THE FILMS

IN THE WORLD / IN PRODUCTION / IN DEVELOPMENT

pot luck / the cold / a thousand guns / war path / the earth above / ghost soldiers

GHOST SOLDIERS/ SCREENPLAY RUSSELL FRIEDENBERG

New Mexico. 1959. The Cold War is in full swing. Europe is divided, Sputnik is in orbit, and America is finding communists under every bed. On a remote, top secret Army base far from the frontlines, Captain Jack Valentine commands a ragtag group of ne’er do well GI’s charged with one simple task: disposing of hundreds of radioactive steel drums that the military parachutes to them each month. Otherwise there’s not much to do except dream about being somewhere else. “Glorified garbagemen,” is what Valentine calls his unit, “and not all that glorified.”
All that changes one clear night when an enormous UFO crashes in the desert not far from the base. With communications suddenly dead and the base commander acting strangely, Valentine and his men investigate the crash. Though the alien craft is destroyed, they manage to retrieve an escape pod with a single living occupant – a beautiful woman with silver-blue eyes. On the return to their base, Valentine and his men come across the burning, shattered remains of another unit from their base. Trucks have been overturned and ripped apart like tissue paper. There are no bodies, only shreds of blood-soaked clothing.

Back at base, Valentine has little chance to unravel the mystery. The base commander commits suicide right in front of him just before the alarm claxon goes off. The base is under attack, but not by any human enemy. From out of the darkness, giant scorpions tear through the perimeter fence and spill into the base, tearing apart anything in their path. Their stings can pierce metal, and they drip with toxic venom. And they are fast. Very, very fast. It’s a bloodbath. The base is soon overrun and Valentine and some of his men escape in a truck with the alien woman. To make matters worse, the men are behaving strangely, and some are complaining of headaches. Valentine himself is experiencing strange visions and hearing voices, leading him to fear for his sanity even as he seeks the truth.
Where did the scorpions come from? Were they mutations from the radioactive waste they had been burying? Or was the mysterious woman from the UFO somehow responsible? Who was she? An alien, or a Russian cosmonaut as some of the men suspect? Was this some kind of invasion, the opening salvo of World War III?

The truth is much more horrifying. As Valentine and his men gamely put the pieces together, they begin to uncover the truth behind these mysterious and cataclysmic events - a conspiracy of such depth and magnitude that it reaches into their minds and permeates the very nature of the world. Valentine’s strange bond with the alien woman leads some of his men to the brink of mutiny, even as others slip into psychosis. Harried at every turn by the relentless scorpions and their own fragmenting sanity, Valentine and his men stumble upon a second secret base – one using technology far beyond anything ever seen on Earth.

Descending into the base and the heart of the mystery, they realize they are a lot farther from home than they ever dreamed. The stage is set for the final showdown between the GI’s and the scorpions.