Day 61: You Are False Data

DARK STAR (1974)
Directed by John Carpenter
Starring: Dan O'Bannon, Brian Narelle, Cal Kuniholm, Dre Pahich

On a decaying spaceship called Dark Star, four astronauts schlep around the galaxy destroying "unstable planets" so as to make way for Earth's colonization of the cosmos.  Of course, if you're stuck in space for that long, that means you have a lot of time to kill.  And the crew does so by telling stories that go nowhere and caring for a beachball-shaped alien that likes to play hide-and-seek.  But after the ship's faulty wiring tells one of the "smart bombs" to detonate itself, the crew must try to convince it not to do so.  As a result, the bomb develops a pretty serious "god-complex."

If all of this sounds like a good idea for a short student film, then you're right on the money.  At first, that's exactly what it was.  Director John Carpenter and writer/co-star Dan O'Bannon made a 45-minute version of this film at USC.  Then, over the next three years, they expanded it to 83 minutes (most of it footage of Sgt. Pinback - played by O'Bannon - chasing the beachball alien around the ship), with the help of producer Jack Harris.  The final completed feature-length version debuted in 1974 to little fanfare. 

So yeah, blah blah blah, history.  Is it any good?  Well, yes and no.

The major problem with developing a short into a feature is pacing.  It can be - and has been - done to great effect in such films as George Lucas' THX 1138 and David Lynch's Eraserhead (which was meant to be a feature all along).  But the problem with Dark Star is that...well, nothing interesting happens until about forty minutes into the film.  Until then, we just sort of "hang out" with the crew.  We even spend 20 excruciating minutes watching Sgt. Pinback chasing the beachball alien.  This sequence could have been it's own short.  In fact, O'Bannon recycled this theme into a little film you may have heard of called Alien a few years later.

Also, this film is purported to be a comedy.  Fine.  Sci-fi comedies are rare, but not unheard of.  But comedies are supposed to be funny.  And, because of the aforementioned pacing problems, there's not much to laugh at until the we near the film's climax.  One of the funniest scenes is when Lt. Doolittle (Narelle) consults the dead-yet-cryogenically-frozen Commander Powell on how to disarm the bomb that threatens to blow them all to bits.  But Powell has been frozen so long, his only question is, "How are the Dodgers doing?"

The DVD version I got has what essentially amounts to an apology written by O'Bannon himself and shown in the style of the open crawl from the Star Wars films.  He tells the story of the film and how it's supposed to be funny and all that.  He also says that you don't have to laugh if you don't want to, "Unless I'm in the room with you."  Well it's a good thing he wasn't, because I really didn't laugh all that much.

Now, as far as student films go, I've seen worse.  But it should have stayed a student film until a few re-writes were done, and they could have raised enough money to make it look halfway decent.  Even as a feature, it still has all the trappings that make people know it's a student film: bad lighting, bad acting and terrible sound design.  But this just goes to show you the power that exposure has in Hollywood.  As we all know, John Carpenter did alright for himself.  Dan O'Bannon went on to become one of the most sought-after screenwriters in town.  So even if your debut is as inauspicious as this one, don't beat yourself up too badly.  If the right people see it, you never know what could happen next.

NEXT WEEK: David Lynch's Dune