Dark Star Reviews

(OK) Carpenter hit in his first one,an anti 2001 space odyssey in its own way, philosophical humour and a long funny suspensefull scene of tha man against a rubber ball humnaly a pet...

Dan O’Bannon sure does love to reconfigure space travelers as truckers just doing their job. He gained cinematic immortality by taking that concept and grafting it to a haunted house in space structure in Alien, one of the 70s best science-fiction films from a decade filled with great science-fiction films. But Alien wasn’t the first time that he decided to populate space with stoned out drifters. Behold, Dark Star.

 

Dark Star is a shaggy hangout movie that plays as both a parody of 2001, replete with destructive piece of artificial intelligence, and like a student film filled with in-jokes amongst friends. The student film vibe is apropos as director John Carpenter and writer Dan O’Bannon met as USC film school and made this D-list midnight movie. Actually, D-list has a certain sense of judgment when Dark Star is fun for its goofiness and stoned-out loser vibes.

 

After all, where else will you find an inflatable beach ball subbing for an alien that nearly tickles someone to death, or watch a literal cosmic surfer meets his demise as a falling star? I laughed more than once at Bomb #20 determining that it was god and not beholden to its original programming. Sometimes eccentricity, even with obvious budgetary limitations, is the perfect antidote to an era that’s overwhelmingly paranoid and dour.

Since this movie was John Carpenter's directing debut, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, to be honest, I really had a hard time to care about the damned thing, probably because I was expecting something completely different. Indeed, with its title and its poster and since it was directed by John Carpenter and written by Dan O'Bannon, I thought it would be some kind of dark vintage SF thriller but, in fact, it turned out to be some really goofy science-fiction comedy. The fact that there was no plot but instead a succession of supposedly funny scenes didn't help either. Finally, it was probably the most cheap-ass science-fiction production ever and it was probably the least convincing spaceship I have ever seen. Especially when they were inside, I never had the feeling that they were actually in a spaceship. There were still some nice things though like the bombs actually discussing and arguing with the crew or the fact that the crew really looked shabby and pretty much depressed. Anyway, to conclude, I think I have been actually generous with my rating here but this movie is still worth a look, especially if you like the genre or if you are interested in John Carpenter's work.