Beginning of the 'Riddick' series on movies.

Rating: Null/10 (15 March 2014)

I recently saw the 2013 "Riddick" movie, and enjoyed it for the type of Sci-Fi entertainment that it is. But it is obvious that there must be some story preceding this one, so I looked up the earlier movies. Fortunately I found 3 of them on a 2-disk DVD set at my local public library.
This one, "Pitch Black", was the first in the series. It starts after criminal (Vin Diesel as) Richard B. Riddick has been captured by a bounty hunter and is being transported, along with a number of non- criminal passengers, via spaceship to a distant penal planet. It is far enough that everyone is placed in a type of cryo suspended animation state and the ship is on some sort of automatic trajectory and the crew would be awakened as they neared the destination.
The spaceship encounters some unexpected debris, probably some asteroid remnants, that pierce the hull and causes it to lose pressure as they near an unknown planet. They get sucked into its gravitational field and as the hull starts to burn we know there must be oxygen in the atmosphere. After a very rough landing which destroys the spaceship and kills most occupants, a core of 10 survive, including Riddick and Radha Mitchell as pilot Carolyn Fry. The bounty hunter is Cole Hauser as William J. Johns.
Most of the movie involves these crash survivors trying to survive on a hostile planet. They end up involving Riddick in the escape attempt as he has skills they need. The planet is occupied by some vicious alien creatures that only come out when it is pitch black, and are very efficient killers. They find remains of a geologic expeditions 22 years earlier, plus a small spaceship that they may be able to use as an escape vehicle if they can get it in working shape.
I always imagined Australia to be an uninviting place, and it sure looks like it in this movie filmed in various locations that look like an alien planet. This earlier movie is not up to the standards of the most recent one, but is still entertaining.
SPOILERS: In the end a few more die at the hands of the alien creatures, including Johns and Fry, but Riddick and a couple of others manage to avoid death and the movie ends as their spaceship has taken off and is headed away from the planet.