Symptom 145: Dark Star - John Carpenter In Space - a podcast by Sci-Fi Malady

Dark Star - released theatrically in 1975 - is the earliest of master filmmaker John Carpenter’s work. It started as a film school project on a budget of $1000, and then $6000 and then $60,000. Buried within this overzealous endeavor was an interesting concept about investigating the nature of reality, was is knowable what is tangible and how can we actually know what is real if the only thing we can really rely upon is our sensory data. Unfortunately what would have been a great high concept for a cerebral science fiction short film or twilight zone episode was padded out to theatrical length with horrible comedy, a beach ball alien (literally a beach ball) and a malfunctioning talking bomb with a personality that comes to believe it is God and kills them all.

While this film lacks a plot, action, drama, good character interaction, sense of direction, comedy, a likeable character or any sense of story, the film making chops of the future legend are evident and co-writer Dan O’Bannon learned from his mistakes to bring us Alien.

This one is a cult classic that while not horribly bad like other movies is about as exciting as watching grass grow. Carpenter and O'Bannon did what all creators do and learned from their shortcomings in this one and built on their success, but to be truthful there was no where to go but up from this one.

Dark Star, 1974, its….something.

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