Screamers (1995 film)
| Screamers | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Christian Duguay |
| Produced by | Franco Battista Tom Berry |
| Screenplay by |
Dan O'Bannon Miguel Tejada-Flores |
| Based on | "Second Variety" by Philip K. Dick |
| Starring | |
| Narrated by | Henry Ramer |
| Music by | Normand Corbeil |
| Cinematography | Rodney Gibbons |
| Edited by | Yves Langlois |
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Production
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| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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108 minutes |
| Country | Canada United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $20 million |
| Box office | $5,711,695 |
Screamers is a 1995 Canadian-American dystopian science fiction film starring Peter Weller, Roy Dupuis, and Jennifer Rubin, and directed by Christian Duguay. The screenplay, written by Dan O'Bannon with a rewrite by Miguel Tejada-Flores, is based on Philip K. Dick's short story "Second Variety", and addresses themes commonly found in that author's work: societal conflict, confusion of reality and illusion, and machines turning upon their creators. Although critical reaction to the film was generally negative at the time of its release, it has gained a cult following. A sequel Screamers: The Hunting, was released in 2009, to equally mixed reviews.
The year is 2078. The planet Sirius 6B, once a thriving mining hub, has been reduced to a toxic wasteland by a civil war between the mining company, known as the New Economic Bloc (NEB), and the Alliance, a group of former mining and science personnel. Five years into the war, Alliance scientists created and deployed Autonomous Mobile Swords (AMS) — artificially intelligent self-replicating machines that hunt down and kill NEB soldiers on their own. They are nicknamed "screamers" because of a high-pitched noise they emit as they attack. Screamers track targets by their heartbeats, so Alliance soldiers wear "tabs" which broadcast a signal canceling out the wearer's heartbeat and rendering them "invisible" to the machines.
A fragile stalemate is in effect between the two exhausted, poorly supplied, and undermanned armies. A message guaranteeing safe passage through NEB territory to discuss a truce is recovered from a dead NEB soldier, killed by screamers as he approached the Alliance compound. When Alliance commanding officer Joe Hendricksson (Weller) reports this development to his Earth-based superiors, he is told that such a meeting won't be necessary; peace negotiations are already underway on Earth. Not true, says Private "Ace" Jefferson (Andrew Lauer), newly arrived from Earth. Hendricksson is not surprised, as he suspects that both sides have simply written off Sirius 6B and abandoned their armies.
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Wikipedia