SPACED-OUT FOR $19.99
Last summer, TIME magazine had a cover story trumpeting (or perhaps contributing to) the upcoming INDEPENDENCE DAY juggernaut. In the article itself, they referred to ID4's $70 million budget as "thrifty." I remember reading that, screaming "WHAT?!? When did seventy million dollars [that's seven followed by seven zeroes, folks!] qualify as 'thrifty?'", and trying to decide whether to laugh or puke. Seventy mill...Bosh. You want "thrifty" cinematic SF? I got two words for you: John Carpenter. Two more: Dan O'Bannon. And two final words: DARK STAR (1973).
Released during the "dark period" between 2001: A SPACE ODESSY and STAR WARS (okay, hotshot, what other SF films of consequence were released in that time? LOGAN'S RUN? I rest my case), Carpenter's debut film started life as a student film, but was expanded to feature length with funds from THE BLOB producer Jack Harris. Total budget outlay? $60,000. That's not a misprint -- sixty grand for a flick with a spaceship, (semi-) hi-tech props, even an alien (more on that later). Even by '73 standards, that's chickenfeed; these days, $60K wouldn't even cover the bill for the caterers. Even more amazing is the division of labor between co-scripters Carpenter and O'Bannon: the former also co-produced and supplied a wide range of backing music (everything from synth pulses to hard rock and even country!), while the latter designed the sets and special effects, edited the film, and even co-starred in it.
On a twenty-year mission to nuke "unstable" planets in systems ripe for colonization, the DARK STAR and its crew are definitely not happy campers. The ship is rundown and constantly malfunctioning, the original captain (Joe Saunders) is in cryonic suspension after being electrocuted by his seat, astrogator Talby (Dre Pahich) has taken to counting stars in the observation dome, Boiler (Cal Kuniholm, in the sort of porcine-redneck role William Forsythe would excel in a decade later) has developed an unhealthy fondness for the laser rifle, and Pinback (O'Bannon) is convinced he's really an imposter sent in to replace the "real" Pinback. He also has the odious task of feeding the beachball-like alien they'd taken aboard as a pet ("And I thought you were cute," he grumbles while tracking the beastie down). To make matters even worse, one of the ship's sentient bombs is threatening to detonate, even though it's stuck in the bomb bay and nowhere ready for deployment...
I'd known about most of DARK STAR's plot and look&feel years before I actually got to see it, thanks to various film books and Alan Dean Foster's excellent novelization -- none of which prepared me for just how good this film is. Carpenter's "cardboard spaceship" (his description) zips through space quite convincingly (and even has a nifty red energy shield in one scene). Much has been made of how O'Bannon recycled the film's middle section of Pinback hunting/being hunted by the alien for his ALIEN script, but on reflection, the crews of the NOSTROMO and DARK STAR have more in common than you might think. They're not heros, they're truck drivers: spacefaring Teamsters bitching about wages, working conditions, and each other. And with minor exceptions (Pinback records his video diaries on what is obviously an old 8-track cartridge), the film's "technology" still stands up pretty well nearly a quarter-century after its release.
With today's gazillion-dollar budgets continuing to make headlines ($200 mill so James Cameron can re-sink the Titantic? BFD...), we need to embrace the "little guys" who can make unique, entertaining flix with chewing gum and twine: CLERKS (watch for a review soon!), Wayne Wang's CHAN IS MISSING, MAN BITES DOG, EL MARIACHI -- and Carpenter's "poor, poor, poor man's 2001."
This page hosted by 
Get your own Free Home Page |
||
 Send mail to dflat@juno.com |
Back to Da
Homepage!  |