There isn’t a single soul out there who won’t deny that John Carpenter is one of the most important, influential, and iconic filmmakers of the last 50 years, but it’s also unfortunately true that the 1990s and 2000s saw the legendary director suffer a massive downturn in fortunes, with Ghost of Mars endemic of his troubled period.
Memoirs of an Invisible Man, In the Mouth of Madness, Village of the Damned, Escape from L.A., and Vampires all bombed at the box office while generating responses that ranged from the mildly enthusiastic to the outright abhorrent, with his genre-bending escapade set on the red planet continuing that alarming trend.
Ghosts of Mars could only recoup half of its $28 million budget from theaters, with respective Rotten Tomatoes scores of just 24 and 25 percent ensuring that not even Carpenter apologists could mount a reasonable defense. However, more than 20 years on from its release, and an appreciatory Reddit thread has nonetheless reiterated its status as an unabashed guilty pleasure.
Is it a good movie? Absolutely not, with the story finding a ragtag group of Mars-dwellers uncovering an ancient civilization boasting very little to recommend. On the other side of the coin, though, how can you not at the very least appreciate a deranged intergalactic adventure that throws science fiction, horror, action, thriller, and Western elements into a single unfiltered melting pot?
On top of that, it’s got Jason Statham – with hair! – as a dude called Jericho Butler, Ice Cube playing a character named Desolation Williams, another cast member credited as Big Daddy Mars, all wrapped up in a gonzo space-set rampage that doesn’t hold back. It may not have worked, but you sure as hell can’t fault Ghosts of Mars for its ambition.