I picked this entry today, not because I want to talk about the film (which is abysmal), but I want to talk about the source material from which it is supposedly derived. Screamers was based on a Philip K Dick 1953 short story called "Second variety". That story, which is reportedly in public domain and can be found in multiple places on the internet including Project Gutenberg, is an exceptional piece of early PKD writing.
PKD is one of my favorite all-time writers, and he is just beginning to get his due, over 30 years after his death. He has had more of his work adapted to TV and Film than Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein or Isaac Asimov, and no one knows it. Most of you would know him as the author of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" which was deveopled into Bladerunner. Both the book and the film, while different, are exceptional, showing that you can take a good print story and turn it into a great film, if you are familiar enough with the source material, and you care at all.
The makers of Screamers did not care at all. They wanted the next big vehicle for Peter Weller, who was still a hot property after his 1987 showing in Robocop, and I guess they figured Sci-Fi story + Peter Weller = Big $$$. They figured wrong. The focus of Screamers felt like a cheapo "Alien" ripoff where the story is not about the story, but about how much killing can get done in a time that's allotted, in an attempt to create suspense. The original story, like most PKD offerings, is about "What is real?" which is a much more tension filled question than "how many people can get killed?". It's the same problem that Punisher 2008 had.
Philip K Dick was superb at creating situations where his characters didn't know if they were in a situation that was real or manufactured. You have seen and enjoyed some of his best stories and probably didn't know it: Total Recall, Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau, The Man in the High Castle, and others were all based on PKD stories. By based I mean legitimately derived from the PKD material, and credit given, not like the situation where the producers ripped off "Time Out of Joint" and gave no credit to PKD when they created "The Truman Show." Note to screenwriters- You cannot copyright an idea, or premise.
Second Variety easily lent itself to screen adaption (I myself have created two feature-length scripts based on PKD short stories in public domain), and if anyone had cared to preserve the original premise, the film could have been a suspenseful, deep, thought provoking hit. They did not, and it was not. The only similarities lie with the little killing machines called "Screamers" that were invented to take out enemy troops in a post-nuclear world. Oh, and they did "steal" the premise that once created, robots will evolve themselves to the point that they will want to eradicate their inventors. Wonder where I heard that before?
The film cost $20 million to make, and got back $7 million at the box office. Remember movie math? You need 3x the budget to clear all the payoffs that have to be made, to make a film profitable. They needed 60 and got 7. Abysmal.
IMDB gave this albatross 6.3/10. Because its a PKD story and should have been better than that (Starship Troopers by Heinlein is a 7.3), Screamers is a 2.3/10.