After working on a series of student films, director John Carpenter teamed up with fellow film student scribe Dan O'Bannon (ALIEN, TOTAL RECALL) to create DARK STAR, a loose satire of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. The results were impressive ... and utterly hilarious! Set aboard a scout ship of the same name, DARK STAR also began life as a 68-minute student film which caught the attention of producer Jack H. Harris (who, oddly enough, had worked previously with Kubrick). Harris convinced Carpenter to shoot an additional 15 minutes of footage to allow the film to be released theatrically in 1975.
The film stars Brian Narelle, Dre Pahich, Cal Kuniholme, and Dan O'Bannon
in a great comedic turn as the easily-befuddled Sgt. Pinback. The mission
of the DARK STAR crew is to seek out unstable planets in the mid-21st century
and destroy them with Exponential Thermostellar Bombs - or what you might
call "smart bombs," since they talk back to crew members and often
exhibit a mind of their own. The whole "talking bomb" idea is a great
spin-off of Kubrick's HAL 9000, and leads to some of the film's funniest
moments.
Shot on a shoestring budget from 1971 to 1974, the film makes great use of stark, limited sets and some clever trick visual effects. What's key here is the sharp writing of Carpenter and O'Bannon, with several in-jokes for sci-fi fans. Then there's the single funniest moment in the film for me: a lengthy schtick between O'Bannon's character and a "pet alien" the crew has taken aboard their ship ... only this "alien" resembles a beach ball with clawed feet! O'Bannon milks the scene as a broad slapstick routine, and I never fail to laugh when the alien beach ball turns on him with a broom, whacking him repeatedly in the head. Carpenter pal Nick Castle delivers his first great silent performance here as the guy behind the alien ... a good four years before donning the Michael Myers mask.
Magic Lantern Entertainment (in collaboration with VCI Home Video and the Roan Group) has produced a superb DVD edition of DARK STAR which features a nice letterboxed (1.85:1 - the only feature Carpenter shot in this aspect ratio) transfer of the film with a newly-remixed Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, the original theatrical trailer, and accurate biographies/filmographies of both Carpenter and O'Bannon.
What's best about this DVD edition is it offers BOTH the original 68-minute "director's cut" as released on home video in 1983 and the full-length, 83-minute theatrical version on the same, single-sided disc! You select which version you want to view via the main menu screen, and it either plays the full 83-minute version or automatically skips the added scenes. The sleeve warns that the shorter "special edition" cut may trigger a slight pause on some players, but I watched both versions and barely noticed any hesitation. Could be I was laughing too hard!
March 1999