Dark Star is a film that I can’t remember when I first heard about it, where I first heard about it, who first told me how great it was, and when I finally got to see it for the first time. I recall seeing a few stills from the film in Starlog and I remember a couple of my friends carrying on about how funny the scenes were with Pinback feeding the alien. Despite being made in 1974, I am certain I didn’t see Dark Star until high school. I know it was definitely post Star Wars and Alien both of which were Junior High film going experiences. My best recollection is that Pat Murphy and Steve Bates were the ones telling me (and fellow Unicorps member Kurt Kleiner) about the film during my sophomore year of high school. I know I bought the Alan Dean Foster novelization and the edition I bought had a 1979 printing date as well as a blurb promoting Foster as the author of Splinter of the Mind’s Eye. The greater mystery is when did I actually get to see the film. My best guess is that it was probably one of the films I rented from Tronix or Captain Video when I first got my VCR. What ever the official time, place and circumstances were, one thing I know for sure is that I went nuts for it.
In high school, I went to a lot of movies and ran around with the S.C. Chorale. But there was one other activity that ate up a bunch of my waking hours and that was playing D&D. Dungeons & Dragons was my generations XBox 360. Several of us played at least once a week, usually more. One of the guys named his characters after characters from Lord of the Rings. My characters were for the most part named after Dark Star. I had a Pinback and a Boiler, but the character I loved to play was an Elven thief named Darsktar. The name came to me while staring at the spine of the paperback on my book shelf. Dark Star had inspired me.
It had been several years since I had last watched Dark Star and I had forgotten it was a John Carpenter film until I was watching the bonus features on Cigarette Burns. I started thinking back on Dark Star and decided to revisit it. The DVD I have features both the Special Edition and the uncut theatrical edition. It seems that Dark Star stared as a student film that ran 68 minutes long. Producer Jack H. Harris had the crew shoot an additional 15 minutes and then released that cut theatrically. Later the filmmakers were given the chance to edit a Special Edition cut. They did this by excising most of those 15 minutes. I opted for the longer 83 minute cut for my viewing pleasure.
Dark Star is the story of five men in space blowing up unstable planets. The captain ends up getting killed during a freak mishap, which was bad enough, but then an asteroid storm damages the communications systems and Bomb #20 starts getting false signals to detonate. As if that wasn’t bad enough, another malfunction is preventing the crew from being able to actually eject the bomb. Eventually it’s up to Lt. Doolittle to teach the bomb the concept of phenomenology to keep it from detonating and blowing up the ship.
Dark Star is a simple film with some amazing concepts. Dan O’Bannon would take inspiration from parts of Dark Star when writing Alien. Many of Carpenter’s musical cues are eerily similar to his later work on Halloween. It is amazing to look at this film and remember that it was made by film students before Star Wars.
One other thing that I can’t forget when discussing Dark Star is the faux country western song Benson, Arizona. I actually special ordered the vinyl soundtrack album from Varese Saraband while I was in high school. I ordered it as well as Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. I listened to Dawn’s soundtrack incessantly, but I also became hooked on Benson, Arizona. To this day I can not get that song out of my mind, and why would I want to?
Dark Star is a 3 1/2 star guilty pleasure.
365 Days of DVDs 