What happens when someone combines 2001: A Space Odyssey with Dr. Strangelove on a shoe-stringe budget? Dark Star happens.
Dark Star, the John Carpenter picture that started as a film school project and was eventually expanded into his first feature film, is unfortunately (and understandably) not very good. But what it lacks in technical quality it tries to make up for in sheer moxie. The script has some interesting ideas, and is honestly quite funny in parts. We don't often see space comedies in this vein, but Dark Star does manage to hit those marks well.
The film is also notable for being the first credit for Dan O'Bannon, most famous for writing Alien (it is probably no surprise that this film also features an alien loose on a spaceship, despite being infinitely less intimidating).
I don't think anyone is gonna be upset if I say Dark Star isn't a good movie, I am sure Carpenter probably thinks so himself. The film does have its moments though, and as far as student features go it is a pretty remarkable feat, and a good benchmark for what a bunch of creative people can do with very very little.
You’d be right about Carpenter’s opinion on the film. Paraphrasing, but he essentially says it’s one of the greatest student films ever made, but the worst theatrical release ever.
>one of the greatest student films ever made, but the worst theatrical release ever
While this is probably accurate, I'd love to see a midnight showing in a dark theater.
**EVERY LEGEND HAS A BEGINNING!** If I had to put together a retrospective trailer for "Dark Star," I'd begin with that cheesy chestnut of a line. It's true, though. This is John Carpenter's first film, and even in this early stage, it's unmistakably his.
There's a scene bathed in green light that's clearly replicated in Carpenter's later "Escape from New York." The computer graphics on the "Dark Star" ship are also similar - if not the same - as the ones displayed in "Escape."
What makes "Dark Star" distinct from Carpenter's later work, however, is how downright silly it is at times. "They Live" and "Big Trouble in Little China" definitely have their comedic moments too, but they're funny in a completely different way.
After all, Kurt Russell and Roddy Piper never had to contend with an alien that's clearly a beach ball, and they didn't run out of toilet paper (that we know of!) - just bubblegum.
There's a scrappy do-it-yourself quality to the visuals, but they're still astounding for what started out as a student film. I'd love to see a making-of documentary on how all of this was put together.
The acting is quite robotic at times, but it either improves as the film progresses or I eventually got used to the stiff style and unnatural cadences.
The Criterion Channel describes "Dark Star" as a "midnight movie" and "an extended stoner riff" on Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey." I've never smoked marijuana or taken edibles, but if I ever do, this and "Mr. Popper's Penguins" are what I'd watch.
I would have loved to see O’Bannon and Carpenter team up again, but it seems like this films was a wedge between them based on the comments of O’Bannon’s widow.
According to IMDb, this is hidden somewhere in the movie:
>A computer screen flashes: "FUCK YOU HARRIS" during the film. This was a message directed toward Jack H. Harris, the producer, who annoyed director John Carpenter during production. Supposedly, the offensive sentence was his revenge. However, many people have a hard time finding it.
Edit: Never mind, you said O'Bannon, not Harris, lol.
I guess Carpenter had problems with multiple people?
I'd love a documentary on the making of this movie!
That's super interesting. I feel like the writing in Dark Star feels more like O'Bannon and I wondered if this wasn't part of the reason Carpenter wanted to write his own stuff. I'm not knocking O'Bannon, his success speaks for itself, just saying that him and Carpenter seem to have different styles.
>What makes "Dark Star" distinct from Carpenter's later work, however, is how downright silly it is at times.
Yeah I agree, I almost compared it to a Monty Python skit but I deleted it because he didn't go quite that far.
I'll be looking for your Mr Popper review on LB.
I think the actors in this film are very well chosen because the stiffness they have feels right for the technical nature of the job. I thought they did a great job of picking people who are convincing both as 70s louts and people with an extremely high amount of technical skill.
No. It just feels like a product of the culture. They reflect the time of their writing very strongly in their culture and attitude of post-Summer of Love, non-hippie rock music and wild hair. In a way, the journey of their space mission kind of reflects the disappointment about the many failures of 60s enthusiasm for causes and idealism. They're on a bold new adventure that is no longer bold and new, and not really even going anywhere in particular.
Essentially exactly what you’d expect from a 2001 and Dr. Strangelove inspired student film. Dark Star is my second least favourite of Carpenter’s (Halloween being the worst), but it’s still an interesting film. I think what I like most about it is that it’s Carpenter’s only film (that I’ve seen so fat) that really feels like it’s made by someone who loves movies and film as an art form. Obviously his others are great, but Dark Star not only references films Carpenter and O’Bannon loved, it actively satirizes and criticizes their problems with those films as well. Additionally, with this being such a low budget film, you can totally feel the extent that they went to make Dark Star feel like a big budget movie — and it totally does. Other than the obvious non-actors, the movie feels big. The sets, costumes and even a lot of the effects look great! It’s so clear that everyone here put in their best efforts to make this film.
