Screamers (1995)

Dir. Christian Duguay (who also directed the sequels to "Scanners" - who knew they existed?), made from a Philip K. Dick story, "Second Variety," that was probably way better than the movie ended up being. (There's also a documentary with the same name from 1996 that's about a tour by System of a Down. Screamers indeed!) Peter Weller is a tough-as-nails corporal in the army of miners and scientists that's fighting against a giant corporation that wants to mine berynium (sp?) on a distant planet and release all the deadly radiation sideproduct that everybody knows is released when you mine berynium. Weller is the kinda guy who kills tons of people but also has a desk that's got a giant pyramid as a pedestal, at which he sits with his legs propped up and listens to classical music as he looks at his coin collection to pass the time.

The "screamers" in question are "autonomous swords" that the good guys have implanted in the sand all over the planet. They race toward anything with a pulse and dismember it. Somehow, only the good guys have figured out the special tech that will disable a screamer (a wristband that screws up your pulse until you don't sound tasty to a screamer). The bad guys are still vulnerable to being all ripped up. Meanwhile, the screamers themselves have evolved, until they're no longer a little animal-looking thing and instead have figured out how to manifest themselves in form of a pathetic little kid clutching a teddy bear, a tough-guy soldier with teardrop face tattoos, a hot-girl soldier, and basically anything else they want. (Where's the missing link, I ask you?)

I don't even really feel like I can properly criticize the movie, because it was so low-budge. I always love an interplanetary resource extraction plot, but I credit Dick with that. But mostly, it made me want to see "Starship Troopers."