Day 65: Dark Star (Carpenter, 1974)

Wednesday, 30 May 2012 06:24 Posted by Katie Parker
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I usually begin these reviews with a brief plot synopsis. That way, anyone reading this blog can instantly tell whether or not they may like a film. Unfortunately I cannot do the same for this feature length debut by John Carpenter since I have absolutely no idea what was going on throughout.

But here is what I made of the story anyway: A group of BeeGees look-alikes decide to make a film one day with a single camera, and by the sounds of it, they don’t even have a boom. They cut out a piece of paper in the shape of a space ship, flick some white paint onto a black sheet and call it outer space. By the time the story actually begins they seemed to have exhausted all their so called ‘special effects’ and so we just see them fooling around with some classic comedy props, which is where I get confused – I don’t know whether or not this is supposed to be a comedy! Anyway, after a lot of fooling around, shouting at each other and sunbathing (why?) the ship, Mother, (this film is written by the same guy who did Alien) asks one of the men to “feed the alien”. If, by this point, you are still interested/sane then the worst is not over… The astronaut goes into a room holding a brush, beckoning an alien toward him – this is the point where the film could have redeemed itself with a naff yet scary-in-a-50s-horror-kind-of-way alien. The alien was a beach ball with bird-like claws! After that the beach ball gets on the loose and there is a confusing incident with an elevator, a lot of shouting, a frozen guy and a Hal9000 type bomb, the end!

It’s not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, and it’s not just because of the terrible ‘special effects’ (they used a torch as the sun) because that can be forgiven given the fact that this is from the mid-70s, but what cannot be forgiven is the God awful acting, frankly inexperienced direction, choice of props (a beach ball??? Really?) and the overall quality of the script. If you need an example of how terrible the script is then just watch the last 10 minutes – this was their chance to bring some action, tension and emotion into the film, but instead it’s as if they were trying to wrap it up as quick as possible – no wonder it’s only 82 minutes long, they were probably too embarrassed with it to go on!

1 star film

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