Sci Fi Sunday: Dark Star
The exploits of the crackpot crew of the interstellar demolition ship Dark Star, whose mission is to blow up unstable planets and make space a safer place for colonisation.
John Carpenter’s cult classic is a bit like MASH in space, the crew of the Dark Star are as out of place (and time) as Hawkeye and Trapper are in Altman’s classic. It’s hippies in space and they have to cope with a beach-ball-alien and a talking bomb with a god complex.
I remember watching this for the first time over twenty years ago and finding it hysterically funny, with Dan O’Bannon’s confrontation with the alien in particular having me in stitches. Time hasn’t served it well, but I’m not sure if it’s the films age or mine that’s dulled the comedy.
It still manages to raise a few chuckles here and there and you have to applaud Carpenter and O’Bannon for what they accomplished with what amounts to a student film. The plus side of being older is that the nods to other films that went over my head those many years ago now add a little extra to the film, with Mr Kubrick coming in for some nice lampooning.
