While John Carpenter directed and scored the music to Dark Star, Dan O’Bannon seemed to have had a hand in most other facets of the film’s production.

When the beach ball jumps on Pinback’s head, face hugging and flapping at him with its claws, and the evil acid synths start to pound, you fear the worst. His unsettling camera angles and lighting, with shots of deserted corridors and hallways, combined with his eerie incidental music definitely creates a sense of real terror. It’s in these scenes that the film is at its most scary and this is down to John Carpenter’s direction. In the film’s longest sequence, Pinback, armed with a broom, chases the Alien through air locks, passageways and into the lift shaft (shades of Alien again) where he ends up stranded and hanging on for dear life. His main ally on board is space cadet Sgt Talby, who spends his time in the observation dome at the top of the ship. Lt Doolittle, the lead ranking officer, is a soulful ex-surfer who’s created a musical bottle organ, which he plays alone in his downtime in one of the ship’s many engine rooms. Plus, since the ship’s stock of toilet roll blew up in a freak computer malfunction, they’re probably not the most hygienic of individuals either.Įach crew member, however, is fleshed out with their own unique characteristics. These spacemen can’t even remember their first names. By presenting us with hippies in space, O’Bannon and Carpenter are parodying a few myths of the sci-fi genre, of brave pioneers who boldly go where no man has gone before. With their long hair, beards and handlebar ‘tashes the crew resemble more The Grateful Dead than the clean-cut, square-jawed action heroes of 50s and 60s sci-fi movies. With only the soothing female voice of the ship’s computer (think ‘Mother’ with a few technical faults) to keep them company, insipid lounge music to listen to and bland space food to eat, they are slowly flipping out. Like the crew of the Nostromo, they’re a lonely unglamorous bunch of blue collar workers who are just doing their job.

The five astronauts have been stuck on the spaceship for twenty years already and are clearly bored and frustrated with each other’s company and the monotony of their existence. The film is set in the year 2250 and follows the trials and tribulations of the crew of the Dark Star as they career around the galaxy blowing up ‘unstable planets’ that stand in the way of Earth’s space colonisation.

John carpenter dead space concept art