John Carpenter’s Last Big-Budget Horror Movie was a Critical Disaster; Now It’s Free to Stream!
John Carpenter movies often take time to catch on. The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China were both box office bombs. But each is a celebrated classic now. Both films just took a little time to find their audience. Maybe Carpenter has always been ahead of his time. If that’s the case, maybe people will eventually come around to his most maligned effort: Ghosts of Mars. Or maybe not. Who knows?
Whether or not the masses come to appreciate the film on some level, it’s currently streaming for free (with ads) on Xumo Play. So, you can take it in and make up your own mind. Is the film the utter disaster the collective consensus suggests? Or is it a misunderstood diamond in the rough as a handful of defenders profess?
I need to rewatch the flick to offer any valid commentary on its merits or lack thereof. However, what I can say is that the picture has an absolutely dynamite cast. My god. We have Natasha Henstridge, Ice Cube, a pre-stardom Jason Statham, Pam Grier, Clea Duvall, and Blade Runner’s Joanna Cassidy. That’s a really impressive lineup.
This is where critics stand on Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars
As for where my peers stand on the film, Ghosts of Mars currently holds a less-than-favorable 23% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The audience score isn’t much better at 25%. With that said, the flick has at least one noteworthy defender. The notoriously hard-to-please Roger Ebert rated the film 3/4 stars and said, “John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars is a brawny space opera, transplanting the conventions of Western, cop and martial arts films to the Red Planet.”
Ebert’s quote seems to suggest he understood exactly what Carpenter was going for. And maybe that’s the problem with the film’s harshest critics. Maybe they didn’t connect with the inspirations and references.
The setup for Ghosts of Mars goes as follows:
Long inhabited by human settlers, the Red Planet has become the manifest destiny of an over-populated Earth. Nearly 640,000 people now live and work all over Mars, mining the planet for its abundant natural resources. But one of those mining operations has uncovered a deadly mother lode: a long-dormant Martian civilization whose warriors are systematically taking over the bodies of human intruders.
That’s all we’ve got for you at present. Stay tuned to the site for more updates on which films are available to stream and where to find them. If you’re not following @DreadCentral on Twitter (X), be sure to fix that so you never miss an exciting update.
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