Gosh. I love this movie.. Who can forgot the alien mascot, smart bombs and country theme song? My favorite part is definetly the ending surf scene! Oh yeah, look on the metal piece he uses to surf: it has IHX 188 (I think that's the name of the movie..) on it.
The penultimate B-movie; incredibly cheap and yet few people really care because it's so funny from beginning to end. Saw it for the first time in college; perfect timing. Laughed so hard I thought I'd cream in my pants. The beach-ball alien was a doll, people in the audience cried when he bought it. (Trivia: its claws are those of the original Creature From The Black Lagoon.)
I have to tell you, since we started "Bad Movie Night" about a month ago, we've seen some bad ones. "Dark Star", however, takes the cake. The little beach ball alien was the highlight of the film. I also love the surfing scene at the end. I never knew they let potheads be astronauts.
This is not only very entertaining (in several ways), it's also very intelligently written as well. The special effects, for the budget, are excellent, unfortunately most people focus on the beachball and the muffin tin and miss the rest of the first-rate work. Definitely something for Carpenter and O'Bannon to be proud of.
Doolittle: "What's MY first name??"
I love this movie! First part of John Carpenters
classic series of films (Dark Star-The Thing).
This is my favorite John Carpenter film and
one of my favorite movies of all time. This is
tied along with Silent Running and Alien as
the greatest sci-fi film of the 70's. I wonder if
JC named the movie after the Grateful Dead
song of the same name?
Dark Star is awesome. I've been looking for it for a long time, being one of the world's biggest John Carpenter fans along with our band Caplata's bass player, Snook. I found it in Suncoast last year, and I was thrilled. I'd heard so much about it and couldn't wait to get home and watch it. It lived up to and surpassed all the great stuff I'd heard. If you haven't seen this movie yet, go out and find it right now.
I would encourage every fan of dark star to seek out the music of a band called Pinback. They're an amazing band and they use a lot of samples of dialog and sound effects from dark star. honestly i didnt find the movie too entertaining, except for pinpointing samples and lines i'd heard in pinback songs. i did feel a little fan-boy shame for renting the movie on the basis that my favorite band samples it, but i'm always happy to join the club of people who've seen such an obscure movie.
This is without doubt JC's best film he's ever produced. The Thing & Halloween are biggies but DS is Mr Big of Bigness!
I loved this film from A to B. $60,000 and 5 years to finish. The sfx are good considering; the acting decent and the plot is literally out of this world. The only criticism is that it's over far too early.
I don't think JC & Danny O could remake the movie now, even if they wanted too. They probably wouldn't be able to resist the temptation of big bucks, big CGs & loads of scriptwriters trying to write cool words.
But the HUMOUR. Maannn!, the humour, both visual & oral, is priceless. Yeah the's the ball, the elevator and the bomb but there's so much more.
For me this is my 3rd fav SF film after 2001 & Bladerunner. Forget the StarWars bulls**t bandwagon and the Terminator tosspots. Those shallow films hide behind a bagfull of money and nothing much else.
Who needs a DeathStar when you've got Bomb #20
DS IS THE FORCE!!!!
Um... I'm hoping the earlier comments were Sarcasm... I'm a big fan of bad movies... but this wasn't even a GOOD bad movie. This was AWFUL. It was worse than Boogie Nights. I almost turned it off a dozen times but i kept waiting for some justification for watching what i already had... unfortuantly such justification was not forthcomming.
Grade A Stinker.
I watched it for free and still feel cheated. I regret the 85 minutes of my life lost to this film.
This is a cute little movie, I've always enjoyed it.
I think what makes the whole Beach Ball Alien scene so funny was the bits where it somehow wrests the broom from Pinbeck, and the one bit where when Pinbeck drops the rubber squeak mouse on the floor and it like leans forward and clicks its claws expectantly. That s**t made me howl. It amazes me how shoving a balloon forward an inch makes me wail with laughter. Next bit that sticks in my head is the elevator scene with Pinbeck stuck in the floor hole with explosive floorplate-jettisoning surrounding his waist. When he grabs the phone on the wall after that exhaustive reaching session, and simply shouts "HELP" into the receiver.
"Hey, do these balloons blow up into all sorts of funny shapes and sizes?"
