Dark Star

I didn't realize what I was watching 3 A.M. one day until someone told me.

This looked like a cheesy rip off of something, but at 3 A.M., all I could do was enjoy.

The low production really shows, but I didn't care. This movie is funny, and as a comedy, that's hard to do these days. The acting, well... ok, but I had the sense that these guys were trying to do it as best they can.

All I can say about this is, this is the type of movie you can watch at 3 A.M. and still enjoy.

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.

John Carpenter's first film. Must be horror you say, but you'd be wrong in that account. Dark Star is a parodied view of future, in where a group of astronauts travel in space, destroying unstable planets in danger of hitting in to the sun, thus making them in to novas.

One would think there's lots of special effects in a movie like this, and one would be right. Those special effects just aren't extremely good in any standard, but they do have lots of charm. And I actually do believe, that if this movie would have any better specials it wouldn't be as funny as it's now.

I won't spoil the movie for you, but if you like sci-fi this just might suit for you then. It gave me couple of laughs.

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.

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.