Dark Star
Tags: comedy, cult, absurd, psychedelic, satire, philosophical

Plot synopsis:
An incoming message from Earth arrives to the spaceship. Watkins (Miles Watkins) says that the trip is being broadcast live. The messages take around ten years to arrive. There was a radioactive leak, and Commander Powell (Joe Saunders) died. In consequence, there is a week of mourning on Earth, all flags are half-mast, but Congress won't pay for a radiation shield. "Dark Star" is the spaceship.Talby (Dre Pahich, with the voice of John Carpenter) is one of the astronauts, and he falls asleep. The crew can speak to Bomb 19 (Alan Sheretz's voice), which destroys a planet. Dark Star goes to hyperspace and leaves the hell out of there, watching the explosion from far away. The computer (Cookie Knapp's voice) says that they've destroyed the last unstable planet on that system. However, the computer finds another unstable red-dwarf planet, so they have to go and check it out.Francis Boiler (Cal Kuniholm) puts on some country music on the radio. On the ship's log, we can hear that a part of the ship self-distructed. They are dancing to the sound of funky music. The computer tells about something on collision course, and the defence system was destroyed some time ago, so they try to do something manually. A thunder activates a bomb. Bomb 20 (Adam Beckenbaugh) is deployed, but luckily, the computer overides the orders and Bomb 20 finally goes back to its place. Images of a hole around the destroyed laser machine.Lt. Doolittle (Brian Narelle), Sgt. Pinback (Dan O'Bannon) and Talby go to their room. They sleep in the same place, and it looks like an aparment from the projects in the 60's. One of them makes music with empty bottles of liquor.Talby should be watching the ship, but he's always sleeping. He is advised to see the rest of the ship. He says that space can be wonderful and full of colour, and Doolittle says that he misses Earth and Mars as well. Francis Boiler starts shooting a square of metal just to distract himself, although Pinback tells him not to do it. The computer tells Pinback about the alien going awry, telling him that it was his original idea to bring him into the ship.The alien (Nick Castle) is a beach ball with legs. It doesn't want to eat. Pinback brought it in because he thought it was fine. Pinback is cleaning up the alien's mess when it attacks him. The alien leaves the room. Pinback gives it a plastic toy, and it eats it, but when Pinback goes to pick the broom, the alien is not there. It holds the broom and hits Pinback with it. Pinback looks for the alien in the bowels of the ship. Pinback uses a plank to go to the alien. A sign says "Emergency air lock interior room". The alien goes around Pinback and takes the plank away. He tries to cross the shaft, although the corridor is very narrow. It is the lift shaft, and the computer says that it's been activated. Pinback tries to move on towards the alien, but it attacks him. He falls down, but can hold onto the thin layer of passway. The alien jump and tickles Pinback. The lift seems to stop when Pinback interrupts it. The lift goes up again, with Pinback holding onto an outer metalic handle. The alien turns onthe laser, which makes all the systems go crazy.Meanwhile, Doolittle and Talby have kept on talking. Bomb 20 has received a signal to ignate itself again. The computer tries to reason with it, saying that it was an error again. Bomb 20 finally agrees, but it says that that was going to be the last time.The lift stops at the third floor, and Pinback thinks of jumping out. He unscrews a floor trap and gets onto the lift. He gets stuck. He tries to use the phone for help, but it's out of order. He presses another button, and opera music resounds. The lift keeps going up and down for no apparent reason. He presses another button to clean the lift, and presses 1, which will make the lift clean itself.Finally Pinback leaves the lift amid a mist of smoke and with a metalic lid around his waist. Now, at this moment, he's really pissed off, so he goes to pick and anesthetic gun. Soon enough, he finds the alien, cornered somewhere. He shoots the alien, who flies all over the place, and ends up deinflated.Pinback talks about his ordeal to the rest of the crew. They have lunch togethertalking about Talby being mentally unstable. Talby goes to the computer room, and says to Doolittle that the computer has found the malfunction in the ship.Powell left a message, saying that he doesn't intend to come back to Earth. Pinback checks his past diary logs, stating that nobody recognises his good qualities, and that nobody said "happy birthday" to him. The computer has finally found the malfunction: it's the