This article is about the 1974 John Carpenter dark stock. Dark Star is a 1974 American science fiction comedy film directed and produced by John Carpenter and co-written with Dan O’Bannon.
Beginning as a University of Southern California student film produced from 1970 to 1972, the film was gradually expanded to feature film length by 1974, when it appeared at Filmex before receiving a limited theatrical release in 1975. The feature directorial debut for Carpenter, and the feature debut for O’Bannon, Dark Star was also produced and scored by Carpenter, while O’Bannon also served as editor, production designer, and visual effects supervisor and appeared as Sergeant Pinback. In the mid-22nd century, mankind has begun to colonize interstellar space. Armed with artificially intelligent Thermostellar Triggering Devices, which can talk and reason, the scout ship Dark Star searches for “unstable planets” which might threaten future colonization. Twenty years into its mission, the Dark Star has aged and suffers frequent malfunctions. Commanding officer Powell has died in one such event, but remains aboard in cryogenic suspension.
Lieutenant Doolittle, a former surfer from Malibu, has taken over as commander. Pinback plays practical jokes, maintains a video diary, and has adopted a ship’s mascot in the form of a mischievous “beach ball”-like alien who refuses to stay in a storage room. After it attempts to push him down an elevator shaft, he eventually kills it with a gun. En route to their next target in the Veil Nebula, the Dark Star is hit by electromagnetic energy during a space storm, resulting in another on-board malfunction. 20 receives an erroneous order to deploy, but the ship’s computer talks it back into the bomb bay. An accident with a laser then causes more mayhem, damaging the ship’s computer.
Pinback opens the airlock to admit Doolittle, but accidentally ejects Talby, who was in the airlock attempting to repair the laser. Doolittle leaves the ship to retrieve Talby, who is in a space suit but has no maneuvering device. The bomb, having learned Cartesian doubt, trusts only itself. Convinced that only it exists, and that its sole purpose in life is to explode, it does so. The screenplay was written by John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon while film students at the University of Southern California.
