Screamers (1995) Triumph/Sci-Fi-Horror RT: 108 minutes Rated R (sci-fi violence and terror, some language, brief nudity) Director: Christian Duguay Screenplay: Dan O’Bannon and Miguel Tejada-Flores Music: Normand Corbeil Cinematography: Rodney Gibbons Release date: January 26, 1996 (US) Cast: Peter Weller, Roy Dupuis, Jennifer Rubin, Andy Lauer, Charles Powell, Ron White, Michael Caloz, Liliana Komorowska, Jason Cavalier, Leni Parker, Sylvain Masse, Bruce Boa. Box Office: $5.7M (US)
Rating: ** ½
Two of my favorite sci-fi movies, Blade Runner and Total Recall, are based on source material from Philip K. Dick. Both deal with heavy themes. Blade Runner (adapted from Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), in particular, questions the nature of humanity with its replicant characters. It’s an intelligent film. I was hoping for more of the same from Screamers seeing as it’s based on Dick’s short story “Second Variety”. While it employs some of the ambiguity of the older film, especially near the end, depth and intelligence is all but scrapped in this junky, mid-budget, futuristic tale of soldiers being pursued by killer robots on some faraway planet.
The year is 2078 and the setting is Sirius 6B, a once-thriving mining planet reduced to a toxic, war-ravaged wasteland manned by a group of tired soldiers. At one time, it was the main source of Berynium, an energy-providing ore that could have solved the world’s energy crisis. Unfortunately, it turned out to be radioactive and many miners died as a result. Since then, there’s been a war between the mining company, the N.E.B. (New Economic Bloc), and “The Alliance”, a group of miners opposed to dying of radiation poisoning led by Hendricksson (Weller, RoboCop), a burnt-out soldier resigned to a life that’s little more than death delayed.
In order to protect themselves from NEB soldiers, Alliance scientists created “screamers”, small, self-replicating robotic creatures that burrow underground like gophers. They’re armed with razor-sharp, saw-like blades with which they mutilate anybody not wearing a special bracelet that cancels out the wearer’s heartbeat (that’s how they track their targets). They get their name from the high-pitched, scream-like noise they emit as they kill.
One day, a NEB soldier arrives at the Alliance’s compound bearing a message from his superiors. He’s killed by a screamer before he gets too close; somebody has to retrieve the communiqué from his dead hand (at the end of his severed arm). It seems the enemy wants a sit-down to discuss a possible truce. Despite orders of the contrary from his superiors on Earth, Hendricksson accepts the offer and heads out to NEB headquarters accompanied by Jefferson (Lauer, Necessary Roughness), a newly arrived soldier and lone survivor of the spaceship that crash-lands in front of the bunker. He appears to confirm what everybody on Sirius 6B has been thinking for years, that both sides have been written off and left to die by the leaders on Earth. Nonetheless, the two set out on their mission of peace only to be met with a horrific scenario. It seems that the screamers have evolved and can now assume human form.
Hendricksson and Jefferson find this out when they arrive at the NEB compound with a little boy, David (Caloz, Affliction), they found hiding in the ruins of a destroyed city. He claims to be a war orphan but he’s really a “Type 3” screamer. He’s destroyed by NEB soldiers Becker (Dupuis, TV’s La Femme Nikita) and Ross (Powell, TV’s Largo Winch) who are holed up with black marketeer Jessica (Rubin, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors). Since the original screamers are Type 1, there’s question as to what (or who) a Type 2 looks like. The soldiers are going to have to work together to survive the oncoming nightmare.
I didn’t like Screamers the first time I saw it. I thought it was ugly, boring and stupid. It just didn’t do anything for me. I watched it again about ten years later and enjoyed it. I decided to see how it would hold up on a third viewing this past week. It’s still pretty good albeit derivative. While thematically but superficially similar to Blade Runner, it shares more in common with Alien which really isn’t an overreach considering Dan O’Bannion worked on both screenplays. Both films have space crews lurking around distant, nightmarish planets inhabited by murderous beings. It’s the same basic situation, different details.
The look of Screamers is the stuff of bad dreams. Sirius 6B is a post-industrial landscape of ruined cities, abandoned machinery, rusted pipes, moldy walls, underground passages and a hell of a lot of rats. The few remaining humans are burnt-out shells without a shred of hope. They just want to make it through the day without being killed. It’s a dark, dirty, gloomy and depressing place. It’s ugly yet striking. It makes the dystopian future depicted in The Hunger Games look like a freaking utopia. The effects in Screamers are pretty good by the standards of low-to-medium budget sci-fi flicks.
Weller does solid work as the hero of Screamers, a worn-out but tough-as-nails leader whose weariness reads like a book. He looks like he’d welcome death with open arms. Rubin is sufficiently bad ass as Jessica, a gal who more than holds her own against her male comrades.
Directed capably by Christian Duguay (Live Wire), Screamers is an entertaining sci-fi-horror flick with a fair amount of violence. It tells a pretty good story. It’s a little longer than it needs to be and I wish they had explored Dick’s themes a little more. Still, it’s not a bad choice for a Saturday night movie.
