Dark Star; science-fiction comedy, USA, 1974; D: John Carpenter, S: Brian Narelle, Dan O'Bannon, Cal Kuniholm, Dre Pahich
In the future, four astronauts are already for over 20 years traveling through deep corners of outer space in their spaceship Dark Star. Their mission is to plant intelligent mega-bombs on unstable planets in order to blow them up for the upcoming human colonization. But those are rare instances, because most of the time the crew is endlessly bored. They practically never see the captain, while an alien in the form of a balloon is starting to annoy them, so they plan to get rid of him. But then a short circuit activates a bomb stuck on the spaceship, so they try to talk her out of blowing up. In the end, she explodes, while the captain takes a part of a ship and "surfs" to a nearby planet.
Filmed for only 60,000 $, independent sci-fi comedy "Dark Star", John Carpenter's first film, is a fantastic fun if the viewer can adapt to its unusual tone, but it lost a part of its charm with time. Basically, it is a raw, cheaply produced comedy with that fresh enthusiasm of first time authors, an incredibly ironic commentary on classic science-fiction films, brilliantly conceived, where the idyll is only disrupted by the argument of the four protagonists. Among the flaws are the pointless subplot where the astronaut is chasing after the balloon-alien through the corridors, which is unfunny, yet lasts for an exhausting 20 minutes, eating up a quarter of the film's running time (!), as well as an heavily overstretched middle parts of the story. Yet this is still a comedy with cult reputation, where the coldblooded humor is thoroughly making the viewer laugh with its original ideas in the beginning and ending. One of those ideas is the basic premise: the four astronauts in the future in their spaceship Dark Star are bored so much that one of them even forgot his own name, so they try to entertain themselves with anything, mirroring the ridiculousness of the banal situations. Their mission is to "eliminate" useless planets: in one hilarious sequence, that builds its humor on the contrast between parallel slow and fast events, they throw a bomb that destroys a whole uninhabited planet (!) while they quickly disappear from that solar system with a speed of light (the idea where a weapon is able to destroy a whole planet was also later used in "Star Wars"). Among the highlights is also the whole philosophical sequence where the astronaut is trying to talk the intelligent bomb stuck on the spaceship out of blowing itself up, that's so rich with absurdness that it almost reaches Ionesco's and HaĊĦek's dialogues. Bizarrely imaginative, hip and impossible to pin down under any category, "Dark Star" is flawed, but still daft enough.
Grade:+++
Filmed for only 60,000 $, independent sci-fi comedy "Dark Star", John Carpenter's first film, is a fantastic fun if the viewer can adapt to its unusual tone, but it lost a part of its charm with time. Basically, it is a raw, cheaply produced comedy with that fresh enthusiasm of first time authors, an incredibly ironic commentary on classic science-fiction films, brilliantly conceived, where the idyll is only disrupted by the argument of the four protagonists. Among the flaws are the pointless subplot where the astronaut is chasing after the balloon-alien through the corridors, which is unfunny, yet lasts for an exhausting 20 minutes, eating up a quarter of the film's running time (!), as well as an heavily overstretched middle parts of the story. Yet this is still a comedy with cult reputation, where the coldblooded humor is thoroughly making the viewer laugh with its original ideas in the beginning and ending. One of those ideas is the basic premise: the four astronauts in the future in their spaceship Dark Star are bored so much that one of them even forgot his own name, so they try to entertain themselves with anything, mirroring the ridiculousness of the banal situations. Their mission is to "eliminate" useless planets: in one hilarious sequence, that builds its humor on the contrast between parallel slow and fast events, they throw a bomb that destroys a whole uninhabited planet (!) while they quickly disappear from that solar system with a speed of light (the idea where a weapon is able to destroy a whole planet was also later used in "Star Wars"). Among the highlights is also the whole philosophical sequence where the astronaut is trying to talk the intelligent bomb stuck on the spaceship out of blowing itself up, that's so rich with absurdness that it almost reaches Ionesco's and HaĊĦek's dialogues. Bizarrely imaginative, hip and impossible to pin down under any category, "Dark Star" is flawed, but still daft enough.
Grade:+++
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