Dark Star Crashes

When we first watched Dark Star: Hyperdrive Edition: Director's Cut (1974), it wasn’t that long after it was released, and it was already a midnight cult movie. (Of course, that was the theatrical cut, but never mind.) We wanted to watch it again, partly because I always remember it as being about one guy and some robots - and I’ve never even seen Silent Running.

The spaceship Dark Star has been on its mission to blow up unstable planets for many years. The captain died in a stupid accident, the ship is showing signs of wear and tear, and the crew is getting a little strange. Talby, played by Dre Pahich but voiced by director John Carpenter, sits in a dome under the stars and just watches. Doolittle, played by Brian Narelle, talks about surfing in Malibu. Boiler, Cal Kuniholm, just wants to find more planets to blow up. And Pinback, played by co-writer and SFX man Dan O’Bannon, claims to be on the ship by accident - he isn’t even Pinback, he’s just wearing his uniform. He is responsible for taking care of the ship’s pet alien, a giant red beach ball with clawed feet. That’s great prop work there, and his fights with Pinback are great comedy.

The movie kind of meanders along, until the smart bomb they are dropping on a planet gets stuck, and they have to talk it out of exploding.

This was John Carpenter’s student project, with some additional material added - not all material that Carpenter was happy with. In fact, the Special Hyperdrive Edition is actually shorter than the theatrical release. So the muffin-tin chestplate on the spacesuit came from poverty, but also made it fun. It seems that audiences didn’t get that, and just thought it was cheap. At least we all got it later on.

Since we got it from the library instead of Netflix, I won’t be blogging about The Cloverfield Paradox, which we watched after this. We liked it (recognizing it as a big step down from the first two). It was mostly a kind of fun “haunted spaceship” movie. But watching Dark Star definitely helped set the mood.