laser. However, everybody is sound sleeping but for Pinback.Eventually, they find the unstable planet. Bomb 20 is deployed. Pinback is in the emergency air lock, where there is a door which can be opened without depressureization. There, there is the laser who works badly. Nobody wants to hear Pinback, because they are busy with the deployment of Bomb 20. The laser is turned on, and it shoots inside the ship. The laser makes Pinback blind, and he crosses the path of the laserbeams. This creates further malfunctions, so they can't drop the bomb. Everybody panics on the bridge because the explosion sequence goes on, and Bomb 20 refuses to turn itself off.The computer will only contain the damage done to the ship by Bomb 20 up to a certain degree. They have to ask Powell, in the cryogenic deep-freeze compartment, what could be done. Powell asks about the Dodgers, and complains that he's lonely. When he is about to give a suggestion, the mike has a malfunction, and then Powells forgets about it. Pinback tries to reason with Bomb 20 while Doolittle questions Powell. Doolittle goes out to space and talks to Bomb 20.DOOLITTLE: How do you know that you exist.BOMB 20: Intuition.DOOLITTLE: You can't base everything on intuition.BOMB 20: I think, therefore I am.and the dialogue goes on and on like that. Bomb 20 agrees that its experience of the outer world depends on possibly wrong information. It says that it'd be nice to keep on discussing the matter with Doolittle, but that it has no time, because it will go off in 49 seconds. Meanwhle, Boiler tries to shoot the bomb. In the fight with Pinback, he almost shoots him.Doolittle tells Bomb 20 to consider what his purpose in life is. To explode, of course, says Bomb 20. As it can only explode once, it wouldn't like to explode at the wrong time, would it? Of course not, says Bomb 20, but as it had admitted before that it had no proof that the outer world does exist. 9 seconds, says Bomb 20, and my memory is very good. It has no proof that the orders are either wrong or correct. Bomb 20 goes back inside Dark Space to think futher about the matter.Doolittle tries to rescue Tanby, who was shot out of Dark Space. Now, Bomb 20 thinks that no order coming from the outer world can be reliable, so it explodes itself happily although Pinback tries to reason with it. Tanby and Doolittle are left stranded floating in space. Powell goes flying away wrapped in a bath of ice.Doolittle falls to the planet they wanted to destroy, Tangy gets kida trapped in a travelling concusion of lights, so that he'll be travelling through the universe forever. Doolittle uses a piece of debris to surf down to the red planet.---written by KrystelClaire

Review: It is filled to capacity with malfunctioning technology, illogical solutions to self-inflicted conflicts and a very genuine feeling of the isolation of deep space.The music (John Carpenter is an innovator in film scoring) is strange and often indistinguishable from the zany noises of the ship's equipment and displays (who would ever create such tortuous bleeps and sirens for EVERY function of a spacecraft designed to house a couple of guys in the outermost regions of the galaxy?).
It is never explained whether she has assumed a mother-figure role or is simply acting out of self-preservation ,but ,like most of the more thought-provoking elements of this absurdist's fantasy, the viewer is merely given the bare-bones information and allowed to decide for itself.Maybe all of this implied data caused me to make the movie better in my head than it actually is ,but how many films have you seen lately that can give you that freedom?.
Dark Star (1974) was a student film that John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon worked on while they were in college.
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 "mOnster" is amazing too its funny to see how a Ball with gloves can actually act, and a little music makes it scary..The Last Scene is clearly inspired by Ray Bradburys (Fahrenheit 451) Short Story "Kaleidoscope"..Sorry for my poor English, but i just had to write something to this incredible piece of film...
I quickly tracked down a copy and rewatched it to see if it was really THAT good...The story involves a bunch of astronauts who have been in space for many years: they spend their time blowing up unstable planets and rocking out to surf music.
During this time, an alien (that looks suspiciously like a beach ball) runs riot, and an unruly bomb threatens to blow everyone to smithereens.'Alien' screenwriter Dan O'Bannon wrote 'Dark Star', and clearly borrowed from it for the 1979 Ridley Scott film - taking the hilarious beach-ball sequence and playing it out for tension rather than laughs.
