Screamers

[[category: drama]

SCREAMERS. Christopher Duguay, dir. Canada, USAm Japan: Triumph Films / Allegro Films (prod.) / Sony Pictures (dist.), and others, 1995 (1996 in hinterlands). Dan O'Bannon and Miguel Tejada-Flores, script. From Philip K. Dick's "Second Variety," Peter Weller, star. Running time in USA: 108 min. **+"The year is 2078. On a distant mining planet ravaged by a decade of war, scientists have created the perfect [surface] weapon—a blade-wielding, self-replicating race of [very small, very fast] killing devices known as 'Screamers.' Unfortunately, the Screamers have continued to evolve without human guidance and are now out to obliterate all life" ("Movies," The Cincinnati Post, Timeout section, 25/I/96: 6). Based on P. K. Dick's "Second Variety," q.v. under Fiction (see also "Autofac"); for mechanical evolution, see under Fiction, J. Hogan's Code of the Life Maker, S. Lem's "The Invincible" and W. Moore's "Robot's Return" Not a great movie, but it captures well Dick's paranoid style when the new varieties of killing devices turn out to be not more mechanical supermoles—tunneling at great speed to jump out of the ground and rip apart an enemy—but a creature like a miniature dinosaur model, and then cyborgs that look like boys, men, and finally women. Note idea of mechanical death leaping from the earth (the initial Screamers as killer moles) and the idea that no one or personalized thing is to be trusted, finally, perhaps, not even a child's teddy bear.