Dark Star is not the best carpenter movie, but its a must see if your a fan.

Hadn't seen this since fine bit of sc-fi/black comedy since it was last on terrestrial TV quite a few years ago, however it stuck in my memory well enough to snap it up on BluRay for the modest asking price. 'Dark Star' is a low budget sci-fi comedy Dan O'bannon made as a film student ages before he hit fame with the 'Alien' thing. Shot on 'Super 8!' film, yeah! super 8!, it tells the story of a spaceship called 'Dark Star' out in deep space on a l-o-n-g! mission that sees the crew blowing up unstable rogue planets using intellegent 'smart bombs' with a view to colonizing the system in the near future. Having been in space for nigh on twenty years the crew are bored with the dull nature of their task, slowly succumbing to a numb creeping apathy they mostly rely on the sexy voiced female computer to direct and look after them. The captain, Commander Powell after being killed in an accident is preserved in cryogenic stasis. Still retaining a limited capacity to think and speak he's extremely lonely as none of the others in the crew seem come to visit him. Resorting to pranks or hobbies to fill their time, work aside, the other crew members slowly fragment into their own individual activities. Doolittle plays music by tapping on water filled bottles n' jars while dwelling on his surf bum past. The spaced out 'Talby' spends all his time in the observation dome gazing out at the universe looking for mythical glowing nebula. Boiler likes to trim his Zapata mustache n' smoke cheroots while indulging in dangerous target practice in the cramped on board conditions using the ships laser rifle. Dan O'bannon's character Sgt Pinback much to the irritation of the others in the crew fills his time devising weak practical jokes. While recording his video diary Sgt Pinback drops the bombshell that he's not Pinback at all!, just a middling fuel technician called Bill Frugge. At the launch site he'd tried to rescue the real 'Pinback' who had gone crazy n' jumped into a tank of liquid nitrogen just before take off. Wearing Pinback's space suit to protect himself Frugge tried to fish Pinback out but ends up getting 'Press Ganged' into the capsule by the rest of crew who assume he's Pinback. The highlights aren't the effects which to be fair are showing their age n' shoestring budget under BluRay's unforgiving gaze, nonetheless they manage to remain fairly convincing . It's the comedy element that does it for me, especially Pinback chasing the escaped alien mascot a 'beach ball' kind of creature with flippers, claws and a wicked sense of fun!. Pursuing this improbable creature around the ship Pinback ends up hanging off the bottom of an elevator over a near bottomless shaft with the alien hanging on his back n' tickling him, hilarious!. Finally cornering this fun lovin' gas filled balloon of a mascot Pinback comes up with the idea of shooting it with a tranquilzer gun whereupon the poor thing bursts n' flies around the cabin farting like a balloon. The ending sees one of their malfunctioning smart bombs developing a God complex after being taught Phenomenology by Doolittle with disastrous results!

Hadn't seen this since fine bit of sc-fi/black comedy since it was last on terrestrial TV quite a few years ago, however it stuck in my memory well enough to snap it up on BluRay for the modest asking price. 'Dark Star' is a low budget sci-fi comedy Dan O'bannon made as a film student ages before he hit fame with the 'Alien' thing. Shot on 'Super 8!' film, yeah! super 8!, it tells the story of a spaceship called 'Dark Star' out in deep space on a l-o-n-g! mission that sees the crew blowing up unstable rogue planets using intellegent 'smart bombs' with a view to colonizing the system in the near future. Having been in space for nigh on twenty years the crew are bored with the dull nature of their task, slowly succumbing to a numb creeping apathy they mostly rely on the sexy voiced female computer to direct and look after them. The captain, Commander Powell after being killed in an accident is preserved in cryogenic stasis. Still retaining a limited capacity to think and speak he's extremely lonely as none of the others in the crew seem come to visit him. Resorting to pranks or hobbies to fill their time, work aside, the other crew members slowly fragment into their own individual activities. Doolittle plays music by tapping on water filled bottles n' jars while dwelling on his surf bum past. The spaced out 'Talby' spends all his time in the observation dome gazing out at the universe looking for mythical glowing nebula. Boiler likes to trim his Zapata mustache n' smoke cheroots while indulging in dangerous target practice in the cramped on board conditions using the ships laser rifle. Dan O'bannon's character Sgt Pinback much to the irritation of the others in the crew fills his time devising weak practical jokes. While recording his video diary Sgt Pinback drops the bombshell that he's not Pinback at all!, just a middling fuel technician called Bill Frugge. At the launch site he'd tried to rescue the real 'Pinback' who had gone crazy n' jumped into a tank of liquid nitrogen just before take off. Wearing Pinback's space suit to protect himself Frugge tried to fish Pinback out but ends up getting 'Press Ganged' into the capsule by the rest of crew who assume he's Pinback. The highlights aren't the effects which to be fair are showing their age n' shoestring budget under BluRay's unforgiving gaze, nonetheless they manage to remain fairly convincing . It's the comedy element that does it for me, especially Pinback chasing the escaped alien mascot a 'beach ball' kind of creature with flippers, claws and a wicked sense of fun!. Pursuing this improbable creature around the ship Pinback ends up hanging off the bottom of an elevator over a near bottomless shaft with the alien hanging on his back n' tickling him, hilarious!. Finally cornering this fun lovin' gas filled balloon of a mascot Pinback comes up with the idea of shooting it with a tranquilzer gun whereupon the poor thing bursts n' flies around the cabin farting like a balloon. The ending sees one of their malfunctioning smart bombs developing a God complex after being taught Phenomenology by Doolittle with disastrous results!

This is a sci-fi classic that I wanted to see for a while. Dan o Bannon wrote the story before he wrote Alien, and John Carpenter (Halloween, Fog, The Thing) directed it, so it's kind of something you have to see to understand how these two people started in the film industry. The story is about a ship and its crew having spent too much time in space cleaning up (destroying) unstable planets. Now I'm not a big fan of funny sci-fi. For me science fiction (apart from maybe Galaxy Quest) is mostly serious, but this is not too self referential as humour can go, so I can live with it. The references to 2001 are not so much the point of the film, it's just one scene with the talking planet annihilator device that starts having an existential problem. More weird than funny in my opinion. Special effects are obviously not the point here, since the budget was about as high as it can get for a student film, still there are a few interesting design ideas and effects that have probably left their mark. Dan O'Bannon's performance is probably what I will remember most, some sort of inadvertent Mister Bean in Space is probably the closest description I can make up of it. In the end, I'm still glad to own it in my collection, but this is not my favourite sci-fi film of the period. Still an interesting one to watch (with the extras) to understand how these two influential film makers have started their career.