Featured Audience Ratings

• Sophie B

  
  I suppose it would have been entertaining for its time (despite Star Wars) and I did find it a slow but thoughtful and interesting piece. I can see the similarities between this and 2001 which is not a bad thing. It was well thought out and had some great comedy moments (intended or… More
  I suppose it would have been entertaining for its time (despite Star Wars) and I did find it a slow but thoughtful and interesting piece. I can see the similarities between this and 2001 which is not a bad thing. It was well thought out and had some great comedy moments (intended or not). A good watch but not something you could view again and again.

• Ken S

  
  Probably the best space satire featuring a crazed beach ball. Loved the ending.

• AJ V

  
  Carpenter's first movie is a dud! It's supposed to be a spoof of 2001, but it's even more boring, as the jokes are obvious and unfunny. I hated this movie, and I've been trying to sell my copy ever since!

• Conner R

  
  It's really sad, I wanted to like this movie so much. You'd think a sci-fi John Carpenter movie would be at least fun, but this is really just a lame attempt at spoofing 2001: A Space Odyssey. In its defense, this is an extremely low budget movie with little talent outside… More
  It's really sad, I wanted to like this movie so much. You'd think a sci-fi John Carpenter movie would be at least fun, but this is really just a lame attempt at spoofing 2001: A Space Odyssey. In its defense, this is an extremely low budget movie with little talent outside John Carpenter. The theme song is actually my favorite part of the whole thing, the hippy nature to it is hilarious. This should at least be viewed by diehard fans of Carpenter, but otherwise it's clearly not a great movie.

• Daniel M

  
  John Carpenter has earned a reputation as a director who constantly breaks the rules of Hollywood cinema. From the unexplained serial killing of Hallowe'en to the gory paranoia of The Thing, his work has constantly challenged what is acceptable to put on screen. This tendency to… More
  John Carpenter has earned a reputation as a director who constantly breaks the rules of Hollywood cinema. From the unexplained serial killing of Hallowe'en to the gory paranoia of The Thing, his work has constantly challenged what is acceptable to put on screen. This tendency to push boundaries has made him the most accidental of pioneers, with the films which he created to pay the bills now among the most revered of cult hits. Dark Star, his debut feature, is fitting company to these works, bridging the gap between the old school and new wave in mainstream sci-fi filmmaking. It is this unintentional mix of old and new which make Dark Star a lot more interesting than other sci-fi comedies such as Spaceballs and Galaxy Quest. The film is primarily a parody of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, with references scattered throughout both the plot and the visuals. We still have some oddly-designed spacesuits and a man floating off in space, only this time HAL is a self-aware bomb (just as destructive but in a different way), and the monolith has been replaced by the Phoenix Asteroids. That said, the film can't quite make up its mind as to whether we should hear the ship's engines. In 2001 we don't, since there is no air in space and therefore no sound; in this we start off quiet and become noisier as we go on. There are also more subtle and comedic references to other great dystopian works. Early on the film, Talby and Doolittle meet in the observation dome and talk about what they miss most about life on Earth. In a tongue-in-cheek nod to Solaris -- in which the central character misses his family -- Doolittle says that he misses surfing more than anything else, and wishes he had a board there with him even if he could only wax it. It's a poignant exchange which is typical of both the offbeat, goofy nature of the characters and the affectionate level of parody present throughout. Equally interesting, however, is the extent to which Dark Star has influenced later sci-fi works, for good or ill. The connections with Alien are writ large -- not only does it feature Dan O'Bannon, who would write the screenplay, but the subplot involving the beach ball-like 'ship's mascot' could be read as a shorter, more comedic version of Ridley Scott's masterpiece. John Carpenter's subsequent sci-fi ventures, like The Thing and They Live, owe a lot to this film in their grungy visual edge, and there are traces of Hallowe'en in the use of synthesisers to create tension, just as Kubrick did in A Clockwork Orange. Most disturbingly, so much of Dark Star seems to have ended up in Star Wars. Not only does it share a plot point (a ship designed to blow up planets), but much of the art direction is reminiscent of the original trilogy, right down to the look of the ship. Leaving aside the film's place in history, it is perfectly possible to enjoy Dark Star as a goofy if uneven low-budget comedy. The comedy is grounded in a number of well-rounded, believable characters, and like John Carpenter films there is no clunky back-story to distract us from what they are doing on screen. This emphasis on characters rather than simply flagging up the references a la Tarantino, means that after a while we don't worry about or even notice the creaky effects. Many sci-fi films made today seem to take the opposite approach, dazzling us with mind-bending effects and CGI to take our minds of slightly creaky characters, and watching this you can't help feeling that modern filmmakers are missing something. The performances are all pretty decent, though Dan O'Bannon's is the standout, largely because he has the most screen time. Pinback is the most interesting member of the crew, being anxious, talkative and self-conscious. The scene of him playing extracts from his electronic diary is one of the film's highlights; you watch him alternating paranoid anger with childlike hysteria and you can't stop yourself from creasing up. The running joke about the lift is also inspired: the stunts look real and the different sequences are well-edited into the rest of the story so that it stays funny all the way through. Sadly, Pinback's witty routines illuminate one of the central flaws with Dark Star, which is its sound design. Much of the longer sections of dialogue are picked up poorly, so that we can't quite make out certain jokes or instructions. This is particularly a shame during Pinback's lengthy anecdote about impersonating another officer. The joke is that the story isn't funny, but it's executed in such a way that we are meant to listen intently for each little twist of the story. When we get cracking instead of dialogue, or fuzz from the actors being too loud, we lose the comic momentum of the scene. The film is undoubtedly funny, but the script is also undeniably patchy. On the one hand, there are several individual sequences which work superbly, such as Pinback's long and battle with the alien, or the diary scene; on the other hand, there is the ending, which seems too simple and rather more cavalier than is necessary. Somewhere in-between these two extremes is the scene of Doolittle negotiating with the Bomb not to detonate, and indeed the previous scene with Commander Powell being cryogenically frozen. The film suddenly in these scene decides it wants to be intellectual, which in itself is not a bad thing. But there is too little build-up or fade-out to these discussions of phenomenology to pull an audience in completely, or to make them realise its validity. Dark Star remains an interesting and important science fiction film and a testament to the virtues of low-budget filmmaking. The film manages to overcome obstacles relating to both the script and its technical execution, and can still make for an enjoyable 90 minutes. It is by no means perfect, consistent, or Carpenter's best work, but its influence is assured through its continuing potential for mirth and its impact on Carpenter's sensibility. If all else fails, there is enough off-beat humour hidden within to keep any sci-fi fan chuckling warmly.

