Dark Star

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.

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.

Up until "Dark Star", crews of rocket ships were usually "spit and polish", highly disciplined members of a crew all working towards a common goal in harmony. This was the image of the astronauts as promulgated by NASA. Dark Star introduced the negative dynamic to spaceship crews: space travel was ho-hum, they had little contact with earth, and everyone had gotten sick of each other.

Dan O'Bannon used this to good effect in "Alien".

Also, the use of contemporary music was highly original and helped move the movie along.

The scene where they talk to the bomb was just a rip-off from Star Trek and the episode "The Ultimate Computer".

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?

I first saw Dark Star about 25 years ago and have enthused about it ever since. It's definitely a movie that you've got to be in the mind for but it is funny, the music has the characteristic Carpenter style, is very hippyish in a lot of ways and the low-budget style works very well. The alien is great - apparently its feet are the ones used in "The Creature From The Black Lagoon"

It's a shame the DVD doesn't have any extras. I suppose there isn't much left lying around for them to use!

It's also incredible to think that it was only 5 years between the release of this and the release of Alien. Pinback is one of the characters in Dark Star, played by Dan O'Bannon and he is also the co-writer. Then he went on to write Alien!

Do see this film - but be in a laid-back mood when you do.