Dark Star (film)
| Dark Star | |
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Theatrical poster
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| Directed by | John Carpenter |
| Produced by | John Carpenter |
| Screenplay by | John Carpenter Dan O'Bannon |
| Story by | John Carpenter Dan O'Bannon |
| Starring | Dan O'Bannon Brian Narelle Cal Kuniholm Dre Pahich |
| Music by | John Carpenter |
| Cinematography | Douglas Knapp |
| Edited by | Dan O'Bannon |
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Production
company |
Jack H. Harris Enterprises
University of Southern California |
| Distributed by | Bryanston Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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83 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $60,000 |
Dark Star is a 1974 American science fiction comedy film written by John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon. The feature film debut for both, it was directed, produced and scored by Carpenter, and edited by and starring Dan O'Bannon, who also acted as production designer and visual effect supervisor.
In the mid 22nd century, mankind has reached a point in technological advancement that enables colonization of the far reaches of the universe. Armed with artificially intelligent "Thermostellar Triggering Devices", the scout ship "Dark Star" and its crew have been alone in space for 20 years on a mission to destroy "unstable planets" which might threaten future colonization of other planets.
The ship's crew consists of Lt. Doolittle (helmsman, and initially, second-in-command), Sgt. Pinback (bombardier), Cpl. Boiler (navigator), and Talby (target specialist). "Dark Star" Commander Powell was killed during hyperdrive as a result of an electrical short behind his rear seat panel, but remains onboard ship in a state of cryogenic suspension. The crew members perform their jobs with abject boredom, as the tedium of their tasks over 20 years has driven them "around the bend." The "Dark Star" ship is in a constant state of deterioration and frequent system malfunctions (for example, a radiation leak which is not repairable, their cargo of intelligent talking bombs lowering from their bomb bay without a command to do so, an explosion destroying their sleeping quarters, the food processing computer repeatedly serving chicken-flavored liquid meals, and a storage bay "self destructing" and destroying the ship's entire supply of toilet paper), and only the soft-spoken female voice of the ship's computer for company. They have created distractions for themselves: Doolittle, formerly a surfer from Malibu, California, has constructed a musical bottle organ; Talby spends his time in the ship's observation dome, content to watch the universe go by; Boiler obsessively trims his moustache, enjoys smoking cigars, and shoots targets with the ship's emergency laser rifle in a corridor; while Pinback plays practical jokes on the crew members, maintains a video diary, and has adopted a ship's mascot in the form of a mischievous "beachball"-like alien who refuses to stay in a storage room, forcing Pinback to chase it around the ship. With regard to Pinback, he may not actually be "Sgt. Pinback" at all; in his video diary, he states he is liquid fuel specialist Bill Froug, who inadvertently took the "real" Sgt. Pinback's place on the mission. It is unclear, however, whether or not this is a paranoid illusory fiction Sgt Pinback has created, due to his prolonged time working in deep space.
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Wikipedia