John Carpenter never got the props that he deserved in the world of mainstream films but he has quite an underground following. I can’t see how any hardcore Carpenter fan cannot have a blast with this film. If you know your shite, you’ll find many Carpenter trademarks in "Ghosts Of Mars". We get a little bit of "The Thing", mixed with some "Escape From New York", with a dash of “Attack On Precinct 13” and a dose of "Prince Of Darkness". Does that sound bad? Not to me.

Carpenter goes for the campy, fun ride vibe and in that respect, he hits the mark and then some. The film is filled with funny one liners (from Cube mostly), has an ass kicking Natasha Henstridge (seeing her Kung Fu her way through this movie was such a turn on), has kool humorous characters (the three friends named “Unos”, “Dos” and “Trez” were a riot”) and has its fare share of action (the first massive fight sequence is a freaking crowd pleaser!).

The film moves at a fast pace and its sole purpose is to take you on a roller coaster ride of thrills and chuckles. I also yelled “holy shit” out loud on more than one occasion due to the "kick your ass" kill scenes (haven’t seen extreme kills like that in a while). Another thing I appreciated was the structure of the script. The Henstridge character remembers the events that unfold before us. That makes for the occasional play on time where we see a scene twice but from different character point of views. Think “Pulp Fiction”-light.

The film did however have a few things that didn’t go down perfectly for me. First off, the “alien” force that possesses the humans must be real dumb when it chooses its hosts (why possess the guy in jail instead of the humans that are free and holding guns) or be really slow (it’s impossible with the amounts of hosts that get killed that ALL of the humans didn’t get possessed at one point).

The other two things I didn’t dig were the “alien” leader (Richard Cetrone) being shamefully underused. He spends most of his time growling like the “Ultimate Warrior” but when it comes down to kicking some ass; he's a big pussy. And I also didn’t fully swallow the last plot point that has the survivors finally escaping their attackers to then have them go back for some trivial reason.

Released By: Columbia Tri-Star

IMAGE: We get a spiffy Digitally Mastered Anamorphic Video image that delivers gangbusters in terms of sharpness and colors. No grains on this bad boy! We also have the option of watching the film in cropped "full screen" or in glorious widescreen. Guess which one you should watch this gem on?

SOUND: We get Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and it serves the film well. The dialogue is clear and the tough score pierced my speakers. I was bit letdown that the DVD didn't sport a "surround sound" option. This flick would've rocked in surround!

EXTRAS: The extras will have every Carpenter fan foaming at the mouth.

Commentary: John Carpenter and the charming Natasha Henstridge give us a very entertaining full length commentary. I had a blast listening to this one! Carpenter is obviously lightly flirting with Natasha (in a playful, nice way) and he asks her lots of questions about her modeling past, her acting technique, her fighting skills and her personal life (she has a second kid in the oven). John, of course, also comments on the film's effects, characters and give us some interesting, kool behind the scenes tidbits. This commentary is awesome!

Video Diary: They had someone on set with a camcorder shooting stuff and this feature gives us an edited 10-15 minutes of it with some "John Carpenter" composed music in the background. I for one love to see on-set footage and this segment delivers on that front. We get to see shots being taken, actors prepping up for scenes, makeup being applied, some stunts (nice torch stunt) and at one point a bunch of "extras" not knowing the meaning of the word "CUT" (hilarious).  Overall, this feature is amusing but being a greedy guy, I would have liked some short on the spot comments by the actors to the camera and of course, it could've been longer. But again...that's me being greedy.

Special Effects Deconstructions: Here we get a 5-10 minute collage that cuts from effect storyboards to the actual effects and how they were created. This segment has a kool tune in the background (by J.C. again) and is fairly engaging. It's nothing to go nuts about, but it's a harmless bonus.

Scoring "Ghost Of Mars": This one was a blast! Here we get to see John Carpenter in the recording studio with the band Anthrax, guitarist extraordinaire Steve Vai and a guitar player that wears a white mask and a KFC bucket on his head (don't ask). You don't see DVD extras that concentrate on the film's score very often so this one was particularly interesting to me. Seeing John at work in the studio with the boyz was a hoot! Great fucking tunes BTW.

The budget for "Ghosts of Mars" was about $30 Million.