Dark Star (1974)

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Original Theatrical Poster

This was Carpenter's first feature length film as a director. It was originally made as a short while a postgraduate at college. He later expanded it into feature length with his friend and co-writer Dan O'Bannon. Dan was also the writer of Alien and Return Of The Living Dead, an excellent Night Of The Living Dead spoof.

Dark Star is an inspired black comedy. Four astronauts travel around the universe indentifying and destroying unstable planets that might turn into black holes. The ship is called Dark Star, hence the films title. Technology rules the crews lives to such an extent that they are left with little to do in the monotonous stretches of space. This leads to apathy and constant bickering amongst the crew.

Captain Powell (Joe saunders) has died in a gruesome accident involving an automatic seat belt he is being kept in deep freeze. He is still 'conscious' and helps the crew out as a sort of counsillor and advisor. The nervous and nerdy Pinback (O'Bannon) bears the brunt of the crews boredom and frustration. He is forced to look after an alien he has rescued, the first encounter with 'intelligent' life. This alien bears a strong resemblance to a beach ball. At one point the alien escapes from its pen and Pinback is forced to track it down. leading to some of the funniest scenes in the film. This alien beach ball has been pointed to as the source of O'Bannons script for Alien, where a rough crew (again, another Alien simliarity) are preyed upon by a killing machine that hunts them around the ship. Another and more obvious reference is the name of the ships computer in Dark Star, it is called Mother, the same name given to the computer in Alien.

During a meteor storm one of the intelligent bombs arms itself and attempts to carry out its primary goal in life i.e. to explode. The crew try to reason with the bomb using philosophical arguments to convince it not to explode. This is a hilarious scene (yes, there are loads in this film) that has rightly made the film famous. Perhaps the only sane character in Dark Star is Talby, the spaced out hippy who just spends his time looking at the stars. The other characters are alwasy squabbling while Talby just relaxes.

Dark Star is a very funny film, it depicts an all too plausible future where technology has robbed man of any meaningful control over his life. It offers a witty and bleak alternative to the scientific Utopia of 2001 and the excitement of Blade Runner.

Alternate Versions - A Special Edition has been released in the USA but is no longer freely available. This has been re-edited to remove all the stuff that was added to turn the film from a college project to a feature film. The extra stuff is at the end. The format is widescreen.

The re-release of Dark Star in the UK has led to some magazines re-reviewing it :

New Musical Express, August 1997, Andrew Sumner : John Carpenter's ultra-low budget student debut Dark Star, co-written by the director with future Alien screenwriter Dan O'Bannon, was a warped slap in the face to the kind of self-important sci-fi crypticism ushered in by Stanley Kubrick's ponderous, wildy overated 2001: A Space Odyssey two years before. Starring O'Bannon himself as ultra-neurotic spaceman Pinback, plus a cast of hirsute unknowns, the movies covers the last days in the life of four deep-space stoner garbage men trapped in a rusting starship and lumbered with a brain-numbingly tedious 20 year bombing mission. Highlights include Pinback's running battle with an alien space hopper, wobbly conversations with the ship's deep-frozen captain and a lengthy philosophical debate with a sentient, megalomaniacal bomb which has become convinced it is God. A subversive college-boy masterpiece which remains eminently watchable nearly 30 years later, Dark Star foreshadowed the pure cinematic brilliance of Assault On Precint 13 and serves as a sobering testament to Carpenter's pre-schlockmesiter brilliance.