Dark Star (1974)

30 years ago a cult classic was made, and it is still alive! Many things have been said and written about this movie and most of it is true.

The crew of the Dark Star perished long ago. 25 years ago I revived the memories with the novelization by Alan Dean Foster. 20 years ago I bought the vinyl record. When the VCR came, I recorded the film from TV. When it was available on VHS, I bought the cassette. I can now play 'Benson Arizona' on the guitar and recently I bought the DVD. Okay, so I'm a fan! If a remake ever is being made, I'd like to see it directed by John Carpenter. The story is still alive, not because it looks good, but because it is an excellent and highly entertaining story. Such story-telling has always been rare. A remake might help bringing this pearl to pork who yet can't see beyond their own noses. But for those who cinema does not need to be flashy, the original will always do.

Fmovies: I saw this movie for the first time at the USA Film Festival. Held here in Big D every spring, the USAFF showcases films produced here in the USA. (No foreign films)

Each night they would show two new films, plus a retrospective film from the actor or director being honored that year. After the film, the film critic who selected the film would interview one or more of the people involved with the film's production.

Towards the end of the week, I arrived at the Bob Hope Theatre (on the SMU campus) to find a notice on the chalkboard: one of the films had cancelled out, and "Dark Star" a "sci-fi comedy" would be shown in its place.

Bringing science fiction and comedy together is a tricky business: usually either the SF content or the humor suffers. Or both.

I ended up being pleasantly surprised. The special effects were a little cheesy (Carpenter originally shot it as a film student, on a film students "budget"), but the characters were funny, and they got off some nice riffs.

Carpenter and O'Bannon (who also co-wrote the first "Alien" movie) produce a collection of odd characters on an extended mission. For the last 20 years they've been travelling the galaxies in search of "unstable planets" to destroy.

Unfortunately, the crew is falling apart. Boredom, apathy, mechanical malfunctions and a puckish alien mascot ensure that things only get worse and worse.

There's a clever parody of a scene from "2001" occurs when one of the bombs can't be released and has to be talked out of exploding.

And there's a reverse reference to one of O'Bannon's own script for "Alien" when the alien gets free and one of the crew has to track the thing down. (O'Bannon refers to this as "Alien" turned upside-down: instead of the alien chasing the crew, one of the crew chases the alien)

Lots of fun. Eight stars.

After being in space for twenty years (but only aging three) the crew of the Dark Star are starting to be at wits' end. The ship is falling apart, the computer is a little bit quirky, and a pet alien is getting restless. How much more of this madness can the men take? This film is known for one good reason: it was the film debut of John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon. How much of Carpenter can be seen in here, I don't know. I'm not a huge Carpenter fan or scholar, and I can't pinpoint the similarities. The connection between this an O'Bannon's "Alien" I will leave to your imagination.

This was a student film, and it shows. I've seen better, I've seen worse. It's not a great science fiction film (the alien is so fake it's crazy) and the comedy is a bit sparse (the bombs are funny, but most of it just sort of drags). I, for one, loved the phenomenology bit, but then I was forced to study that bunkum for three semesters, so I'm glad to see it made light of.

John Carpenter completists need to see this film. It has some charm. I will maybe take it off the shelf and watch it a second time soon to rethink my position, but this just didn't really strike me as the signs of a budding genius. Oddly, the other Carpenter film I don't much like is "Ghosts of Mars", so many it's his treatment of space that I don't care for. Who knows?

Dark Star fmovies. Opinions vary widely on this one and I can see why. In the movie's favor is its bizarre energy and atmosphere which makes its melange of scifi horror and comedy intermittently hypnotic. On the downside are the truly amateurish production values and pathetic acting. Most of this movie has the look of some longhaired grad film school students with no life shooting a quasi-homage to 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY guerilla style in their college dorm in the middle of the night. Aspects are intriguing, though, including the alternatively exasperating yet also humorous renegade beach ball monster attacks, which are clearly Dan O'Bannon's fledgling version of his later far scarier and cleverer ALIEN screenplay. The dialogue between the astronauts and the Hal 9000-esque bomb is definitely the funniest sequence; the movie probably should have been a 20 minute short focusing on this portion rather than a full blown feature length effort with all the other boring subplots, which feel tacked-on like they decided to extend the movie at some point but couldn't come up with anything resembling an organic structuring to justify it.

Carpenter does come up with interesting solutions to budget problems, like creating a fake futuristic elevator by using forced perspective on their dorm room floor and turning the camera on its side. The effect very nearly works!

In all, this is probably best viewed as an early failed effort by two talents who went on to bigger and brighter things. Carpenter's techno music is at its disharmonically buzzy worst here; amazing that a mere four years later he would craft the masterful music, script and direction for the truly harrowing HALLOWEEN. That movie bears almost no resemblance to this one and is a testament to how far someone can come in such a short span. It has to give the worst hack considerable hope (along the lines of James Cameron going from PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING to TERMINATOR.) If you rent this for $0.99 and go in with no expectations, you'll probably still be disappointed, but there are a few inexplicably charming moments amidst the mostly boring and monotonously dated peek into the "future world" of the 1990s by minds of the 1970s. 1.5 / 4 stars (but I still pause on it whenever I stumble onto it on late night cable.)

When one takes into account that this was the first real film venture of John Carpenter and Dan O' Bannon, two incredibly influential and talented movie personas, Dark Star is not all that bad. It has some imaginative camera shots, an intriguing storyline, and some unique, definitely not mainstream humour. The story about the humdrum nature of flying in space for an interminable time has several layers peeled in the script. If I judged the film solely on those merits, it would indeed do well. However, the film has a snail's pace and some uneven plot twists, not to mention some not very good acting. Many of Carpenter's soon-to-be-signature trademarks are clearly evident in this film. No denying it, the man has talent. The film was made with a shoestring budget, but Carpenter and crew do a workmanlike job with the resources they had. Clearly, the greatest appreciation for this film is not for the product itself but for the potential and early, evident development of Carpenter and to a lesser degree O' Bannon.

It all started out as a short film made at film school made by the now legendary John Carpetenter, but then they wanted to make a longer version, however they couldn't get money to remake it, so they simply added extra scenes in the middle (example, the beach ball alien).

The story is this, on a ship where the captain is dead (but you can unfreeze to ask him questions) and the rest crew are going basically crazy they have problem. One of their bombs has become sentient and is busy contemplating the nature of existence.

The effects are OK, and who would have thought the beach ball would become the inspriration for the movie Alien.

Over all one of the great classics of science fiction and of low budget film making.

I heard of this movie a long time ago and it took me over 10 years before I finally found it in my local video shop. Great and amazing movie.

What will bomb number 20 do, now it is intelligent...watch the film and find out.