John Carpenter's First Movie is Fun, Not Frightening, and Totally Free
John Carpenter may be a horror master, but his first break in the movie industry wasn't actually scary at all.
Back in 1974, two years before George Lucas began shooting Star Wars, the great John Carpenter made one of the most out there space films that Hollywood had ever seen — and one that continues to influence filmmakers to this day. It began as a University project, expanded into a proper feature, and eventually sent its director on one of the great directorial runs in the history of cinema.
The film we are talking about, of course, is 1974’s Dark Star, a sci-fi hangout film and existential cult classic that’s available to watch right now for free on the JustWatch TV streaming platform. Here are just a few of the reasons why you should do just that.
What is Dark Star About?
As a description like “hangout film” might suggest, there’s nothing quite like Dark Star in Carpenter’s filmography. The director is rightly known as a master of horror and sci-fi (Halloween, Escape From New York, The Thing), but his debut is closer in tone to the work of Douglas Adams or shows like Red Dwarf. This is especially strange considering where the genre was at in the early ‘70s — a period during which most sci-fi films, for better and worse, were grasping to emulate what Stanley Kubrick had achieved with 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Carpenter’s bright idea was not to satirise the introspection of writers like Arthur C. Clarke but to lovingly subvert it into something more human and funny. Set around the year 2250, a time in which the human race has started to colonise other worlds, Dark Star centers on the jaded crew of a not-particularly glamorous spaceship whose mission it is to destroy unstable planets in potentially habitable solar systems. This decidedly nihilistic premise is counterpointed by the film’s relatively chill mood and the deadbeat vibe of most everyone on board: from the replacement commander (Brian Narelle), who spends the long, deep space hours dreaming of surfing back in Malibu, to Mother, the ship’s vaguely flirtatious AI system.
Of course, we never get the sense that the mission will be completed or that it even really matters. As Carpenter once explained, the film is pretty much “Waiting for Godot in space” — although I’d argue with a lot more laughs.
Why You Should Watch Dark Star
If that clash of black holes and Sam Beckett isn’t enough for you, there’s plenty more stuff to enjoy here. Take the ship's previous commander, who, despite being dead, can still talk to the crew in his cryogenically frozen state. Then there’s the ship’s on-board alien, which looks a bit like if a beach ball and a tomato had a baby and which is said to have been so disliked by O’Bannon (Carpenter’s college buddy and the film’s co-creator) that he decided to go off and write a much scarier film called Alien. That otherworldly being is also voiced by Nick Castle, an old friend of Carpenter’s who went on to play Michael Myers in Halloween (both the original and more recent versions) and later co-write the script for Escape From New York.
Outside of all that tasty lore, Dark Star is really just a nice watch for fans of low budget and lovingly made science fiction. This is the kind of film that shows hanging out in space as being kind of boring, but in an interesting way: a place where you might find yourself having a chat with a sentient bomb just to pass the time, or arguing with your fellow astronauts about who’s using all the toilet roll. There are janky elements to it (more on the low budget in a second), but I’d wager that Dark Star looks a whole lot better than it should and in terms of influence, it’s hard to imagine the likes of Sunshine, Guardians of the Galaxy or Project Hail Mary existing without it. For cinephiles and sci-fi fans, it is an invaluable reference to have in your back pocket.
John Carpenter Worked Wonders on a Small Budget
From its early days as a student film, Carpenter and O’Bannon naturally had to be incredibly thrifty when it came to spending. Working with an eventual war chest of only $60k (increased from roughly $6k for the original film), they pretty much shared most of the key responsibilities — with O’Bannon acting as editor, production designer, and visual effects supervisor and also playing the role of Sergeant Pinback. This left Carpenter to compose the film’s score — a practical solution to a financial constraint that basically changed the course of film history.
The shots of the ship from the outside and some of the more challenging sequences, like the space walks, haven’t aged as well, but the interiors still look great even when you know that some of the consoles were constructed using ice trays and random bits and pieces from 99c stores. It’s a wonderful achievement that deserves its place in the sci-fi canon.
