Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8221 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-04-19
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Collector's Edition, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 79 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Dark Star is absurd, surreal and very funny. John Carpenter once described it as "Waiting for Godot in space." (It's also, surely, one of the primary inspirations for Red Dwarf.) Made at a cost of practically nothing, the film's effects are nevertheless impressive and, along with the number of ideas crammed into its 83 minutes, ought to shame makers of science fiction films costing hundreds of times more.

The story concerns the Dark Star's crew who are on a 20-year mission to destroy unstable planets and make way for future colonisation. The smart bombs they use to effect this zoom off cheerfully to do their duty. But unlike Star Trek, in which order prevails, the nerves of this crew are becoming increasingly frayed to the point of psychosis. Their captain has been killed by a radiation leak that also destroyed their toilet paper. "Don't give me any of that 'Intelligent Life' stuff," says Commander Doolittle when presented with the possibility of alien life. "Find me something I can blow up." When an asteroid storm causes a malfunction, Bomb Number 20 (the most cheerful character in the film) has to be repeatedly talked out of exploding prematurely, each time becoming more and more peevish, until they have to teach him phenomenology to make him doubt his existence. And the film's apocalyptic ending, lifted almost wholly from Ray Bradbury's story "Kaleidoscope", has the remaining crew drifting away from each other in space, each to a suitably absurd end. --Jim Gay

Special Features

• CGI menus
  
• Synopsis
  
• Character and Crew biographies
  
• Chapter points
  
• Stills gallery
  
• Publicity material
  
• Theatrical trailer
  
• Commemorative Anniversary packaging

DVD Technical Information:

• Soundtrack: Dolby Digital 2.0: English
  
• Running Time: 79 mins
  
• Region Code: 2
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85 Anamorphic Wide Screen/4:3

Synopsis
The first film from John Carpenter is a hilarious romp in a not-so-glamourous spaceship into the outer reaches of space. A team of astronauts manning the beat-up spaceship Dark Star are on a mission across the universe to seek out and destroy unstable planets. The journey is wrought with mishaps and danger seems to come from the most unexpected places. There are misbehaving pet aliens, suicidal bombs that see no reason to live and want to blow themselves up, frozen crewmates dispensing advice from beyond the grave and a surly, unhelpful main computer that holds the men it serves in total contempt. Despite all these problems, the crew is still bored to the brink of madness. Co-written by Dan O'Bannon, who would go on to write the script for ALIEN, the film is brimming with jabs at the science fiction genre. John Carpenter cut his directing teeth on this film, which he also co-wrote. Made while Carpenter was a college student and produced for very little money, DARK STAR is considered to be the most successful student film ever made.

Customer Reviews

Great little film let down by careless DVD mastering
I'm fond of this film, which shows just how much can be done with how little, but I really can't recommend this region 2 pressing: the sound is very distorted, and the picture is soft and murky. Unless you're a die-hard fan, hang on until somebody finds a better print and makes a new master from it.

Not Anamorphic
Having been waiting for a decent edition of this movie on DVD since the format was launched, I was pleased to see this package with "anamorphic widescreen' plastered across the front, so I picked it up straight off.
Unfortunately, it's a port of the original US edition. Pretty good in and of itself - 2 versions of the film, a handful of extras - but NOT anamorphic/enhanced for 16x9 format.

The film itself is terrific. Funny, touching, tense, imaginative, beautifully designed, raw, bleak. And surprisingly sad coming from Howard Hawks-worshipping man's man John Carpenter. Dan O'Bannon's so funny, you wonder why he didn't really act again.

So... best available edition, but not what it claims.

A low budget classic - the human side of space fiction
This is one of my top ten favourite films of all time - why? Especially as I'm not a science fiction fan. But I like the way it injects some humour, realism and cynicism into the "glamour" of space travel - how would you feel if you'd been stuck out in space with the same 3 guys for 20 years and Congress weren't going to pay for a rescue ship for a bit longer because of budget cuts? Low budget, but all the characters ring true. And any film with a guy hanging half in, half out of the bottom of a lift waving his legs frantically and listening to Rossini's "Barber of Seville", who has got there by a totally logical and natural sequence of actions, has got to have something going for it! How much you enjoy it probably depends on what appeals to your sense of humour.