The basic Screamers are little clockwork frisbees with saw-blade spinners we don't see exactly how they dig-cruise their way underground, like sharks. The movie requires a lot of sophisticated special effects, most of which earn an A-minus for execution. Near the end come a couple of moving romantic moments between Weller and Jennifer Rubin. Only Peter Weller nails his lines, even the ones that feel forced, mock-hardboiled. As directed by ex-cinematographer Christian Duguay, the show has excellent atmosphere, but the tough-guy dialogue and performances occasionally falter. O'Bannion's screenplay was eventually re-written by Miguel Tejada-Flores, who is best known for Revenge of the Nerds he's also one of 27 writers on The Lion King. Attached early on was writer Dan O'Bannon, the busy writer who wrote or contributed to a string of interesting projects: Dark Star, Alien, Return of the Living Dead, Lifeforce and Total Recall. The show was in development for more than ten years, handed down through a succession of possible producing entities plagued by bankruptcies and legal tussles. Couple that with the necessary explanations behind the various varieties of Screamers, and the characters do little but react as best they can to new threats - against which almost no progress is ever made. The setup of the planetary war requires quite a bit of exposition, including a tedious narrated text crawl, a la Star Wars. The ambitious Screamers adds all manner of extra background and detail. What nobody seems to realize is that the Screamers are expanding their role in the war, adapting to fight both sides of the human conflict. Along with Becker is a nervous soldier named Ross (Charles Powell) and the hard-drinking NEB officer Jessica Hanson (Jennifer Rubin), who takes an immediate liking to Joe. And there are more kinds of Screamers to be discovered. These new Screamers have basically won the war, wiping out almost all of the NEB bunkers. He's an advanced, 'new variety' of Screamer. When defender Becker (Roy Dupuis) shoots David, Joe and Ace discover that the boy is not human, but a robot. They discover only three surviving enemies at the NEB bunker. Along the way they pick up a helpless small boy named David, who has unaccountably survived (Michael Caloz). Joe and Ace hike over the half-frozen ruined terrain to negotiate with the NEB bunker. A hologram transmission from Alliance headquarters says the war is ending soon, but a survivor of a crashed transport ship, 'Ace' Jefferson (Andrew Lauer) claims that the war is ongoing on the new planet as well. Joe receives a mysterious parlay request from the nearest NEB blockhouse. The few Alliance troops left do not control the Screamers, which have their own factories hidden below ground to maintain themselves and multiply their numbers.Ī small Alliance outpost led by Commander Joe Hendricksson (Peter Weller) has had little contact with the enemy and precious communications with anybody for six months, although supplies have been coming through on schedule. The much weaker rebel Alliance would have been easily destroyed, had they not deployed their murderously effective terror weapons, the Screamers. Ordinary soldiers are only pawns in an intergalactic clash of corporate interests. A space war is underway between the ruling New Economic Bloc (NEB) and a worker rebellion. The movie shifts the action to the planet Sirius 6B, in the year 2078. The only protection is a wrist-band transmitter that identifies the wearer as a non-enemy. They are completely self-sufficient - they can't be defused, even by friendly troops. Unlike land mines, they roam at large looking for victims. Properly called 'Autonomous Mobile Swords' (in the story, 'Claws'), Screamers are small robotic anti-personnel devices with spinning blades that make piercing sounds. The basic idea extrapolates the function of a military land mine, those nasty mechanical-explosive traps that wait to blow up under unsuspecting troops. Its setting is a post-apocalyptic battlefield, not another planet. The fact that it stars RoboCop's Peter Weller didn't hurt either.Īuthor Dick's source story "Second Variety" hails from 1953. Dick, I was ready for 1995's Screamers to be a special sci-fi experience: Dick stories set on off-world planets were some of his best. Because I was hooked on the mind-stretching science fiction books of the visionary Philip K.
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