From the spaced-out minds of young John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon rockets their auspicious debut sci-fi comedy Dark Star. Twenty years into an underfunded deep space mission to obliterate uninhabitable planets, systems begin to degrade aboard the titular vessel, including a commander in suspended animation, a self-aware explosive device which keeps threatening to fulfill its existential purpose, and a mischievous beach-ball-like alien. A charmingly lo-fi mad space odyssey, the lion’s share of credit for what’s on screen goes to O’Bannon who served as production designer, VFX supervisor, editor, and played the lead role of Sgt. Pinback. Of course, no slouch himself, Carpenter directed, produced, and scored the cult oddity. Hyperspace has never been groovier and more psychedelic than this.
“Dark Star is one of the damnedest science fiction movies I’ve ever seen, a berserk combination of space opera, intelligent bombs, and beach balls from other worlds.” – Roger Ebert
“By introducing human eccentricities into the cold structure of SF, Carpenter creates a vision of the technological future that is both disillusioned and oddly affirmative in its insistence on the unscientific survival of emotional frailty.” – Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
Listen to Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary discuss Dark Star on the debut episode of their Video Archives Podcast.
