While it’s not a GREAT movie, Screamers doesn’t get nearly the credit it deserves, and is one fun watch for a sci-fi fan like myself. It’s not just his acting chops though, as the extras reveal that he had a really big hand in the production and rewriting of the script that went on, infusing several key elements of the story into the re-writes and adding some great suggestions that really makes the movie. The decision to make them abandoned soldiers really resonated well with the bleak tone of the movie, and Peter Weller’s gruff and beleaguered style of acting fits in really well with a worn down base commander. There’s some misses in the plot, especially with the cliched ending (we all saw the end reveal coming a mile away in my group watch of the film), but there’s some really smart elements as well. The shrieks and tense frights come from anticipating their arrival, and the near misses that occur. Director Christian Duguay weaves in a goodly element of horror to the sci-fi film, making the screamers absolutely terrifying by allowing us to NOT see them very well (part of that was due to the budget, but what you can’t see is almost scarier than what you CAN see at times). Screamers isn’t a wildly intelligent movie, but it’s a blast to watch. The screamers have slaughtered everyone, and now it looks like their own masters are the next targets as they evolve past being simple mindless machines. There’s nothing left of the NEB forces either. With nowhere else to go, and nothing else to lose, Henderson and a crack shot sniper named Ace Jefferson (Andrew Lauer) travel across screamer infested lands to find out the horrifying truth. The war has moved off of Sirius 6B, as there is a brand new source of this energy, and now the fighters on BOTH sides of the war left on Sirius have been left their to die. It’s not long before a crashed star cruiser confirms his gut feelings. However, peace is better than the hell that they’re in, so he agrees to go meet with the NEB commander. Joseph Henderson (Peter Weller) is a bit suspicious. When a NEB envoy arrives stating that the corporation wants a peace treaty, Sirius 6B commander Col. Years later the war is still going, but it is winding down on Sirius 6B, as the Alliance had created robotic seeker/killer drones known as “screamers” to wipe out the ground troops of the NEB. Refusing to let their cash cow go away, the NEB sent their private military goons in and started and all out war with the Alliance. However, the mining of the ore was found to cause radiation sickness in the miners, so the survivors and miners banded together against the NEB goons and staged a protest. Mankind has moved to the stars and the huge NEB corporation (there was ALWAYS an evil all powerful corporation in these movies) has found a POWERFUL energy source on Sirius 6B, and it has been a life saver to mankind. The film’s got a post apocalyptic feel that was popular during the 80s and 90s, and most of the actors are no named nobodies of that era, with a beleaguered post Robocop Peter Weller raising the bar just a bit with his enthusiasm. No, it’s not a classic film like Starship Troopers, but it is a glorious bit of cheese and genuine science fiction that somehow manages to be really entertaining despite being a razor thin budget, and being written by the same guy who wrote Bachelor Party and the original Fright Night Part 2. My personal opinion is that Screamers is an underrated bit of sci-fi cheese. Even though most sci-fi fans haven’t heard of the film, it SOMEHOW generated a DTV sequel in 2009 (which was awful by the way), and now has made it’s way to Blu-ray. Screamers was a low budget sci-fi/horror film that was almost forgotten as quickly as it was release, languishing on home video in several crummy releases (Sony released it in 1998, but it wasn’t ever reprinted till SPE put out a new copy in 2014 and was crammed in several “triple packs” as well). Movies that even actors themselves probably forgot that they were in. It’s the LITERALLY forgotten films like Screamers that makes me appreciate their efforts. Sure, the Hammer horror films are kind of obscure to modern audiences, but they are known cult films. One of the biggest reasons that I love Scream Factory (and Shout Factory) is that outside of rescuing already released catalog titles, they are really digging deep recently and pulling out those forgotten films that no one would ever think to bring to Blu-ray.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |