Screamers

Cast: Peter Weller, Jennifer Rubin, and Roy Dupuis     

Director: Christian Duguay    

108 minutes (18) 1995

101 Films 
Blu-ray region B  

[Released 25th May]

Rating: 7/10

Review by Christopher Geary  

Norman McLaren’s classic animated short-film of pixilation, Neighbours (1952), helped to establish the essentially critical tone of many notable anti-war movies. With its narrative about escalation, from dispute and confrontation to high levels of increasing violence and brutality, this dramatic sketch from Canada’s national film board, might be viewed as the vital spark for multi-cultural protests about Vietnam, and even an influence on CND. In a further controversy, McLaren’s animation won an Academy award for documentary short. After those sneaky killing-machines of James Cameron’s SF action-thriller Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), and its low-budget imitators, Screamers was based upon Philip K. Dick’s story, Second Variety (1953), and obviously continued promoting the staunchly accordant message of Neighbours.

In the 21st century, on planet Sirius 6B, a 10-year global war has been fought without using nukes. An outpost chief salvages a priority message from enemy forces calling for peace negotiations. Despite grim cynicism, official armistice talks are considered and so Alliance bunker chief Joe (Peter Weller, RoboCop, Naked Lunch) accepts the challenging invitation and travels to meet corporate NEB command. Along the way, the expedition is attacked by fast-moving mole-bots ‘autonomous mobile swords’, that still emerge from an automated underground factory, because “No-one’s been down there since they first pushed the button and ran like hell.” Screamers concerns the evolution of military tech and the horrifying prospects of weaponised A.I., with upgrades proliferating, including droid-boy ‘David’, specially designed to infiltrate troop deployments in a dangerous world where “things ain’t what they used to be”, including orphaned refugees.

Joe meets Hansen (Jennifer Rubin) who’s averse to gunplay, and simply wants to escape off-world. Paranoia ramps up with fatal consequences from mistaken identities in a trust-free zone of Jekyll ‘n’ Hyde character interactions. Ultimate night-fighting against hordes of electric ‘children’ precedes a string of final twists in a human-versus-machine conflict. Digital visuals enhance locations, and action scenes on gritty industrial sites, including a refinery, while filming sequences inside the roof of Montreal’s Olympic stadium provides a vast set which adds great production values to this movie’s rather modest budget. Also worthy of note, the Chiodo brothers provide appealing stop-motion effects for the quirky robots.

While it’s possible to nit-pick and find significant faults with basic plot-lines in Screamers, and some of the obvious flaws are sometimes confusing with sadly illogical developments and curiously intentional ambiguities, there can be little doubt about the crucial sincerity of SF meanings. Peaceful co-operation is the only route forward, especially for interstellar colonisation. This moderately successful cyber-horror was scripted by Dan O’Bannon, and co-writer Miguel Tejada-Flores (screenwriter of Brian Yuzna’s robot-dog movie Rottweiler, 2004), who - with producer Tom Berry - extracted a second movie from the original PKD source, for their belated sequel, Screamers 2: The Hunting (2009), directed by Sheldon Wilson, maker of average yet creepy shockers, Shallow Ground (2004), and Kaw (2007).

Following an 'as you know...' recap, and video reportage, this offers a homage to James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), with a paramilitary starship on an action-replay rescue mission to the mining planet, Sirius 6B, where runaway mecha threatens the few survivors of the earlier movie’s warfare. Team leaders are played by genre TV’s Greg Bryk (ReGenesis), and Gina Holden (Flash Gordon, Blood Ties). Veteran star Lance Henriksen, tries to bring something worthwhile to his supporting role, but the space squad don’t locate his bunker hide-out until the last half-hour and, by then, it’s really too late to salvage entertainment value or narrative significance from this unabashed retread of genre B-movie conventions, not helped by Z-grade plotting and barely workmanlike direction.

Screamers made a stronger point about machine evolution as the key product of militarism, but the robots that are first encountered here are stuck in that hyperactive leaping-mole gear, and the ‘androids’ remain hidden, just so the original movie’s story-arc can be reproduced (keep that word in mind, so you can easily guess the picture’s closing twist). Most of the main cast rarely perform well enough to recite their lines and emote at the same time. Even the usually dependable Henriksen coasts along on past experience, so this sadly tedious sci-fi horror ends just where it should have begun.

Disc extras include:

• Northern Frights - Christian Duguay interview
• Orchestrating The Future - Tom Berry interview
• More Screamer Than Human - Miguel Tajada-Flores interview
• From Runaway To Space - Jennifer Rubin interview