Some may know this movie because Anthrax collaborated on the soundtrack, but it deserves mention for holding its own not only as part of the John Carpenter oeuvre but in recognition of its difficult mixture of science fiction, mindless action, and absurdist comedy.
The story seems simple enough: something that the settlers on Mars in two centuries, now a mostly-terraformed colony, have encountered among the ruins of the past civilization there has possessed them and turned them into cannibalistic maniacs who can only be handled with excessive violence and possibly, psychoactive drugs.
Combining elements of Philip K. Dick’s paranoid science fiction, Ray Bradbury’s vision of telepathic Martians, and a riff on Carpenter’s own Assault on the Precinct 13 (1975), Ghosts of...