• Randy T

  
  Director John Carpenter cut his proverbial teeth on this 70's <i>Space Odyssey</i> spoof about a crew of hippies cruising deep space in search of 'unstable planets'. Held to the same standards as other sci-fi comedies (i.e. <i>Sleeper</i>,… More
  Director John Carpenter cut his proverbial teeth on this 70's <i>Space Odyssey</i> spoof about a crew of hippies cruising deep space in search of 'unstable planets'. Held to the same standards as other sci-fi comedies (i.e. <i>Sleeper</i>, <i>Spaceballs</i>, etc..), <i>Dark Star</i> doesn't quite cut the mustard. A comedy should be funny. With the possible exception of the climactic conclusion, this one is, at best, only mildly amusing.

• Tim S

  
  Wonderful film. Superb camera work, very funny and a great performance from Dan O'Bannon. Why didn't he do more acting?

• Adam M

  
  John Carpenter's big student film has way more presence and more to say than most sci-fi features

• Lafe F

  
  A cool, quirky, dark, intense, timely and well-set movie. It expands on the Space Odyssey atmosphere in a pre-Star-Wars world. It's not bad at all, but set within small confines, so not very expansive.

• Stuart B

  
  Weird but funny

• xGary X

  
  Cheap and rather slapdash debut by John Carpenter. It reeks of post modern humour in the vein of Douglas Adams, and there are some very funny moments, but it's also dull and amateurish for extended periods. Great ending though.

• Eric B

  
  Director John Carpenter's first feature looks surprisingly good, considering its tiny budget. This deep-space comedy -- mostly a parody of "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- benefits from being contemporary to the many sci-fi classics released during the same glorious era.… More
  Director John Carpenter's first feature looks surprisingly good, considering its tiny budget. This deep-space comedy -- mostly a parody of "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- benefits from being contemporary to the many sci-fi classics released during the same glorious era. However, its story is rather thin. Two isolated sequences have a strong pull -- a countdown crisis involving a bomb that has been mistakenly triggered and an incident chasing an escaped, onboard alien that looks like a radioactive beach ball -- but most of the film's short length just follows four astronauts (one of them is Dan O'Bannon, who later helped write "Total Recall" and the "Alien" series) killing time during a years-long mission to destroy planets with unstable orbits. Their idle boredom (daydreaming about surfing, clipping their beards, building homemade instruments, etc.) is precisely the point, but this doesn't make "Dark Star" any more fun to sit through. The best ongoing gag is the passive-aggressive banter between the ship's HAL-like computer (this time, it's female) and a skeptical bomb who's tired of false starts. Trivia: Indie-rockers Pinback took their band name from O'Bannon's "Dark Star" character.

