Cheap Screamers (DVD) (Peter Weller, Roy Dupuis) (Christian Duguay) Price

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Customer Reviews of Screamers

Based on Philip K. Dick's short story Second Variety, this story plays on the theme of what is real. A mining colony on Sirius 6B went on strike because of radiation released by the mining operations. The company did not like that and the two have been at war for ten years. The miners managed to survive by creating screamers, underground flying buzz saws. Now the company wants peace. Both sides have found out that the war is a lie and want to band together. The trouble is the screamers have an automatic production facility and it has started turning out new versions.

Properly advertised this could have been a pretty big film, but it wasn't. Instead it was lost in obscurity. But if you like Philip K. Dick, the man behind Total Recall and Blade Runner, then you will get a kick out of this movie (and all of the surprise twists in the plot).

One of the best modern low budget sci/fi flicks.
Screamers takes the idea from Philip K. Dick's story "The Second Variety", and puts it on another planet set in the future. Yes, this is low budget, but it works. Screamers is basically a post apocalyptic sci/fi film that fans of the genre should probably enjoy. Maybe if this film had a huge budget it could probably have outclassed even The Matrix. The story is easy to follow, but it's very intriguing. If you go into this movie expecting tons of action... forget about that. The dialogue in the film is well done, and the atmosphere is pretty grim. Great acting as usual from Peter Weller, our rugged hero on the desolate planet Sirius 6b. Roy Dupuis was not in this film for very long, but this was one of his best performances ever. You may remember him from the La Femme Nikita show on USA. In this movie he plays an N.E.B. solider who is like a cross between the Terminator, and Shakespeare. While many movies have cheap one liners, he uses famous quotes instead, giving this a more intelligent feel all around. This is creative low budget sci/fi, and not for all tastes.

A blade runner style investigation of humanity
If you look at this movie as a version of "Aliens", you're missing most of the theme here. The movie isn't about "people fighting robots". It is how people initially create mindless devices to slay other humans. These devices grow on their own from spinning blades, to crawling lizards, to simple happy children, to "help me!" heart-string-tugging hurt soldiers, all the way up to Shakespeare-quoting men and real-love-feeling women.

When the robots reach that human-like point of development, they no longer simply focus on breeding and staying alive as a collective race. Now the ROBOTS start slaying each other for reasons that humans find all to understandable - love and personal desire.

Yes, there's the tension as you keep thinking "what will the NEXT robot look like". You begin to examine the actions of each character, wondering if he or she is a robot too. The line between "real human" and "mechanical device" becomes blurred. At one point Hendricksson grabs Jessica's hand and slices it open on purpose, to see if she really is human or a robot. She bleeds, and he apologizes profusely - leading to them falling in love. But of course the blood was fake - this was merely the next evolution in the robot progression. And it brings to mind the classic line, "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" (Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 1). Given the large number of other Shakespeare quotes in the movie, the symbolism was quite apt.

It was impressive that Hendricksson treats the people around him with casual disregard many times - but the robots are showing emotions. The humans are often brusque and untalkative - but the robots make insightful comments drawing from Shakespeare and other great thinkers. It is almost the robots who are the better race here - they have managed to wipe all the humans off the planet, evolved themselves to higher levels, and have their sights set on Planet Earth next. In that sense, Screamers is VERY much like Blade Runner, making us really think about how we would differ from intelligent robots - and if we would measure up. A movie to watch over many times.