It all started out as a short film made at film school made by the now legendary John Carpetenter, but then they wanted to make a longer version, however they couldn't get money to remake it, so they simply added extra scenes in the middle (example, the beach ball alien).The story is this, on a ship where the captain is dead (but you can unfreeze to ask him questions) and the rest crew are going basically crazy they have problem.
When one takes into account that this was the first real film venture of John Carpenter and Dan O' Bannon, two incredibly influential and talented movie personas, Dark Star is not all that bad.
It's not a great science fiction film (the alien is so fake it's crazy) and the comedy is a bit sparse (the bombs are funny, but most of it just sort of drags).
After the film, the film critic who selected the film would interview one or more of the people involved with the film's production.Towards the end of the week, I arrived at the Bob Hope Theatre (on the SMU campus) to find a notice on the chalkboard: one of the films had cancelled out, and "Dark Star" a "sci-fi comedy" would be shown in its place.Bringing science fiction and comedy together is a tricky business: usually either the SF content or the humor suffers.
The special effects were a little cheesy (Carpenter originally shot it as a film student, on a film students "budget"), but the characters were funny, and they got off some nice riffs.
The dialogue between the astronauts and the Hal 9000-esque bomb is definitely the funniest sequence; the movie probably should have been a 20 minute short focusing on this portion rather than a full blown feature length effort with all the other boring subplots, which feel tacked-on like they decided to extend the movie at some point but couldn't come up with anything resembling an organic structuring to justify it.
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.
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.
The f/x isn't bad for it's time, and Carpenter at least makes the film nice to look at.Some may find it funny, but I found it dreadfully repetitive, boring, and void of anything funny.
"Dark Star" shows us that even if you do not have a huge budget you can still produce an entertaining, and thought provoking film that serves to act in part as a homage to other classic films and stories while also presenting us with something that had never been seen before.
You have got to put aside the quality of the set and special effects and judge this on the dialogue and the overall ideas.The absurdity of the colossal scope of destroying whole worlds to allow Humanity to colonise Star systems against the banality of the people doing it is just brilliant.Balancing the human frailties of a bunch of idiots with such a quest is genuinely funny and also pokes fun at how important we think we are and avoids the well worn clichés of the super capable Star ship crew believing in the greatness and weightiness of their mission.I think if we ever get out there it will be more like this!
It goes without saying, of course, that it's John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon, who have had their own names attributed to various brands (Halloween/Alien), without noticing that they're also excellent at delivering comedy through a filter of awkwardness, the bizarre, and even the bad-ass intent.On top of the humor, which never calls too much attention to itself...actually, scratch that, any movie with a beach ball as an alien and a rubber chicken used as a distraction during boredom will have to be considered a bit 'broad'.
What I mean to say is that there's a fine line that Carpenter and O'Bannon work at with the material; the actors, of course, aren't the greatest at comic timing, and sometimes O'Bannon's Pinback sounds like he has just gotten out of a nerd convention with how he talks, most stilted of all (with the biggest exception being his Diary entry scene, which is howlingly funny).
Yet he and the other characters also serve a purpose for the story, however loose it is: there's an attitude of the 70s (long hair, beards, a cluttered bedroom for the men covered in nudie pics) that seeps in through the pores of Dark Star, a counter-cultural f-u to the establishment by proclaiming how preposterous it all is, and then having us laugh with it instead of at it (albeit it's hard not to laugh at it once or twice, particularly with the little space-man models outside the ship in space).But if a comic sensibility, and a grasp of what it takes to subvert the genre just enough, is in reach, so is the technical aspect, to the degree it's allowed.
Counting in with this is the cinematography, fairly sophisticated for a student work, and the music (from Carpenter, of course) being a sweet mix of weird drum beats, a classical bit during the elevator scene, and a wacky theme that if otherwise used in any film would seem ridiculous.