• Daniel P

  
  Rightly feted Sci-Fi film, made as a comedic response to "2001: A Space Odyssey" but practically a masterpiece in its own right. Dark Star is brimming with intelligent ideas & goofy sight gags, and has an oddly touching ending. It's Arthur C Clarke meets Douglas… More
  Rightly feted Sci-Fi film, made as a comedic response to "2001: A Space Odyssey" but practically a masterpiece in its own right. Dark Star is brimming with intelligent ideas & goofy sight gags, and has an oddly touching ending. It's Arthur C Clarke meets Douglas Adams.

• Lesley N

  
  Cult space film wtih four guys, long abandoned by the powers that be on earth, float around in a breaking down spaceship, tinkering with their hobbies and their malaise, and both bickering and ignoring each other. It's cheaply made and over thirty years old and it shows, but… More
  Cult space film wtih four guys, long abandoned by the powers that be on earth, float around in a breaking down spaceship, tinkering with their hobbies and their malaise, and both bickering and ignoring each other. It's cheaply made and over thirty years old and it shows, but there's comedy too including a game of cat-and-mouse with an inflatable alien, and a sweet ending that's worth waiting for.

• Stephen E

  
  Basically one of the oddest, most mind-numbingly dull and poorly-produced movies I've ever seen. The final exchange between the bomb and one of the astronauts merits at least a grin or two, but other than that sole scene, "Dark Star" is eventless and hard to sit still… More
  Basically one of the oddest, most mind-numbingly dull and poorly-produced movies I've ever seen. The final exchange between the bomb and one of the astronauts merits at least a grin or two, but other than that sole scene, "Dark Star" is eventless and hard to sit still through. John Carpenter is usually one to deliver when it comes to producing a quality cinematic experience, but this is not one of those times.

• RJ M

  
  The mother of all low budget movies. While still attending USC Film School, John Carpenter, and classmate (and future "Alien" writer) Dan O'Bannon would film as much footage with the money they had. They would then show the footage to anyone who was willing to loan them… More
  The mother of all low budget movies. While still attending USC Film School, John Carpenter, and classmate (and future "Alien" writer) Dan O'Bannon would film as much footage with the money they had. They would then show the footage to anyone who was willing to loan them more money to shoot more footage. The movie is parody of intellectual sci-fi movies, most notably 2001: A Space Odyssey. A trio of astronauts has been in space for 20 years blowing up unstable planets with a supply of talking, intellectual bombs. You gotta love a movie where the acting commander, recording in the ships log, has nothing more interesting to report that there was a mishap in the storage area that destroyed the ship's entire supply of toilet paper. Ouch. That hurts. The visual effects, while obviously low budget, perfectly invoke the feel of 2001. The cast of three actors are great, showing the utter boredom that has come from so many years in space with NOTHING else to do. How do you keep busy? How do you stop yourself from going insane? Or have they? The movie is not a knee slapping, laugh riot, but it is an extremely entertaining, one of a kind sci-fi spoof. The first feature film from legendary director John Carpenter.

• Henrik S

  
  A quirky ride on a spaceship into the wicked minds of John Carpenter and Dan O' Bannon. A lot of people hold this movie in high regards, and as a strange experience it might be, it certainly had its moments. But disappointed was I when I learned that two of the three things I… More
  A quirky ride on a spaceship into the wicked minds of John Carpenter and Dan O' Bannon. A lot of people hold this movie in high regards, and as a strange experience it might be, it certainly had its moments. But disappointed was I when I learned that two of the three things I liked the most of the movie were plain copies of other Sci-Fi pioneers work. The ending (I won't take it away) was straigt from Ray Bradbury's story "Kaleidoscope" and the idea that the crew could communicate with the dead Cpt. was coined by Philp K. Dick, author of "Do robots dream of electric sheep ?" the novel on which Blade Runner is based upon. So, with all poetics aspects of the movie being plagiats, what is left is a funny and weird spaceship comedy/horror. One thing that bothered me about the story is that the structure is very loose and the pace is not very well executed. I identified some key conflicts within the movie. The alien, the cabin fever, and the philosophical bomb. But none of this conflicts is the center of attention and server as overall arc. The alien conflict is ressolved in a 20 minutes action sequence. The cabin fever is hinted here and there but does not increase to a climax. The philosophical bomb conflict surfaces merely at the end of the movie and feels awkwardly disconnected. I give John and Dan credit for the sheer enthusiasm of film making which is apparent when you watch this. Crazy Editing, a bizarre Soundtrack, an even more bizarre Alien. I suggest you look at John and Dan follow-up projects to see to what heightzs of quality the guys arose ignited by the succes of Dark Star. Alien, Halloween, Assault on Precint 13 being a few of them. Check them out Henrik

Read all 17 featured audience ratings