Dark Star

[Robert L. Folkner]

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.

[yeti]

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.

[Melinda]

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!!

[JT Crowns]

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 .

[Chuck]

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.

[bambi]

Dark Star is a great camp movie.  I noticed references to it it MIB2.

[DangerMouse]

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! ;)

[No Nukes]

The theme song is STILL running through my head! Dammit!

[Collin R. Skocik]

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

[Tyler]

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. :)

[James Perry]

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).

[john]

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:)

[Phil Plait]

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...

[Jeffrey Stube]

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.

[K from Finland]

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.