Dark Star, 1974.
Directed by John Carpenter.
Starring Brian Narelle, Cal Kuniholm, Dan O’Bannon, Dre Pahich, Nick Castle, and John Carpenter.
SYNOPSIS:
The crew of a space ship 20 years into a planet-bombing mission must do battle with their alien mascot and a sentient bombing device that begins to question its existence.
Dark Star is an odd movie. Essentially it is a student film given a bit of gravitas due to the talent behind it – it is credited as director/co-writer John Carpenter’s first ‘proper’ movie and co-writer Dan O’Bannon’s first feature-length script – and the lengths they went to in able to release it as a theatrical movie, and although it does borrow heavily from several sci-fi movies that came before it, its influence can be felt in countless projects that came after it, including Alien, Star Wars, Red Dwarf and Carpenter’s own The Thing. But it is still a student film.
The Dark Star of the title is an interstellar space ship whose mission is to destroy planets that are home to dangerous alien species in order to make the universe safe for humans. The bombs that they use are able to talk and think, thanks to onboard computers, but occasionally they go a little haywire and start operating by themselves, and so the weary crew – who are now 20 years into their mission – have to talk them down and generally get all of the super-hi-tech equipment to behave itself.
On board the ship there is also an alien life form that the crew have picked up on their mission and have kept as a mascot. However, like aliens in sci-fi movies tend to do, it runs amok aboard the ship, forcing crew member Pinback (played by Dan O’Bannon) to search the ship for it. While this is going on, Lieutenant Doolittle (Brian Narelle) has to go on a spacewalk to try and convince one of the bombs not to self-destruct aboard the Dark Star, engaging in a philosophical conversation with a computer about life, the universe and the nature of existence.
Needless to say, Dark Star is very much a product of the 1970s, from film students who were likely indulging in everything being young in the 1970s had to offer, as it is a crazy movie but, as with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that also came out that year, a lot of the humour gets lost amongst the spectacle of what is being shown on the screen, and whilst John Carpenter was probably chuckling away to himself behind the camera, the deadpan nature of the performances and the absurdity of the situation don’t really gel all that well.
Most of which is likely down to inexperience of the behalf of all involved, but watching the movie today it is interesting to see the individual parts that influenced other movies, most notably the bits that Dan O’Bannon reworked for Alien. Tellingly, the alien in Dark Star is not as fully realised as the Xenomorph, nor is it as terrifying as it is basically a beach ball painted red with some rubber feet stuck to the bottom and operated by future Michael Myers actor Nick Castle, but it is quite amusing watching Dan O’Bannon hunt for it around the ship, ending up in a lift shaft. All done on the cheap of course, but if you watch Alien – and even Aliens, to some degree – after watching this you can see where the ideas developed from.
And that is really what Dark Star is – a fertile breeding ground of a movie where ideas, themes, styles and careers began, but is it actually a good movie? Depends on your tolerance for stoner humour and intellectual think-pieces mashed with cheap special effects and filmmakers still learning their craft. If you love that sort of thing then the 83-minute Theatrical Cut is for you, but the original 71-minute Director’s Cut is also included on the disc and is probably the safer option, especially for a first watch.
However, where this 4K UHD set scores very highly is the inclusion of Let There Be Light: The Odyssey of Dark Star, a 116-minute documentary covering everything from the genesis of the project through the production, release and its influence. Featuring contributions from actor Brian Narelle, Carpenter collaborator Tommy Lee Wallace, filmmaker and fellow University of Southern California student Jeff Burr and producer Jack H. Harris, this is a superb documentary even if Dark Star doesn’t do it for you as it gives an insight into how student movies get funded, produced and promoted, and it also reveals a few surprises along the way, such as where George Lucas may have gotten the idea for how to show the jump to light speed on film.
Also included is an audio commentary by Dark Star super-fan Andrew Gilchrist, and interviews with Brian Narelle and author Alan Dean Foster, plus a sew-on patch, a collector’s booklet, reproductions of the two UK quad posters, lobby cards and a reproduction of the original film campaign brochure, so a very packed box set for collector’s and plenty of supplementary material to get stuck into.
It is fantastic that movies like Dark Star are being given the 4K UHD treatment; not just because it improves on the visual and audio quality – remember, this is a student film from the 1970s, so whilst it does look tidier and the colourful computer graphics pop out a bit more, there are scenes that have the production values of Button Moon and they still look like it no matter how much film grain you try and reduce – but because it is an important film from a group of filmmakers who would go on to shape genre movies for the following few decades. As a whole, Dark Star may be less than the sum of its parts, but it is a significant and, thanks to the included documentary, fascinating insight into how turning one’s passion and ideas into a tangible thing audiences can still enjoy 50 years later is a struggle, but, ultimately, a worthwhile one.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