Given how lackadaisical, and nutty, and original the dialog and settings are in this great strange bird of a movie, the song fits right in.Both of its main creators would go on to greater things, to be certain, but Dark Star is a lot of fun, and surpasses any of its limitations of cost through ingenuity, deranged humor, and that spark of genius from time to time (particularly with the climax) that makes it builds up a cult crowd..
Starting off as a generic speculative drama that pays dues to Star Trek, which, in 1974, had recently ended its episode run and revitalized a craze for science fiction on television, the film progresses through a low-budget action scene, short on both special effects and coherence, and ultimately ends as a casually evolved suspense story that examines humankind's dependency on technology and its destructive implications, as well as our inability to relate to one another in a constantly devolving social environment.I've always been a fan of science fiction, so I figured I'd watch this film out of respect for the filmmaker.
O'Bannon went on to pen the script for Alien, among other films, which, containing its own symbolic alienation (no pun intended) of Ellen Ripley, shares some thematic structure to Dark Star and the plight of Lt. Doolittle.This might take a few viewings to extrapolate further meaning, but it's worth watching at least once.
Or Talby's - What a beautiful way to die - as a falling star.'Dark Star' is totally different from Carpenter's best known works in tone and atmosphere but it is one entertaining little piece of science fiction..
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"..
The best thing that "Dark Star" does is capture the mundane workaday existence of space travel; very much like the space truckers of "Alien" (especially with those camera pushes through the ship).
'Dark Star' is a spoof of science-fiction movies, in special '2001: A Space Odyssey' (or maybe just a Kubrick spoof: the bomb part also made me remember 'Dr. Strangelove', though maybe that was just me).It centers on four hippie-like astronauts whose mission is to explode unstable planets.
The characters are all pretty well made and original; in special, Sgt. Pinback (a surprising Dan O'Bannon) steals the show whenever he is on scene.Unlike modern spoofs, which tend to follow either the Mel Brooks or the 'Scary Movie' formulas, 'Dark Star' is something most would find strange nowadays.
Great story, funny effects and a independent, non-commercial film-makers attitude has made Dark Star an underground classic..
The timeline is the mid-22nd century, a scout-ship named "Dark Star" has been carrying its mission of obliterating "unstable" planets in the galaxy for over 20 years, a preliminary step for mankind's space colonization (a hobby horse persists against time), whereas the remaining four crew members have aged only 3 years (their captain died of a seat panel malfunction during hyperdrive, his body is preserved in a cryogenic state with his mind still alive and kicking to spread wisdom when the crunch comes) and inured to the journey's built-in boredom and incessant, pesky mechanical hiccups.
Shot in conspicuously iridescent back-projections and matte technique with shoddy props to trump up proto-analogue space environs, the film strides ebulliently in its tongue-in-cheek mockery of the loneliness and nihilism bred out of a monotonous space odyssey, a hearty episode of Sg. Pinback (O'Bannon, a jack-of-all-trade who would get his fa me as a co-creator of ALIEN franchise) trying to lay his hands on the beachball-like alien pet within the ship's two-by-four interior comes off as a sidebar lark playing with optical illusions, but also manifests his crashing tedium and angst of being under-appreciated by his fellows, not to mention he is not even the real Sg. Pinback, his name is Bill Froug, a fuel specialist mistakenly takes Pinback's place, meanwhile, Lt. Doolittle (Narelle) and Astronaut Talby (Pahich) engage a melancholic convo redolent of bland nostalgia and self-absorption which doesn't go anywhere.
This version of director's cut runs a concise 71 minutes, and what leavens this psychotronic incipient work to something of a cult classic is Carpenter and co-writer O'Bannon's innovative idea holds sway the latter part of their project, sending up an existential crisis of a talking bomb in a time-ticking fashion, only jocosely but fatally boomerangs on the entire crew's undoing, with no recourse to money-aided visual grandeur, it is the hippie ethos of its time charms us and makes us giggling, slack-jawed and adequately thrilled by its cockamamie payoff.
"Dark Star" is filmmaker John Carpenters' theatrical debut, expanded from a college short he wrote with his fellow student, Dan O'Bannon.
Trying to liven up the ship Pinback picked up this cute little alien in space that he's made the "Dark Star's" official mascot just to bring some entertainment on board.
