John Carpenter is one of the most influential filmmakers. Throughout his 50-year career, he has directed dozens of movies spanning horror, action, and sci-fi, including iconic films like Halloween, The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China. Browsing his filmography, though, it’s impossible to ignore the nine-year gap where Carpenter didn’t direct any feature films, and that hiatus was the direct result of a sci-fi horror flop that is now streaming on Tubi.
Carpenter’s 2001 wild sci-fi horror Ghosts of Mars joined Tubi on April 1st. Released on the heels of Vampires’ success in 1998, the movie was a mashup of stars including Ice Cube, Natasha Henstridge, and Jason Statham and is set in the year 2176 as a Martian police unit led by Lt. Melanie Ballard arrives at a remote mining town to transport criminal “Desolation” Williams. When they discover the miners possessed by ancient, vengeful Martian spirits who turn them into violent, mutilated killers, they must team up to survive.
Ghosts of Mars hit theaters in 2001, and it marked Carpenter’s last film until The Ward in 2010. Produced with a budget of roughly $28 million, the film grossed only about $14 million worldwide, making it a major financial disappointment. It was also overwhelmingly panned by critics and general audiences alike, scoring just 23% Tomatometer and 25% Popcornmeter scores on Rotten Tomatoes to become one of Carpenter’s lowest-rated movies ever. Following the movie’s failure, Carpenter stepped away from directing feature films for nearly 10 years, later telling Crave Online, per Far Out Magazine, that he was “burned out” and had “fallen out of love with cinematic storytelling. I didn’t want to make any movies.”
Whether Ghosts of Mars is actually a bad movie is up for debate, but it’s definitely a movie that was misunderstood upon release. So much of what went wrong with Ghosts of Mars is that it was initially viewed as a failed, serious horror film rather than the campy genre-hybrid it was meant to be, something Carpenter expressed frustration with. Ghosts of Mars is far from a masterpiece, but it’s a decently entertaining, high-energy, guilty pleasure B-movie that features a great hard-rock score composed by Carpenter, an eclectic cast, and great practical effects and high-octane 1980s-style action. In the decades since its release, the film has even gained cult status and is considered a highly underrated Carpenter film.
Tubi has a pretty deep catalog of sci-fi and horror to keep viewers entertained, and that lineup grew with dozens of titles in April. On the sci-fi front, Tubi now streams movies like Gemini Man, Sunshine, and Timecrimes. For horror, Tubi viewers can now stream both the original and modern remakes of Carrie and Child’s Play, the original Scream trilogy, and Zombieland 2: Double Tap. Tubi also added a few sci-fi/horror genre mashups in addition to Ghosts of Mars, with both Event Horizon and Under the Skin now streaming for free.
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