Dark Star

Dark Star (1974) was a student film that John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon worked on while they were in college. They later found a film distributor who asked them to expand it to feature film length. The movie takes place in a small, cramped out of date spacecraft. Several astronauts are on board (who have been around each other to long) trying to complete their mission of destroying unstable planets. I found this film to be very entertaining and bizarre. I enjoyed it very much. The highlight of this film is when a computerized bomb decides that he doesn't want to take orders from the astronauts anymore and ponders the meaning of life. Highly recommended, but it's not your average Sci-Fi film.

A.

A Great Movie, i think it was made in Film School and is the first Movie available by John Carpenter.. The great thing besides the Humor, are those little typical low-budget Mistakes like the actor in the "lift" scene who is pretty clearly just lying on a common Floor.. The "mOnster" is amazing too its funny to see how a Ball with gloves can actually act, and a little music makes it scary..

The Last Scene is clearly inspired by Ray Bradburys (Fahrenheit 451) Short Story "Kaleidoscope"..

Sorry for my poor English, but i just had to write something to this incredible piece of film..

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.

Well OK this may not the most enjoyable film I've seen but it is certainly one of the most unique and cynical films ever. I find myself pulling out the tape and watching it again every couple of years just to give myself a reality check with all the Hollywood tripe you get these days. To make the most of it you need to watch a couple of Star Trek episodes first and then watch this. Instead of the clean-cut, politically correct, join-the-dots films that are so common now, you get a feeling that this might just be the way life on a space ship would really be.

It was really way ahead of its time. People now comment that films like Star Wars and Alien were the first to make sci-fi more 'realistic' but Dark Star pre-dates both of them by several years. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is where Scott Ridley and George Lucas got some of their ideas.

I saw this film as a kid, dismissed it as boring, and moved on. Luckily, fate forced me to see it again about 2 years ago and (some are going to hate me for this) now i consider it second only to Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey. The scope is gigantic, even though we're trapped inside the goofy little ship with these rejects (and they ARE rejects). It is a spoof of man's uninformed view of his place in the universe. It is filled to capacity with malfunctioning technology, illogical solutions to self-inflicted conflicts and a very genuine feeling of the isolation of deep space.

The music (John Carpenter is an innovator in film scoring) is strange and often indistinguishable from the zany noises of the ship's equipment and displays (who would ever create such tortuous bleeps and sirens for EVERY function of a spacecraft designed to house a couple of guys in the outermost regions of the galaxy?). The ship's computer is a perfect contast of Hal9000 (2001) in that SHE seems to understand her crew's dimwitted plight and ,after speaking to them in her programmed monotone, recognizes the need to go back and dumb herself down so that they can function accordingly. It is never explained whether she has assumed a mother-figure role or is simply acting out of self-preservation ,but ,like most of the more thought-provoking elements of this absurdist's fantasy, the viewer is merely given the bare-bones information and allowed to decide for itself.

Maybe all of this implied data caused me to make the movie better in my head than it actually is ,but how many films have you seen lately that can give you that freedom?