’s terms, given “too much” metaphorical truth . . .
Carpenter’s plot becomes satisfyingly ironic in that, if one were to give heed to the possible reading that genocide wasn’t immediately enacted, which is implied by the first cycle of possessions being that of minors–that is, common laborers–then we have a metaphor for a now extinct (en)slaved race whose unrequited disembodied spirits are now “enslaving” the bodies of the colonists in order to have them, in essence, kill one another or, put another way, to have the imperialists of today commit inadvertent suicide if you will.
Though John Carpenter’s Ghost of Mars is a matriarchal society (concurrent with the feministic mindset in most of his films), the director transverses his signature theme to pause and examine the topic of race, our collective subconscious guilt, identity, and history. Granted, the work could have been better written and paced but, given what the director was attempting to do, one is forced to nod in appreciation for, indeed, few would attempt to tackle such heavy, potentially volatile themes but, as always, Carpenter does so in a highly (apparently too much given the many surface readings leading to unjustified lambastes by countless critics) creative, artistic manner: a B-movie sci-fi horror Western. Of course, what is to be expected when the face of film criticism continues to enter a film with preset expectations as Roger Ebert rhetorically complains that he has been given yet another film hosting a collective of vicious, bloodthirsty aliens? Aside from the entire premise justifying such bloodletting and homicidal motives, I suppose it is a moot gesture to point out the fact that Carpenter is a horror director . . .
Conversation piece: Courtney Love was cast in the role of Melanie Ballard prior to having her foot run over and being replaced by Natasha Henstridge at the last minute.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