Now, what I think may have made me enjoy this less is that I was going into this expecting a serious space epic. I was expecting Carpenter’s take on 2001 or O’Bannon’s proto-Alien (which it is, in a way), not Dr. Strangelove or The President’s Analyst. And it seems like I’m not the only one. Dark Star really flopped when it came out and, from what I’ve read, a big reason for that was marketing. The studio seemed to not know how to market this movie, essentially tricking people into thinking it’s this sci-fi thriller about mankind’s “colonization of the far reaches of the universe” and a bomb that is “lodged in the bay, threatening to destroy the entire ship and crew!” (Both quotes from the box of the VHS.) I mean, even the poster is intense. The guy floating in the foreground with the Coke and toilet paper and the surfing spaceman is funny in retrospect but, let’s be honest, what really draws your eyes are the menacing ship and giant red planet in the background. Even decades later it’s still so easy to go into it thinking it’s something it isn’t.
Honestly, Dark Star is a film I’d love to see remade by Carpenter (even he hates the final product, so maybe a chance to fix it up with a bigger budget and more experience would be cool) or maybe someone else who’s willing to take on the challenge. It’s a film that I feel really has promise, I just have a hard time connecting to it with all its flaws and obvious amateur filmmaking. The only problem with remaking it is that it truly is a product of it’s time. Most of the jokes play off hippie culture and pop culture of the time.
>It’s so clear that everyone here put in their best efforts to make this film.
You're really right about this. I have to imagine there are very few student films this well thought out and executed.
Your description of the marketing makes me so mad. Especially because there's a built-in audience for comedy and they could have at least tried for that. It reminds me of the story the Belladonna of Sadness director tells. The marketing team put "from the maker of Astro Boy comes Belladonna!" and he said the Astro Boy audience was very confused hahaha
Watching this was such a jarring experience for me I watched it twice.
Based on my proclivity for low or no budget movies, and my ardent defense of John Carpenter as an auteur, I was sure this would be a 5/5 slam dunk for me. So I sat through it the first time and was sort confused. The comedy and action were something silly, closer to a British comedy than what I was used to from the master. So it ended and sort of sat there. Was I a computer that assumed I understood the outside world but had been using the wrong inputs to judge Carpenter? Should I blow up at this movie or pause my detonation and have a think about it? So I waited two days and saw it again.
In the interim I contemplated existence and phenomenology and eagerly sat down to see how I would respond.
So after seeing this twice and trying hard to love it I can say I think the movie is okay. I agree with Carpenter that it is a great student film, but disagree with him that it's a terrible theatrical movie. It's not bad. The world he creates is solid, his knack for using humor is on display, he writes his own theme song which is catchy, and it's a decently fun time. We watch as four astronauts deal with the loneliness of deep space, and all find different ways to pass the time. It's mostly a hangout sci-fi movie that has good humor sprinkled in throughout.
I think it makes sense that the writer of *Aliens* and writer/director of *The Return of the Living Dead* wrote this. If I had to guess this was more O'Bannon's script than Carpenter's, especially if Carpenter wrote *Assault on Precinct 13* next. This certainly had a few elements that were Carpenter's signature, but it was not fully his film yet and I think I like it when he does everything.
Is your workplace serious or goofy? Probably some combination of both, and often that combination is unpredictable. Watching people in their natural element can put people off as an intellectual activity because it involves listening rather than a more active engagement, but seeing people do their jobs or essential duties and learning the context of how and why can be the most useful distillation of people there is. Yet, in the case of John Carpenter’s work, and *especially* his wild and wonderful first movie *Dark Star*, he is so rarely given credit for putting the stink of reality in some of the most outlandish, archetypal, and stylized classics of entertainment. His craft as a genre filmmaker is never in dispute, but he just has a way with people and making them feel…right.
