Dark Star

[James]

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.  

[Squishy]

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.)  

[hawkmankt@earthlink.net]

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.

[Scaarge@AOL.com]

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??"

[Brandon]

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?

[ebolamonk@yahoo.com]

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.

[Justin]

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!!!!

[David]

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.

[Chadzilla]

This is a cute little movie, I've always enjoyed it.

[Big Vic]

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

[Chris K.]

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.

[richard]

Wer ist der Sänger des Liedes "benson arizona"?

[Dave]

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!!!!!

[Ethan]

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.