Time to Feed the Alien

John Carpenter has earned a reputation as the ultimate shoestring auteur. From his D.I.Y. synthesizer scores, to using a turned inside out William Shatner mask to create Halloweens iconic villain, nothing’s too cheap for him.

Four years before Halloween made him a huge success; Carpenter wrote and directed the sci-fi oddity known as Dark Star. The story of four bored astronauts on a decades long mission to blow up unstable planets using intelligent atomic weaponry. Essentially a parody of Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey, it seems Carpenter went out of his way to make the films as bizarre as possible.

The astronauts are essentially apathetic proto-slackers, whose boredom has degenerated into a full blown existential crisis, having been travelling and blowing up planets for 20 years (though by some hyperspace fluke they have only aged 3). Compared to the pristine interiors on 2001 the Dark Star ship is the intergalactic equivalent of 1975 Skoda, Nothing works, the crew sleep in a converted food locker and the ships computer (who sounds suspiciously like HALs bitchy, overly educated, little sister) plays the kind of country and western popular, during the early 70s, with the stoner crowd.

As with everything Carpenter does, he manages to get a lot from fuck all. The special effects are, quite frankly, awful, looking like they were made on a budget of a crinkled five pound note. However as they were probably made on a budget of a heavily tarnished twenty pence piece it is rather impressive. Nothing demonstrates this more than the pet Alien the crew have picked up on their travels. Essentially a large orange beach ball with a pair of gloves stuck to the bottom of it. It makes early Dr. Who look like James Cameron’s Avatar. The film has a kind of 80s arcade game quality to it (think Asteroids), and depending on your point of view this is either Quality kitch, or massively shit.

Now this isn’t the greatest thing that John Carpenter has ever made (in my opinion that’s gonna be Big Trouble in Little China) but it’s a good example of his early work, complete with synth soundtrack and wry humour, and is a must see for any of Carpenters diehard followers, and maybe a curiosity for more casual fans.