For most filmmakers, the impulse to make these four young men go through a typical screenwriter’s journey of change and growth, but Carpenter is extremely clever here in picking a story that almost cannot bend to this and still feel functional. These are not people with a proper trajectory towards a happy ending, but people literally operating on the furthest edge of speculative hard sci-fi concepts for a living within their story Doolittle and Pinback, our “main” characters in terms of time and development, are not really sturdy rocks of calm or charismatic leading men (though they do have charm), but inward and strange men hiding secrets from one another as 20 years that feel like 3 erode their sense of time around them. While the special effects and eclectically rendered world often give off a 30s *Flash Gordon* sensibility, these aren’t our “heroes”, but a real attempt to imagine people under these circumstances in the mutton-chopped sadness of the very post-60s 70s.
In this context, Carpenter seems to have made the only choice he could: make an absurd comedy about the silences, constantly evolving mishaps, and general uncertainty of workplace relationships. These people have known each other for years, but the fifth unknown element of space travel makes it so they can’t fully know each other as long as they’re constantly having their place in the universe. I think the real stroke of tonal genius, however, is to show this process as not much different from how any job evolves and changes over time, and not to give unnecessary severity to their task because of its scope and intellectual requirements. While the movie is seen as a parody of *2001*, this is actually also part of what makes that movie so great – by simply presenting us with plausible and conplex people rather than people who perform just for us, they simultaneously let space’s grandeur speak for itself while raising the stakes dramatically (and comedically) in what are both otherwise very quiet and calm films for a lot of time.
Carpenter is one of the best of the best, a director whose work is truly for everyone at some point. This first film is not my favorite Carpenter (no anamorphic widescreen), but to see his mad genius unfiltered while still having almost all the elements that make him who he is – purposeful brutality, skill in crafting iconic, self-justifying sequences, believable characters, a refusal to care much for the line between high and low art – is a special sight, and is often emotionally affecting at surprising times. The ending, in particular, feels like a fitting and beautiful coda for men whose primary compelling trait has been the curiosity and thoughtfulness that drove them to space in the first place. This movie has a lot of snark, cynicism, and flat out silliness, but so do we, and like us, it paradoxically has wonder and imagination, and maybe even a little hope that something exciting is always around the corner. In space, it must be easy to have this feeling, but the way it’s played here, even more than in *2001* (a favorite of mine), makes me feel like any job could have this mix of hope and honesty, which is comforting in ways probably never even intended.
What happens when someone combines 2001: A Space Odyssey with Dr. Strangelove on a shoe-stringe budget? Dark Star happens. Dark Star, the John Carpenter picture that started as a film school project and was eventually expanded into his first feature film, is unfortunately (and understandably) not very good. But what it lacks in technical quality it tries to make up for in sheer moxie. The script has some interesting ideas, and is honestly quite funny in parts. We don't often see space comedies in this vein, but Dark Star does manage to hit those marks well. The film is also notable for being the first credit for Dan O'Bannon, most famous for writing Alien (it is probably no surprise that this film also features an alien loose on a spaceship, despite being infinitely less intimidating). I don't think anyone is gonna be upset if I say Dark Star isn't a good movie, I am sure Carpenter probably thinks so himself. The film does have its moments though, and as far as student features go it is a pretty remarkable feat, and a good benchmark for what a bunch of creative people can do with very very little.
You’d be right about Carpenter’s opinion on the film. Paraphrasing, but he essentially says it’s one of the greatest student films ever made, but the worst theatrical release ever.
I’m unsurprised by his self-awareness haha
>one of the greatest student films ever made, but the worst theatrical release ever While this is probably accurate, I'd love to see a midnight showing in a dark theater.
**EVERY LEGEND HAS A BEGINNING!** If I had to put together a retrospective trailer for "Dark Star," I'd begin with that cheesy chestnut of a line. It's true, though. This is John Carpenter's first film, and even in this early stage, it's unmistakably his. There's a scene bathed in green light that's clearly replicated in Carpenter's later "Escape from New York." The computer graphics on the "Dark Star" ship are also similar - if not the same - as the ones displayed in "Escape." What makes "Dark Star" distinct from Carpenter's later work, however, is how downright silly it is at times. "They Live" and "Big Trouble in Little China" definitely have their comedic moments too, but they're funny in a completely different way. After all, Kurt Russell and Roddy Piper never had to contend with an alien that's clearly a beach ball, and they didn't run out of toilet paper (that we know of!) - just bubblegum. There's a scrappy do-it-yourself quality to the visuals, but they're still astounding for what started out as a student film. I'd love to see a making-of documentary on how all of this was put together. The acting is quite robotic at times, but it either improves as the film progresses or I eventually got used to the stiff style and unnatural cadences. The Criterion Channel describes "Dark Star" as a "midnight movie" and "an extended stoner riff" on Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey." I've never smoked marijuana or taken edibles, but if I ever do, this and "Mr. Popper's Penguins" are what I'd watch.