"Well no, unless of course you think round is funny." Raising Arizona
John Carpenter's derectiorial debut. DARK STAR remans his best film he has ever made. People may say HALLOWEEN is his best, but I think those people are just lying to us. DARK STAR and Carpenter's supernatural film THE FOG remain to be his best features. Does anybody know the history of DARK STAR? If you don't, then I am here to tell you. DARK STAR was an ametur film made on a budget of $60,000 by Carpneter and his pal Dan O'Bannon. Jack H. Harris (the man who produced THE BLOB [1958], 4D MAN [1959], and Dinosaurs! [1960]) struck it big with the release of EQUINOX (1971; a.k.a. THE BEAST) and financed Carpnters film. However, Harris requested additional esquences to be filmed in order for it to be released (Harris did this with EQUINOX as well). Recently, both the original version and the theatrical version have been issued on DVD by VCI Home Video. The transfer quality is said to be excellent, so buy the DVD as soon as possible. Compared to STAR WARS, DARK STAR kicks George Lucas' right in the ass. So go see DARK STAR.
Wer ist der Sänger des Liedes "benson arizona"?
This is a fantastic movie! I'd love to see it remade with a big budget. Ok so the effects are cheesy but for a college project, the screenwriting, directing, and acting are great. Not only does "Dark Star" spoof movies like "2001- A Space Oddessy" and "Dr. Strangelove", but certian scenes become the basis for future John Carpenter/ Dan O'Bannon movies.
Remake "Dark Star" with a big-budget please!!!!!
The above comments are right, this movie is great, definitely a classic (Suggested alternate title: 'When Beach Balls go Bad'). However, why hasn't anybody noticed my favorite fact about this film? The scene in the end, when Talby and Doolittle are floating away from each other, is lifted, almost directly, from Ray Bradbury's classic short story 'Kaleidoscope'. In the story an asteroid destroys a spaceship and the astronauts float away from each other until only two remain in contact. One (Talby, in the film) gets caught up in an asteroid shower and floats away, the other (Doolittle, obviously) floats into Earth's atmosphere and burns up (sorry, no surfboard). Even the dialogue is lifted directly from the story. I really loved seeing the story recreated on film; it was a high point in this fabulously cheesy movie.
Overall this is a fun movie, especially with a bunch of friends, MST3K style. I first saw it in at my school's sci-fi club, and at the time I actually thought it was trying to be a serious, respectable film. I must say I was disappointed to read that it was intended as a comedy, it's really a lot more fun to think of it as a hilariously misguided movie, but it's still a lot of fun as-is. I definitely recommend seeing this film, if only for the beach ball/alien sequence, definitely one of the greatest scenes ever. This is a truly worthwhile viewing experience. (And definitely read 'Kaleidoscope' in the book 'The Illustrated Man' by Ray Bradbury)
Peace.
I'm really surprised no one mentioned the ALIEN ties to DS. Dan O'Bannon (Pinback in DS, and co-writer of both DS and ALIEN) obviously turned some of the Beachball hunting scenes into the basis for ALIEN. As for this being Carpenters best, I don't know about that. I am kinda partial to ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 and THE THING, myself...Then there's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, THE FOG, HALLOWEEN, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA...Ok, I'm a big John Carpenter fan...
Someone once asked me if I ever watched a film called Darkstar...."about 200 times" I replied.
This is one of my fav. films. My fav.part has to be the bomb
phenomonology bit. I'm going to order the DVD as my video copy is now quite bad. I have better quality pornos!
One of the few films I can watch again and again
I love the theme music too: "Benson, Arizona" - the music was composed by John Carpenter himself; the lyrics written by Bill Taylor. John Yager sings on the soundtrack, with backup from John Carpenter, Terry Winkless, Tom Wallace and Justice O'Neil.
Uhh, I liked it, but it could have been edited down to about 30 minutes...don't kill me...
Am I the only one who knows that the ending of the movie is an almost verbatim rip-off of Ray Bradbury's short story "Kaleidescope" from "The Illustrated Man" ?
Carpenter Rules!This is one of the greatest,and that beachball alien has more charm and character than a thousand E.Ts... :-)
i saw this movie YEARS ago, but i still remember laughing heartily at the line (and forgive me if this isn't verbatum):
"my rocket pack blew up! oh, man...."
superb.... remember seeing this on tv aged about 13 and rolling around my bedroom floor in laughter, then discovered a copy at a local yard sale and watched it again aged 30 with the same results. the scene of pinback stuck in the elevator has me in stiches every time. an excellent movie, and proves you don't need a multi-million dollar budget and gigabytes of cgi effects (are you reading this, george lucas??)
