We can always hope for another great John Carpenter movie, but "Ghosts of Mars" is strictly one for the hardcore fans, and they will find elements of this DVD release interesting.
TECHNICAL FEATURES
Picture Movies set on Mars will always be a challenge for a good picture transfer, with plenty of potential for angry orange and red colours to merge and blend. As this is yet another technically good Columbia TriStar release, there are no such problems.
Sound The 5.1 sound mix is a sturdy bass-enhanced affair that takes all the guitar distortion and heavy drum beats that John Carpenter can throw at it.
SPECIAL FEATURES
Audio Commentary John Carpenter introduces his guest on this commentary as "the very beautiful, very talented, and very annoying Natasha Henstridge". As we find out through the course of their chat, Carpenter seems quite smitten with his female lead, who was only cast a week before the film went into production, but does find many opportunities to rib her on her work for the film, as well as praising her, too. Natasha gives as good as she gets, and between them they make for an easy, entertaining audio experience.
Special Effects Deconstruction There's no explanation for what you see, but this five-minute featurette shows behind-the-scenes shots of the effects team at work, and the CGI work stripped down to basic layers.
Video Diary: Red Desert Nights Seventeen minutes of footage following the production behind-the-scenes, with captions to explain who we're looking at. There are a few facts to pick up, but this could be a tighter production, and the lack of interviews or comments from the cast and crew is disappointing. It is fun, though, watching actors getting thrown into the air by 'air rams', which are used to propel people upwards to accentuate explosive shots.
Scoring "Ghosts of Mars" Again there's no commentary or interviews for this final featurette, but you do get to see John Carpenter nodding along to heavy metal music performed by Anthrax and Buckethead.
Additional Extra Features Also on the disc is a trailer gallery, and cast and crew filmographies.
Region: 2
Chapters: 28
Ratio: 2.35:1 (anamorphic)
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Technical Features: Scene selection, multiple languages and subtitles, and English captions for the hearing impaired.
This DVD was reviewed on a JVC XV-S57 DVD player.