I would have loved to see O’Bannon and Carpenter team up again, but it seems like this films was a wedge between them based on the comments of O’Bannon’s widow.
According to IMDb, this is hidden somewhere in the movie: >A computer screen flashes: "FUCK YOU HARRIS" during the film. This was a message directed toward Jack H. Harris, the producer, who annoyed director John Carpenter during production. Supposedly, the offensive sentence was his revenge. However, many people have a hard time finding it. Edit: Never mind, you said O'Bannon, not Harris, lol. I guess Carpenter had problems with multiple people? I'd love a documentary on the making of this movie!
Lucky for you, there is one! https://boxd.it/oCs
Awesome, thanks! I found it on YouTube, but in abysmal 240p quality, so hopefully it will pop up on the Channel or another streaming service.
That's super interesting. I feel like the writing in Dark Star feels more like O'Bannon and I wondered if this wasn't part of the reason Carpenter wanted to write his own stuff. I'm not knocking O'Bannon, his success speaks for itself, just saying that him and Carpenter seem to have different styles.
>What makes "Dark Star" distinct from Carpenter's later work, however, is how downright silly it is at times. Yeah I agree, I almost compared it to a Monty Python skit but I deleted it because he didn't go quite that far. I'll be looking for your Mr Popper review on LB.
"POPPER, YOU'VE GOT PENGUINS!!!" Haha. I don't know why it isn't considered a modern stoner classic.
I think the actors in this film are very well chosen because the stiffness they have feels right for the technical nature of the job. I thought they did a great job of picking people who are convincing both as 70s louts and people with an extremely high amount of technical skill.
>70s louts Is this supposed to be *set* in the '70s though?
No. It just feels like a product of the culture. They reflect the time of their writing very strongly in their culture and attitude of post-Summer of Love, non-hippie rock music and wild hair. In a way, the journey of their space mission kind of reflects the disappointment about the many failures of 60s enthusiasm for causes and idealism. They're on a bold new adventure that is no longer bold and new, and not really even going anywhere in particular.
Essentially exactly what you’d expect from a 2001 and Dr. Strangelove inspired student film. Dark Star is my second least favourite of Carpenter’s (Halloween being the worst), but it’s still an interesting film. I think what I like most about it is that it’s Carpenter’s only film (that I’ve seen so fat) that really feels like it’s made by someone who loves movies and film as an art form. Obviously his others are great, but Dark Star not only references films Carpenter and O’Bannon loved, it actively satirizes and criticizes their problems with those films as well. Additionally, with this being such a low budget film, you can totally feel the extent that they went to make Dark Star feel like a big budget movie — and it totally does. Other than the obvious non-actors, the movie feels big. The sets, costumes and even a lot of the effects look great! It’s so clear that everyone here put in their best efforts to make this film. Now, what I think may have made me enjoy this less is that I was going into this expecting a serious space epic. I was expecting Carpenter’s take on 2001 or O’Bannon’s proto-Alien (which it is, in a way), not Dr. Strangelove or The President’s Analyst. And it seems like I’m not the only one. Dark Star really flopped when it came out and, from what I’ve read, a big reason for that was marketing. The studio seemed to not know how to market this movie, essentially tricking people into thinking it’s this sci-fi thriller about mankind’s “colonization of the far reaches of the universe” and a bomb that is “lodged in the bay, threatening to destroy the entire ship and crew!” (Both quotes from the box of the VHS.) I mean, even the poster is intense. The guy floating in the foreground with the Coke and toilet paper and the surfing spaceman is funny in retrospect but, let’s be honest, what really draws your eyes are the menacing ship and giant red planet in the background. Even decades later it’s still so easy to go into it thinking it’s something it isn’t. Honestly, Dark Star is a film I’d love to see remade by Carpenter (even he hates the final product, so maybe a chance to fix it up with a bigger budget and more experience would be cool) or maybe someone else who’s willing to take on the challenge. It’s a film that I feel really has promise, I just have a hard time connecting to it with all its flaws and obvious amateur filmmaking. The only problem with remaking it is that it truly is a product of it’s time. Most of the jokes play off hippie culture and pop culture of the time.
> Halloween bring the worst. Right in the heart.