Cracking site folks. Full of really brilliant stuff about a truly funny movie. Would anyone know the name of the artist who recorded the theme song 'Benson Arizona', or where I could get a copy of the song?
Thanks
I know I say this alot but the only way you'll get me to watch this movie would be if it was on Mystery Science Theater 3000. I believe Mike/Joel and the Bots would be the only ones to give this more entertainment for me. I bet they would be just chock full of oneliners for this movie.
Damed horrible
Try this sometime: While riding in an elevator full of strangers some time say, "Lt. Pinback, it's time to feed the alien." and half of them will probably break out laughing. The elevator scene in Dark Star is the funniest sketch ever filmed in any scifi movie.
One of the bloody most important movies in my book! I saw it twice in a row, because the little part-arthouse-part-porn-cinema in the town where i lived (it`s true! The arthousepart was for tax reduction reasons integrated in the porn cinema. This sounds modern, but it was of course a dirty trick, hehehe. We kids didn`t care anyway, only the sounds from the other screeningroom were sort of strange to liten to,especially when there were quite parts in the movies we watched. Very funny: we heard the uuh ooh aah-stuff quite loud when we saw 2001-a space odyssy, when the astronauts float through deep space and you can hear only them breathing)
Oh, and of course the bomb is happy to detonate! One should be a happy beeing when ones purpouse in live is clear, and one has the ability to live up to it (or better: die up to it;-)
I loved this film the first time I saw it, and still do. I also love Silent Running, another classic.
Guess what, I love this film. Anyone who mails me the song Benson Arizona will be on my list of Very Nice People. :)
Hysterical! I honestly love this movie! I like to sing the sort-of Outer Space Trucker's theme song while I work at my night job.
I first read about this thing in the book "Cult Movies 2." For all of the cheap special effects this movie, made on a bake-sale budget, actually has a very good plot. It is odd when you think that far worse sciience fiction films have been made since, and with much larger financing at the disposal of the casts and crews.
The first time I saw this film, I was on the floor rolling with laughter. The part where the beach ball alien tickles Pinback under the armpits, well..., we knew that was coming but it was still hilarious. More subtle yet just as brilliant were the scenes of Pinback's "diary". I think the cheesy props fit well into the overall scheme of the film by not detracting from the clever, and at times brilliant dialogue of the script. Hat off JC.
I was 9 years old when this film came out and it has been one of my favourites since then. It is anarchic in the extreme, silly, stupid and yes, I agree, with absolutely crap special effects. BUT, I love it!!
It makes me Smile.
Artists Dealing with Ideas and Storylines that we would now call "thinking outside the Box".
Effects, both visual and aural, that were ( No, make that ARE) special because they created imagery from imagination & resourcefulness rather than throwing money at it.
Judging this Work against that by Studios is missing the Point- This was the new, exciting, very raw work created by young artists living up to their potential.
This Film should be Valued the same way you would value a Baseball Card of Ted Williams when he was just a nobody rookie.
Like a Favorite Book, I return to it on occasion to Recharge my Creative .
The theme song, Benson Arizona, is my favorite shower song. I only wish I could find it complete somewhere other than the copy I made years ago off the VHS.
Dark Star is a great camp movie. I noticed references to it it MIB2.
Ah yes! Fellows of mine own ilk. This movie makes me laugh just reading through these posts! Part of its brilliance is its spontenaity. None of this prepackaged, formulated, "sure fire" hollywood crap! If they thought it would be funny, they wrote it into the screenplay! Oscars be damned! ;)
The theme song is STILL running through my head! Dammit!
This is my second favorite movie after 2001: A Space Odyssey. As funny as it is, I never really thought of it as a comedy. There's lots of serious subtext.
Lots of great comments here. I saw the movie years and years ago on Suspense Theater and spent years looking for it. I was starting to think it didn't really exist, that I had just dreamed it, but then I found it at a video rental and was delighted. I've watched it hundreds of times since then. Great movie!
