Screamers

Woah... I saw it in 1996 in a theater near my small Provençal village, and i simply wasn't expecting that... Christian Duguay proved once again he was terribly underrated by both the press and the public, "Screamers" ("Planète Hurlante" in France i/e "Screaming Planet", nice title too...) is the B-side at its best, the B-efficiency with an almost-A script. The cast is OK (Roy Dupuis was almost a star here in the early 90s, the VFX impressive (for the most of them), and - as some viewers wrote earlier - the first part very promising. Overall, a good job. Take it on video with a couple of friends, some chips'n'soda (ok, beer if ya want).

In the future the mining planet Sirius 6B has become a war zone with two warring factions. The ground is patrolled by underground robots called Screamers who target anyone not wearing identifying marks. One side receives a plea for peace negotiations after 10 years of war and discover from a lost soldier that the war has been forgotten on earth. The two sides have been left to die on Sirius 6B while another way is started on another planet. Commander Hendricksson (Weller) sets out with the lost soldier Jefferson (Lauer) to contact the other side and declare peace. However what they find will spell the end of their war one way or another.

This is based on a Phillip K. Dick story and has all the intelligence you would expect from a sci-fi from him - this is not a gory horror movie. This is an intelligent story about the creation of the Screamers and their "evolution". It also has a cynical edge lended by the way that the soldiers have been deserted by their leaders and continue to be tricked into fighting while the leaders get on with their business.

Weller is excellent as the world weary commander who finds his life sold out from under him. The supporting cast are OK with their stereotyped characters but the real stars are the Screamers who start out by small things with saw-blades and gradually take other forms. The child versions of Screamers are particularly creepy and perhaps a little disturbing.

However this is not as terrifying as it should be, nor is it as intelligent as it starts out being. The whole issue behind the different screamers is not explained and towards the end they just keep popping up without reason! It also has one of those "watch out for the sequel" style endings - although in fairness it isn't quite as bad as that. The special effects are a bit ropey but do the job - after all this is a very low budget movie.

The whole thing is not as good as it could have been but is certainly head and shoulders above a lot of low budget sci-fi thrillers.

Based on a Phillip K. Dick story (the writer of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," which was the background for "Blade Runner") this movie delivers, but suffers because of the apparently tight budget. Some scenes in here reminded me of the original "Star Trek" episodes, where the production crew had to become quite inventive to get effects on an almost non-existing budget.

So movies low on money have to rely on their scripts and on good actors, and "Screamers" has them both. The story and its subplots could serve for three movies and especially Peter Weller showed a superb performance here. Generally there are some weaknesses, but they can be forgiven, if you allow yourself to get into the story.

If you have enough of FX loaded movies that cover their thin plot with a multitude of explosions, then give it a try.

Based on an Philip K Dick's short story 'Second Variety', 'Screamers' is set on the planet Sirius 6B in the year 2078 and focuses on two warring factions and the weapons they develop in order to defeat one another. Given the paltry budget, I was pleasantly surprised to find this a relatively high quality production, with reasonable performances by the lead actors. Both Peter Wellers and Roy Dupuis do the film credit. Although the plot suffers from a cumbersome backdrop and some rather far-stretched concepts, the film moves along at a reasonable pace and is sprinkled with its fare share of tension-filled moments. My biggest disappoint with this film is that it takes what is Philip K. Dick's greatest polemic against the cold war and the arms race and fails to translate this onto the big screen. the neurosis and paranoia, so prevalent in the short story, are missing from this adaptation. 7 out of 10.

Thats right. Those small kid robot things. Uhhhhhh *shudders*.

Anyway, a good sci-fi flick that sometimes a bit cheesy but otherwise it dosen't let you down as far as action and suspense goes. Christian Duguay, Dan O'Bannon and Philip K. Dick did a fair job at a movie that has a decent jab at the sci-fo genre. Although one of the lesser sci-fis(in my opinion) the storyline would have to be one of the best and the characters fit in perfectly. Peter Weller does a splendid job as Hendricksson. His acting performance is probably up there with his robocop one and it probably lifted his career to new heights. Special effects impress for 1995, as this helps lift 'Screamers' to new heights. A good movie for anyone who wants a creepy sci-fi.

Overall: 70%