Dark Star

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".

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.

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 The movie takes place in a small, cramped out of date spacecraft.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.

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.

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.