In case anyone's interested, I've got a yahoo! group devoted to Dark Star. It's at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scoutshipdarkstar
I really enjoyed this movie. The first time I saw it was probably when I was 9 years old after my mom rented it for my little brother, being a major sci-fi fanatic. I am now 16, and I found this little gem at a Suncoast and had to buy it. It is amazing how much I remembered from the movie. I used to think of it as a stupid movie with terrible acting and just bad everything overall, and that's why I liked it. But now, being older, I understand what it really was all about, and its just great! I also noticed a few others mentioned how Silent Running is among one of their favorite movies, well, I find it funny because it happens to be my all-time favorite. Sometimes I think I was born a little too late. :)
This is actually a pretty decent film. Several great comedic moments make the whole thing worth watching. The DVD can be had for around $5-6 on the net. I know because I paid $12.95 last year. (Sigh) That title song is catchy as hell! I remember thinking this was an animated film but bought it after watching the clip on this site with the beachball. I was not disappointed!
I don't know if anybody mentioned it yet, but this was the inspiration for the classic BBC series Red Dwarf (see the documentary on the Red Dwarf DVDs for proof of this claim). RD turned out to be one of the funniest things on Earth. Somebody mentioned Silent Running...it was the inspiration for the show Mystery Science Theater 3000 (at least the "guy stranded with his robots" theme of the show).
I was channel surfing one night a few years ago and came across Dark Star. I had taken a hit of acid about an hour earlyer, needless to say i realy enjoyed the movie:)
Alan Dean Foster wrote a fairly decent novelization of the screenplay of Dark Star. As I recall, it's worth reading. Of course, a lot of the humor is better onscreen...
I remember seeing this movie a bunch back when we first got cable- Showtime ran it often, and for some reason always with a short called "Hardware Wars" preceding it. That was a low-budget Star Wars parody- stuff like the spaceships were irons flying through space, etc- that was pretty funny too. For a while I thought they were both part of the same movie! Like siamese twins, you never saw one without the other.
Only scfi that makes me cry. And I´m a man.
Really, the end of the movie gets tears in my eyes.
Just absolutely magnificent.
Oh, this site is lovely, I don't know how what started me obsessively thinking about Dark Star, but sometime last week after 20 years, I started recreating it in my mind. I remembered the alien, phenominology, the eyes of the frozen captain, Talby staring into space then going off with the pheonix asteroids--I couldn't get it out of my mind, and I searched for it at the video store with no luck, finally I searched online and got it within two days. Aaaaaaaah, there was sooo much I had forgotten! I had forgotten "Benson Arizona"! I love this movie, I've played it repeatedly since getting it. It was playing as I made dinner and my husband walked in asking what that horrible movie was. What a shock...and we're supposed to stay married for the next 50 years?
Ditto to the previous comment mentioning the band Pinback. They are one of my favorite bands, but I had no idea when I saw the movie that there was a connection. I laughed to hear of Sgt. Pinback, all the samples that I knew from the songs, and Talby. (Talby is the name of a Pinback song. Seriously, Pinback is an amazing band.
And if ya like Pinback....check out Heavy Vegetable and Thingy, also the brainchilds (brainchildren?) of Mr. Rob Crow. OK, enough Indy rock 'shoutouts'. I liked Dark Star on it's own. Target practice with laser rifles. Rubber chickens and novelty eyeball spring glasses. Phenomenology? Brilliant!
I loved this film right from the start. Saw DS first when I was 17, now I´m 39 and I still love it... There`s humour, sarcasm - and it shows that humans will always be the same idiots ,even they`re in outer space...
Kinda reminds me of the 60s sci fi classic LOST IN SPACE where their aleins were kind of strange looking and one episode featured mine made from BEACHBALLS and another talked about NUTRON BOMBS which looked a lot like the beads that some toddlers would string on a red rope kindda fun
Is EQUINOX, aka THE BEAST ever going to be released to DVD? and how about DON'T BE AFRAID OF TEH DARK? if anyone knows about this, please let me know.
This movie was so freakin sweet! A classic one of a kind work of art for science fiction and B movies in general. And so funny!! I just saw this for the first time recently.
This movie is hilarious and obviously is has a very intelligent plot, i like all the movie, especially the final reasoning of bomb 20 about his existence.
great great movie, strange, but 99% of people who likes this movie, likes 2001 too, me either.
This is probably my favorite sci-fi movie of all time. Ever since I saw it I always answer my phone with "Help". JC is god.
