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We will be using Blorptube tonight: https://blorp.bot.nu/o/visual_cuisine. It is still recommended to use a vpn for peertube.

Ghosts of Mars (2001)

John Carpenter’s signature penchant for lovingly-crafted sets, costumes, and special effects, weird fiction stories, and gruesome horror meets a suspenseful, complex, and action-packed plot, delivered by a star-studded cast: Pam Grier, Natasha Henstridge, Ice Cube as basically himself, Jason Statham as basically himself, Clea Duvall, and Joanna Cassidy.

Set in the distant future of 2176, when Womankind (yes, they have a matriarchal society) has colonized Mars. A detail of cops is sent to the mining town of Shining Canyon to retrieve a wanted criminal, James “Desolation” Williams, who’s been captured and is being held in the town. But upon arrival, there’s nobody around. The cops investigate, and what they find is a dark and bloody mystery. A whole lot of death, dismemberment, mutilation, blood, gore, and spooky shenanigans ensue set against the beautifully composed backdrop of John Carpenter’s dark synths and light metal. The lighting is beautifully red, because this is Mars, the red planet, and it’s not just blood that’s red here.

Part horror, part space western minus the genocidal settler-colonial atrocities, it is a fantastic film. Sadly, it was such box-office bomb that John Carpenter went into retirement for almost a decade. The movie has been unfairly maligned as “bad” because it was a “commercial failure” (making back only $14million of its $28million budget) with “ham-fisted acting”, according to critics who clearly cannot recognize Genius even when it stares them directly in the face. But I maintain that John Carpenter did not fail America; America failed John Carpenter! And now we who reject the legitimacy of so-called America can do what we can to make up for that failure in our own small way by giving His Genius the veneration and adoration it so rightly deserves (by watching a copy of the film that none of us paid for).

It’s 1h38min long so we will try to start promptly at 5:30 Eastern US Time to provide for enough buffer and not eat into the regularly scheduled movie night which starts at 8PM Eastern US time (but as always it may depend when I get home). Aiming for a hard start time at the latest by 6PM Eastern US time.

Content Warnings:

• Racism
• a fair amount of sexual harassment throughout — unwanted advances, a leader makes suggestive comments to an underling
• A ton of blood and violence
• Multiple dismemberments
• multiple decapitations
• multiple heads displayed on pikes
• hand trauma and severance
• lots of shooting people
• self-mutilation
• many people cut their skin, scratch wounds into their faces, and give themselves piercings on screen
• many mutilated corpses are also displayed, hanging from hooks, etc.
• suicide via throat slitting is shown (about 26 minutes)
• someone is burned alive, thought it is not done very graphically
• implications of cannibalism though no on-screen depiction
• teeth are damaged
• Severed body parts are used as trophies and even costumes/clothing.
• some homophobic slurs
• little bit of drug use

Doesthedogdie: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/9742 IMDB Parental Guide: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0228333/parentalguide/ UnconsentingMedia: https://www.unconsentingmedia.org/items/13996

TankieTube link to movie: https://tankie.tube/w/kUQdWjxhPZf8R5PQanMRs6