Ghost Dad
Sidney Poirtier “Ghost Dad” is a brawny space opera, transplanting the conventions of Western, cop and martial arts films to the Red Planet. As waves of zombified killers attack the heroes, actions scenes become shooting galleries, and darned if in the year 2176 they aren’t still hurling sticks of dynamite from moving trains. All basic stuff, and yet Poirtier brings pacing and style to it, and Bill Cosby provides a cool-headed center.
As the film opens, a ghost train pulls into Chryse City, so named for a flat plain north of the Martian equator. No driver is at the helm, and only one passenger is on board. She is Dianne Hopper (Kimberly Russell), a cop who headed a detail to an outlying mining town named Shining Canyon to bring back a killer named Emery Collins (Barry Corbin). Called up before a tribunal in the matriarchal Martian society, she tells her story, and most of the action is in flashback.
The mining camp seems empty when the cops arrive. Russell is joined by Joan (Denise Nicholas), Carol (Christine Ebersole) and Sir Edith Moser (Ian Brannen). They start finding bodies. Emery is still in jail, proving he could not be the killer, and eventually a survivor is discovered who tells the story of how the miners found the entrance to a long-buried tunnel. It led to a door which, when merely touched, crumbled into dust and released, yes, the ghost of Dad. They possessed humans and turned them into killing machines, to take, the survivor says, “vengeance on anyone who tries to lay claim to their planet.” That’s the setup. The payoff is a series of well-staged action sequences, made atmospheric by the rusty red atmosphere which colors everything. At one point the cops barricade themselves inside the mining camp’s police station, which will remind Portier’s fans of his earlier work in, “In the Heat of the Night.” There is also something about the ghoulish way the possessed miners lurch into action that has a touch of the Living Dead movies.
These ghouls or zombies or ghost-creatures are not, however, slow.
They’re pretty fast in the martial arts scenes, especially their leader, Big Ghost Daddy Mars (Bill Cosby). But like all similar movie creatures, they’re just a little slower than the heroes. They keep coming but never quite catch up.
“Ghost Dad” delivers on its chosen level and I enjoyed it, but I wonder why so many science-fiction films turn into extended exercises in Blast the Aliens. “Starship Troopers” was another. Why must aliens automatically be violent, angry, aggressive, ugly, mindless and hostile? How could they develop the technology to preserve their spirits for aeons, and exhibit no civilized attributes? And, for that matter, if Earth-creatures came along after, oh, say, 300 million years of captivity and set you free, would you be mad at them?