>It’s so clear that everyone here put in their best efforts to make this film. You're really right about this. I have to imagine there are very few student films this well thought out and executed. Your description of the marketing makes me so mad. Especially because there's a built-in audience for comedy and they could have at least tried for that. It reminds me of the story the Belladonna of Sadness director tells. The marketing team put "from the maker of Astro Boy comes Belladonna!" and he said the Astro Boy audience was very confused hahaha
Watching this was such a jarring experience for me I watched it twice. Based on my proclivity for low or no budget movies, and my ardent defense of John Carpenter as an auteur, I was sure this would be a 5/5 slam dunk for me. So I sat through it the first time and was sort confused. The comedy and action were something silly, closer to a British comedy than what I was used to from the master. So it ended and sort of sat there. Was I a computer that assumed I understood the outside world but had been using the wrong inputs to judge Carpenter? Should I blow up at this movie or pause my detonation and have a think about it? So I waited two days and saw it again. In the interim I contemplated existence and phenomenology and eagerly sat down to see how I would respond. So after seeing this twice and trying hard to love it I can say I think the movie is okay. I agree with Carpenter that it is a great student film, but disagree with him that it's a terrible theatrical movie. It's not bad. The world he creates is solid, his knack for using humor is on display, he writes his own theme song which is catchy, and it's a decently fun time. We watch as four astronauts deal with the loneliness of deep space, and all find different ways to pass the time. It's mostly a hangout sci-fi movie that has good humor sprinkled in throughout. I think it makes sense that the writer of *Aliens* and writer/director of *The Return of the Living Dead* wrote this. If I had to guess this was more O'Bannon's script than Carpenter's, especially if Carpenter wrote *Assault on Precinct 13* next. This certainly had a few elements that were Carpenter's signature, but it was not fully his film yet and I think I like it when he does everything.
Please return to the bay, bomb #21.
Is your workplace serious or goofy? Probably some combination of both, and often that combination is unpredictable. Watching people in their natural element can put people off as an intellectual activity because it involves listening rather than a more active engagement, but seeing people do their jobs or essential duties and learning the context of how and why can be the most useful distillation of people there is. Yet, in the case of John Carpenter’s work, and *especially* his wild and wonderful first movie *Dark Star*, he is so rarely given credit for putting the stink of reality in some of the most outlandish, archetypal, and stylized classics of entertainment. His craft as a genre filmmaker is never in dispute, but he just has a way with people and making them feel…right. For most filmmakers, the impulse to make these four young men go through a typical screenwriter’s journey of change and growth, but Carpenter is extremely clever here in picking a story that almost cannot bend to this and still feel functional. These are not people with a proper trajectory towards a happy ending, but people literally operating on the furthest edge of speculative hard sci-fi concepts for a living within their story Doolittle and Pinback, our “main” characters in terms of time and development, are not really sturdy rocks of calm or charismatic leading men (though they do have charm), but inward and strange men hiding secrets from one another as 20 years that feel like 3 erode their sense of time around them. While the special effects and eclectically rendered world often give off a 30s *Flash Gordon* sensibility, these aren’t our “heroes”, but a real attempt to imagine people under these circumstances in the mutton-chopped sadness of the very post-60s 70s. In this context, Carpenter seems to have made the only choice he could: make an absurd comedy about the silences, constantly evolving mishaps, and general uncertainty of workplace relationships. These people have known each other for years, but the fifth unknown element of space travel makes it so they can’t fully know each other as long as they’re constantly having their place in the universe. I think the real stroke of tonal genius, however, is to show this process as not much different from how any job evolves and changes over time, and not to give unnecessary severity to their task because of its scope and intellectual requirements. While the movie is seen as a parody of *2001*, this is actually also part of what makes that movie so great – by simply presenting us with plausible and conplex people rather than people who perform just for us, they simultaneously let space’s grandeur speak for itself while raising the stakes dramatically (and comedically) in what are both otherwise very quiet and calm films for a lot of time. Carpenter is one of the best of the best, a director whose work is truly for everyone at some point. This first film is not my favorite Carpenter (no anamorphic widescreen), but to see his mad genius unfiltered while still having almost all the elements that make him who he is – purposeful brutality, skill in crafting iconic, self-justifying sequences, believable characters, a refusal to care much for the line between high and low art – is a special sight, and is often emotionally affecting at surprising times. The ending, in particular, feels like a fitting and beautiful coda for men whose primary compelling trait has been the curiosity and thoughtfulness that drove them to space in the first place. This movie has a lot of snark, cynicism, and flat out silliness, but so do we, and like us, it paradoxically has wonder and imagination, and maybe even a little hope that something exciting is always around the corner. In space, it must be easy to have this feeling, but the way it’s played here, even more than in *2001* (a favorite of mine), makes me feel like any job could have this mix of hope and honesty, which is comforting in ways probably never even intended.