Popular Culture Review
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change leading to true gender equality perhaps means little more than the
opportunity for women to be similarly corrupted by power as men have
historically been. For Carpenter the problem, as always, lies with the potential for
corruption in people. Gender simply has little to do with it. As Williams states at
one point, “There’s a thin line between a cop and a crook these days. You’ve just
got the woman behind your bullshit.”
That all of this may be uncovered in Ghosts o f Mars is surprising, for the
title certainly stands as one of Carpenter’s lesser efforts. The film has a “directto-video” sense of production values to it that is compounded by the obvious
miniatures used for the scenes of the train carrying the police team to and from
Shining Canyon. Car penter also elicits less-than-sterling performances from costars Natasha Henstridge and Ice Cube as well, with Cube walking through his
role as “Desolation” Williams while giving most lines only the most desultory
delivery. For a film whose major location (the Shining Canyon outpost) parallels
the one-street settings of Carpenter’s beloved westerns, Ghosts o f Mars shows a
remarkably lax group of performances, and is less than what it could have been
had Carpenter shown a bit more interest in his casts’ rendition of their roles.
Both Vampires and Ghosts o f Mars establish intriguing twists to the
often-used Hawksian formula. In Vampires, despite the title’s misogynistic
treatment of Katrina, Carpenter presents a creative rendition of the Hawks woman
by placing Father Guiteau in that role. Ghosts o f Mars shows us that it simply
doesn’t matter much whether men or women are in charge, as the power both
genders may wield can be equally corrupting. In both films, Carpenter’s
characters can only hope to discover something of importance about themselves
while fending off, however temporarily, an evil that is ever-present and can never
be totally defeated.
Arizona State University
J. Robert Craig
Works Cited
Cumbow, Robert C. Order in the Universe: The Films of John Carpenter, 2d ed. Lanham,
MD: Scarecrow Press, 2000.
Muir, John Kenneth. The Films of John Carpenter. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company,
2000
Wood, Robin. Howard Hawks. New York: Doubleday, 1968.