Saw this for the first time on TV when I was about 13 -- laughed so hard I nearly hacked up a lung! It's one of my all-time favorites, and I'm thrilled to get it on DVD. Whenever anyone starts talking about which really "bad", cheesy movies they like, I always recommend DS to them. And Pinback's eight track diary is hilarious -- his explanation of how he accidentally got shot into space because he didn't know how to work the microphone in his helmet was priceless!
I found the song online!
http://www.benzedrine.cx/darkstar.html
I watched this movie a long time ago on a german tv channel, and i liked it so much. I wish, Mr. Carpenter make a remake, it will be great fun. :]
My top 5 SF flix!
1 - Dark Star
2 - Lathe of Heaven
3 - Silent Running
4 - Blade Runner
5 - Space Balls (...just kidding)
5 - Sleeper
My top favorite DS moments:
* The alien tapping it's toe nails on the floor.
* "And now for your listening enjoyment; Rosellini's Barber of Seville"
* The entire Doolittle/Powell conversation.
* The arm-less alien grab he broom?
* "Boiler punches me in the arm when noone's looking."
I'd love to see a remake, but am affraid of what Hollywood hacks would do to such a classic.
I stumbled upon this film once when zapping thru channels, and had a delightful surprise. I realized the allusion to Stanley Kubrik's Space Odissey when I first saw it, and when I saw the scene of the B-52 captain riding the atomic bomb in Dr. Strangelove years later the connection to DS occured to me immediately.
Great great movies all of them!
I saw an interview with John Carpenter. He said this was ment to be a comedy! But in the era when it was made America had such a drug culture that the audiance just said "Wowwwww" and looked vacant.
The scenes of Lt. Pinback feeding the alien and cleaning the elevator made me laugh so hard that I bought a copy of the film when it came out on video! Twenty some odd years after seeing this movie, those scenes still put me on the floor.
I have to say, one part that made me laugh unexpectedly was when the ship drops out of its hyperdrive (or whatever) -- and it just suddenly STOPS. No sound, nothing. Just like they quit animating its movement. I thought that was so jarringly funny....
I've got this cinematic wonder on DVD.
The dead pan acting suits this movie wonderfully. Never fails to get me laughing hysterically.
YE GODS!, DONT EVER TRY TO BECOME A FILM CRITIC!, YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVE NO IDEA WHATSOEVER OF WHAT A GREAT FILM LOOKS LIKE! DARKSTAR IS A GENUINE CLASSIC, A FILM THAT REAL MOVIE LOVERS STILL TALK ABOUT TODAY, ITS A GREAT FILM, ON A PAR AT LEAST WITH SO-CALLED TODAYS "BLOCKBUSTERS" SO I SUGGEST YOU HANG YOUR CAP UP AND TRY COMMENTATING ON SAY...FISHING?
I wrote about this one some time ago. It has since become one of those on the short list that I can pretty much watch any time and be elated for a while after.
I don't know if a remake would be any good. This is a product of it's time. Instead, they should just do the Red Dwarf movie. :thumbup:
...erm, on second thought... cheech & chong would be perfect for this kind of thing and as of now (2008) they are working together again. Huuummmmm..... *scratches chin at length*
Probably the funniest scene in any B-movie I've ever watched was Pinbeck staggering out of the elevator with the rim of that escape hatch around his neck, smoke pouring everywhere. Willie Coyote on his worst days had nothing on this. :bouncegiggle:
Loved it! Found it absolutely hilarious! :bouncegiggle: It's good to be bad, bad movies are sinfully good! Sit me down and slap on some JLo I'm not ashamed! If you like bad movies check out my reviews including Dark Star (they are not all bad movies admittedly). laradavy (dot) com
Actually watched this one more than once. Surfing in space at the end, what a great movie... Yeah and chasing around the balloon creature was fun. With a broomstick...
I have this on VHS. Like (seemingly) every 70's independent sci-fi feature, there's little plot, and lots of talking, wandering around, and random weird things. Unlike (seemingly) every 70's independent sci-fi feature, there are jokes, some of which are funny. Their alien has an amazing amount of personality (for a beach-ball), and I like the way Doolittle tried to disarm the bomb (very funny). All in all, it's watchable, if your in the right mindset.
P.S. The Phoenix Asteroids are pretty.