Dark Star: The Spaced-Out Spaceship*

-University of Southern California/VCI Home Video (1974)

Summary

Dark Star is the slightly odd comedy about some futuristic 1970's astronauts who have a big problem. The bomb they are supposed to drop isn’t listening to orders and is about to go off! (Exclamation mark added for effect!)

My Thoughts

I originally came across this film by randomly picking it up at a store and reading the box. The plot and campy quality intrigued me to the point that I had to make a purchase. It’s hard to explain Dark Star as anything else but as a low budget student made sci-fi film. What makes this film different from a lot of other crap student films, or even ultra low budget pictures, is its humor and the cleverness of the simple plot.

This edition is pretty adequate considering how obscure the source material is. The film does have some status as a cult classic, which saves it from becoming a horribly bad edition like Freejack.

The back cover of the DVD does a good job of explaining a little bit of the film's history and why there are two versions of the film on the disc. The reason is that the film was originally a student film, but it found a distributor who thought some scenes should be added to the film in order to make it longer. It seems as if the Special Edition version without these extra minutes is more or less the official version, so this is the one I picked to review, but I'll talk a little bit about the extra stuff later.

The most annoying thing about this DVD is the intro from VCI entertainment. It looks like a porno DVD studio opener, which is largely cheap and ugly looking. To make it even worse you can’t skip it.

The film begins with the crew of the ship Dark Star doing their job, which is blowing up “dangerous” planets in order to make the galaxy safe for colonization. There isn't much of a plot other than following the crew as they do their job, and go through their daily living until there is a crisis. Through some humorous scenes we get to see what kind of dull, long, and boring life these guys live. It’s a meaningless existence that consists of blowing up planets, sitting around, and finding more planets to blow up. One of the greatest lines from the film that demonstrates how empty their lives are occurs when Boiler asks Lt. Doolittle what a fellow crewmate’s first name is. Doolittle responds by saying in a shocked tone, "What's my first name?"

The best reason to watch this film is for co-writer Dan O'Bannon's performance as Pinback. It is simply hilarious, because the character is such a neurotic freak. The best scene in the film is when Pinback watches his journal and you see the kind of psychopath he is.

The weakest part of Dark Star are the scenes where Pinback chases around an alien pet. The thing doesn't look like much more than a beach ball with rubber monster hands, which is exactly what it is. It has its moments, but it's not as clever as the rest of the film and slows down the pace greatly.

The ending of the film is a tribute (I hope not ripped off) to the Ray Bradbury short story, "Kaleidoscope.” The astronauts communicate as they float away from each other in the emptiness of space. Thank you Internet Movie Database.

Extras

There aren't many extras, but the budget probably didn't allow for much more than what was put on the disc.  What the disc could have really used was a director’s commentary, because I'm sure there are some good stories or at least memories associated with this film. But sadly, there isn't a commentary track.

You get a couple of extras with no motion menus. Also, an annoying aspect of the scene selection is that there aren't any pictures to help identify the scene you're looking for.

The text for the menus also looks very close to the Star Trek font used for the original cast films. I wonder if this is just a coincidence or what.

The “Cast and Production” section is, sigh, a collection of bios and filmographies. The bios are actually a decent read, and of course I skipped the filmography portions like usual. Included in this section is a “Special Edition Prologue” that’s basically a prologue for the beginning of the film explaining why the ships are blowing up planets.

One extra note is that I think Dan O’Bannon is a lot more talented than he’s been given credit for. His acting in this film and the fact that he wrote both Total Recall and Screamers, well, that seals the deal in my book for a talented individual.   

Score

Film: 8.0

Extras: 5.0

Edition: 6.5

-Paul

*yes, the tag-line really is… "The Spaced-Out Spaceship"