Red Dwarf meets Alien (Dark Star (DVD))

Member Name: pje

Product:	Dark Star (DVD)
Date:	12/06/01 (57 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Hilarious cult classic.

Disadvantages: Daft low budget and stuff.

The spacecraft Dark Star has been in space for twenty years
and the crew are all bored out of their minds. It is now so far from Earth that there is a ten year delay in communications.

The ship's commanding officer has been killed in a seat-belt accident, and as if that isn't bad enough, a storage area has self-destructed, destroying the ship's entire supply of toilet paper...

Their mission is to search the universe for unstable planets
to destroy. When they find one they drop a thermostellar bomb on it and then scarper, using hyper-drive... Cue streaky stars!

Director John Carpenter originally made this film while at college and later expanded it. With a budget of just $60,000 the special effects certainly aren't special - the way the ship abruptly stops would puzzle Newton and have Einstein chuckling. I pee myself laughing and keep rewinding the tape to watch it over again.
If my mum had seen this she would have said it was too daft
to laugh at. Mainly because of the beach ball...

Sergeant Pinback has adopted an alien as the ship's mascot, something he bitterly regrets when the time comes to feed it.
The alien - an orange coloured speckled beach ball with feet(!) - is very mischievous and plays hide and seek with him around
the ship, in particular the elevator shaft - which proves to be
a very dangerous place to go chasing a beach ball!

In this long, tense, and comic sequence there is a sign of things to come in the way that Carpenter uses over-dramatic electronic music to heighten tension - a technique he went on to use so effectively in the all-time classic horror film Halloween.

Eventually the alien gets it's comeuppance - suffering exactly
the sort of demise you would expect a beach-ball to suffer.
If this sounds vaguely familiar (as well as stupid) it's because
Dan O'Bannon, who co-wrote the film with Carpenter, expanded on
this scenario when he went on to develop the screenplay for Alien, so this whole sequence is effectively a prototype of Alien.

And I'm sure this film must have been a source of inspiration
for Rob Grant and Doug Naylor when they devised Red Dwarf.


When the ship passes through an asteroid storm, a malfunction causes bomb number twenty to repeatedly leave the bomb-bay - and it gets a bit stroppy, refusing to come back inside! Y'see
the thermostellar bombs are equipped with artificial intelligence and converse with the crew in a high pitched "have a nice day" sort of voice - a la Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey - a big influence on this film. (Along with another of Kubrick's 1960's masterpieces the apocalyptic black comedy Dr. Strangelove.)

In the end only a metaphysical discussion of reality and phenomenology persuades it not to detonate under the ship. Although, this leads to a more serious delusion...


I first saw Dark Star one Sunday evening while at university.
I was meant to be struggling with some work that was due to be handed in the next day, along with a fellow student who shall remain nameless. But, we thought we ought to see what this film was like first... Nowadays any students heard laughing the way we laughed that night would be arrested and Anne Widdicombe would probably call for us to be publicly flogged to death. So students beware, this film could lead to you becoming a drop-out!

John Carpenter went on to direct the terrifyingly nerve-jangling Assault on Precinct 13; Halloween and Escape From New York. Sadly he seems to spend most of his time making an uncountable number of Halloween sequels.

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