Dom Robinson reviews

Cat.no: FABD 2001

Cert: PG

Running time: 82 minutes

Year: 1974

Pressing: 1999

Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)

Chapters: 18 plus extras

Sound: Linear PCM Mono

Languages: English

Subtitles: None

Widescreen: 1.85:1

16:9-enhanced: No

Macrovision: No

Disc Format: DVD 5

Price: £75.99

Extras : Scene index, Trailer, Photo Gallery, Biographies

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Director:

John Carpenter (Escape From L.A., Escape From New York, Halloween, Vampires)

Producers:

Jack H. Harris and John Carpenter

Screenplay:

John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon

Music:

John Carpenter

Cast:

Doolittle: Brian Narelle
Boiler: Cal Kuniholm
Talby: Dre Pahich
Pinback: Dan O'Bannon

Dark Star is a parody of old sci-fi films including 2001: A Space Odyssey, for its female version of HAL, with the astronauts going between planets and blowing up the unstable ones, while coming across an alien and having to carry it back to Earth. Then the ship's computer suffers a serious malfunction and, as alighted to on the front cover, only one of the crew remains, having to 'surf' back to Earth.

The film is the result of a collaboration between writer-director John Carpenter and co-screenwriter Dan O'Bannon when they made a short film based on the same premise on a film studies course at the University of Southern California. They had no budget so relied on bizarre props such as a beach ball in place of an alien with a voice that sounds like Pingu, not to mention a tea tray used as a life-support machine. Eventually they got the go-ahead - and $60,000 - from Hollywood distributor Jack Harris, who co-produced the end result, to

While Carpenter went on to direct a number of films such as Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, The Fog, Escape from New York (and L.A.), The Thing, In the Mouth of Madness and the most recent, Vampires, Dan O'Bannon has mostly made a career out of screenwriting on films such as Alien, Blue Thunder, Lifeforce, Total Recall, Screamers, Alien 3 and also wrote and directed one of my all-time favourite pieces of nonsense, Return of the Living Dead in 1985. Both have added other strings to their bow in their time, including Carpenter composing the score for many of his films, giving them his distinctive moody-synthesizer style. turn it into a feature-length film.

On the plus side, this the first time this film has been available in widescreen in the UK on either DVD or video and it's the original 1.85:1 ratio, unlike every Carpenter film to come after it which were all shot in 2.35:1. However, although it's good to see such an effort has been made by an independent company, the print could use a good remastering as well as making it anamorphic but such can be very expensive to do and the Region 1 disc doesn't have this either. The average bitrate is a 6.85Mb/s, occasionally peaking over 9Mb/s.

The sound quality also has its problems. It comes in mono, but isn't particularly clear and at times sounds quite fragmented meaning that sometimes you can't hear the dialogue clearly. There are no subtitles either which doesn't help.

Extras :

Chapters :

Languages & Subtitles :

The film is in English only, with no subtitles.

And there's more... :

A Photo Library contains fifteen stills from the film and the Biographies section provides brief information and filmographies on Carpenter and O'Bannon.

Menu :

The menu is static and silent and mirrors an old computer screen with green writing. Reminds me of the Tandy TRS80 :)

Overall, this film didn't grab me as much as Carpenter's later film and the picture isn't of the best quality, but if you must get it in widescreen then a DVD would be better than the VHS alternative.