IF I were John Carpenter, I would be ashamed to put my name to this trite, trashy ghost story.

Carpenter is but a shadow, a ghost, of his former self, the American director, screenwriter and composer who made Dark Star, Assault On Precinct 13 and Halloween in the 1970s and The Thing in 1982. Now he must hope that his name alone adds curiosity value, sufficient to fool his fans into seeing his latest pulp-action piece of Carpentry, an artless and heartless sci-fi Western.

Carpenter always borrowed from old B movie styles; now he rips off himself, and in particular Assault On Precinct 13, in a woefully outdated yet supposedly futuristic mission to the red planet in AD 2176.

Leather-clad Natasha Henstridge, Blaxploitation movie queen Pam Grier and Ice Cube (with new facial topiary) lead the human colonists out to terminate vengeful flesh-eating alien spirits who have a nasty habit of turning the local mining camp into crazed Marilyn Manson clones. As if in tribute to the goth rocker, Carpenter himself knocks out a ghastly, screeching thrash-metal soundtrack.

Where John Carpenter's Vampires in 1998 was self-aware corn, Ghosts Of Mars has gone beyond a joke, beyond self-parody. There is no life on this Mars.