THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 31, 1996 TAG: 9601310030
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
A RASH OF films, including the current ``12 Monkeys,'' predict that if we just stick around long enough, we're going to be out of food, water, gas, air or all of the above. Jolly thought.
``Screamers,'' an ambitious new science-fiction film, is based on a short story, ``The Second Variety,'' by Philip K. Dick, the cult sci-fi figure who wrote the story upon which the now-classic ``Blade Runner'' was based.
Directed with a relentlessly serious, no-nonsense stance by Canadian cameraman Christian Duguay, the film has some fascinating sets and a murky mood that is initially eye-catching but eventually becomes too repetitious for its own good. It has lofty ambitions and talks a serious talk, but eventually it becomes pretty routine.
It's the kind of a psychological mumbo jumbo talker that will eventually settle down with a cult following. Cult, however, is often just another word for a movie that a lot of people ignored but a few liked a lot.
The Screamers are portable chainsaws with miniature blades. These little meanies were designed as war weapons; they burrow through the sand, leap out and slice up the victims, and then drag the remaining ``parts'' underground. The main trouble, as our story opens, is that they have developed a life of their own. They are reproducing, or mutating, and now attack anything human.
Peter Weller (``Robocop'') plays a macho soldier type who apparently thinks he's John Wayne with a bad headache. He spouts bitter lines all over the place, especially when he learns that the folks back on Earth are going to abandon him on a wretched little mining-camp planet called Sirius 6B.
He's even more ticked off when he learns the Screamers can now take human form. This means, of course, that you can't trust anyone and that at least half the cast (which is only about six actors) will turn out to be Screamers.
Weller is a member of the Alliance, a force of laborers and scientists who have been fighting the New Economic Bloc, a money-hungry mining corporation back on Earth, for years. Since uranium has been discovered on some faraway planet, the war has been taken there and, for reasons that are vague, no one wants Weller and his soldiers to get back to Earth.
The movie spends too much time explaining itself. By the time the game rules are all explained, it's almost time to go home.
Besides, you don't have to learn French if you aren't going to France.
You do, however, have to put up with all this scientific patter if you want to get through the movie. Take your choice.
If you insist upon taking all this seriously, there are hints of Freud, Kierkegaard and Christian theology lurking around. Just hints.
It's entirely likely that those trying to get outside the theater will be more numerous than those trying to get in. This one simply talks itself into a screech rather than a scream. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
MOVIE REVIEW
``Screamers''
Cast: Peter Weller, Roy Dupuis, Jennifer Rubin, Andy Laurer
Director: Christian Duguay
Screenplay: Dan O`Bannon, Miguel Tejada-Flores, based on a story
by Philip K. Dick
Music: Normand Corbeil
MPAA rating: R (gore but not as bloody as you might expect)
Mal's rating: Two stars
Locations: Cinemark, Greenbrier Mall in Chesapeake; Janaf, Main
Gate in Norfolk; Columbus, Lynnhaven 8 in Virginia Beach.
by CNB