Things get even worse for the "Dark Star" when it runs into a asteroid shower that, unknowing to Let. Doolittle and the crew, knocks out one of the ships lasers that controls the bombs used to obliterate the unstable planets.
As the film ends Let. Doolittle sails into the atmosphere of the unstable planet that the spaceship "Dark Star" was to destroy.
This doesn't preclude it being any good, but it defines the kind of film you're likely to get - it's not going to be cerebral, and some of the effects are so utterly awful that you have to ignore them, or look at them and then look past them.Dark Star is an odd laugh.
Although a bit slow occasionally in some parts, this gem is extremely funny and refreshing piece of low budget SF which is actually also a student work which start Carpenter's career.I reccommend this movie because it deserves all attention!7/10.
A low-budget film about a couple guys in a space ship who goes around blowing up planets that might be a threat to Earth.
The writing at the end of the movie is sci-fi genius, when Doolittle has to float around in space and teach existentialism to the ship's somewhat sentient bomb.
The acting, characterizations and cinematography are on the whole forgettable; however, as Carpenter went on to have a spectacular career of hits and misses and Dan O'Bannon lent a rather Dark Star-ish weirdness to whatever he touched, this movie should not be missed by the serious film buff.
Dan O'Bannon starred in this, who went on to make Alien, a totally killer movie that also was a blend of genres (sci-fi and horror).
A science fiction black comedy that was made as a film school project predominantly by John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon.
I'll say watch it if you're a film student and want to see how Dan O'Bannon and John Carpenter got their start or if you're just interested in that check this movie out..
Forget Becket this would make a good stage play :) "Alien" would later reveal the quality of Dan O'Bannons vision and writing.YES it was low-budget and it was a pity that the "creature" could not be made to look a little less like the plastic ball that it was - BUT it doesn't matter because the whole thing is hilarious.
Dark Star is one of my favorite movies of all time.
Dark Star with its' minimal budget but limitless imagination and good writing shows what a great shame it is.Some fantastic setpieces, you can clearly see that the liftshaft Boiler gets stuck in is actually a corridor filmed from a forced perspective but the scene is so damn slapstick funny that the suspension of disbelief totally works.
When one thinks that Dark Star started life as a USC student film, it becomes an all the more impressive experience—it's not surprising that its creators, John Carpenter (director of Halloween) and Dan O'Bannon (writer of Alien, director of Return of the Living Dead), would go on to become such important names in the realms of horror and sci-fi cinema.Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film brilliantly depicts the mundanity of long-haul deep-space travel, whilst provoking philosophical, phenomenological and existential debate; but unlike Kubrick's interminable, po-faced 'classic', Dark Star also offers up likable characters (including sentient thermo-nuclear bombs) and a wry sense of humour, all of which go to make this the far more entertaining movie in my humble opinion.
And although things ultimately don't work out well for the crew of the Dark Star, the bomb's logic leading it to fulfil its purpose, one can't help but feel happy for Doolittle and Talby, who end their lives doing what they love best.
John Carpenter's 1974 sci-fi comedy stars Brian Narelle, Dan O'Bannon, Cal Kuniholm and Dre Pahich.
An accident has already lead to the death of the commander and substantial damage to the ship and an encounter with an asteroid storm causes further damage to various systems; most notably one of the bombs which now wants to starts its mission.The films low budget shows in the special effects that make those on the original 'Star Trek' look hi-tech and an alien creature, looking like a large beach ball with claws that make early 'Doctor Who' monsters look believable surprisingly this turns out to be part of the films charm.
The acting isn't the most dynamic but that helps emphasise how bored the crew are meant to be.This film is mainly of interest because it was director John Carpenter's first film and was co-written by Dan O'Bannon who would later go on to write 'Alien'.
I don't know what the original footage was, but there seems to be a lot to weird things in this film.The movie is about the crew of the scout ship Dark Star which flies around the galaxy looking for unstable planets and blowing them up so that the system might be fit for colonisation.
The first theatrically released film of John Carpenter is one of the few comedies that he made and it's a good one.