The order of things happening in Dark Star is not even particularly important, this take on a space sci-fi film had a very low budget, considering their mascot alien is a painted beach ball as one of the low budget factors to this movie. It is kind of a ship of oddballs who are forced to live and work together, Pinback wants to have a comrade relationship with the others and tell stories and jokes and such but the others do not really want to. Forcing Pinback to be one of the most talkative and comedic of them all. The truth is actually that Pinback is not even really supposed to be on the ship, he kind of snuck on in the last few moments before take off in the real Pinback's place. Doolittle is the guy who takes charge after Commander Powell died in a tragic accident having to do with a radioactive blast, but the people on Earth won't pay for a shield to protect the other guys because it is too expensive, sounds terribly familiar to situations on Earth in times of budget cuts. Doolittle has the personality of a wall, the most unique thing about him is the fact that he used to surf when he was younger. Francis Boiler is also on the ship and he is sort of like the rough and tough kind of guy on the ship, he has ass kicking facial hair and gorgeous blond bangs that are parted in the middle and flip out like waves on the sides. His idea of fun is stabbing himself with a pocket knife or shooting a metal square on the ship, all the while with a cigar or cigarette in his mouth. Him and Doolittle both spend time ignoring and making fun of Pinback. Talby is the last man of the ship, he sits up in the viewing area of the Dark Star. When looking at the whole ship this spot looks just like R2D2 when he is mounted on a space ship. Talby does not really socialize with the other guys, he is just up there looking at all the stars and things and letting his mind drift into space. However Talby is one of the smartest guys on the ship because he actually pays attention to the ship. They have various other characters in the form of voices, the computer is a pleasant sounding woman voice who has basically the main controls in her "hands", the voices of the bombs, BOMB 20 speaks more than BOMB 19. Then there is the alien, a beach ball with feet that bounces around causing mischief for Pinback. So things on the ship start getting kind of crazy after they hyper spaced away from the planet they destroyed with BOMB 19. They start relaxing and go to their room, it looks like a bachelor pad for sure, there are things all over the floors and pictures blurred out in the back. Boiler smokes and plays the game where you spread your fingers out and try not to stab them. Doolittle plays a card game like the lame-o he is and Pinback tries to get a rise out of them with funny glasses, then pisses off Doolittle with a rubber chicken. They are headed towards another planet to destroy, a long trip ahead of them they have to pass the time some how. Just to make things more exciting they run into an asteroid storm and have to activate the shields! But a portion of the ship gets damaged and the bomb bay opens up and BOMB 20 comes out to launch, the computer finally talks it into going back into the ship. But with the controls to launch all messed up they are doomed to repeat this scene again. Like the mom she is the computer tells Pinback to go take care of the alien. The alien doesn't want to eat or play, its fed up with the stupid men, so when Pinback is trying to clean up it decides to attack , the two trade hits and eventually the alien gets away. Pinback chases the alien to the emergency airlock room after using a plank to get across the elevator shaft. The Dark Star is like Mary Poppins carpet bag, it looks so small on the outside but has so many huge things on the inside! The alien is clever and grabs the plank trapping Pinback on the other side. So now he must face his fear of heights and try to shuffle across the ledge. Once he is in the middle the elevator turns on and starts moving up and down, causing him to be trapped on the bottom. He unscrews a panel and tries to climb inside, he gets stuck half way in, the phone is out of order, there is elevator music playing, and when he thinks he has saved himself it turns out the clean process wants to blow up the panel. He gets out alive though so thank the comedic film gods. He finds the alien and shoots it, the thing goes flying around the room like a balloon. They all meet up for lunch in the food room and Pinback tells them about his scary ordeal but no one is listening, and they all talk about how weird Talby is because he is unsocial. Pinback goes to a video dairy he is creating and makes a new entry about how everyone sucks on the ship and they don't care about him. They make it to the unstable planet and start to deploy BOMB 20, however Talby is in the emergency airlock room trying to fix the laser malfunction part, no body knows he is there because Doolittle is a jerk and turned off his radio to him. The laser blinds Talby and sets the bomb launch into a frenzy, it won't launch but still wants to blow up. The computer can't talk the bomb out of it, so the crew is trying to. Doolittle visits Commander Powell in this freeze room, but can't get a solid answer out of him other than to talk to the bomb. He gets his space suit on and goes out to talk to it about philosophy and the meaning of the bombs life. The best part is when the bomb says: "I think, therefore I am". Doolittle talks the bomb into going back into the ship to have more time to think about blowing up, meanwhile Talby was shot into space so Doolittle has a jet pack on to rescue him. The other two were inside fist fighting about Boiler trying to shoot the bomb. As Doolittle is trying to rescue Talby, Bomb 20 decides it will blow up now, shooting Doolittle and Talby to drift further apart, Talby get picked up by the traveling space rocks he was talking about earlier and Doolittle gets to surf down to the red planet on a piece of debris.
They really could have turned this into a TV series and gone even further with it. It was quirky entertaining story about different personalities clashing together in a confined space...in space. I really enjoyed this film because it was lighthearted and comedic, the characters were portrayed well, and hairy. The low budget part of it just added to it's success as a whole.
No comments:
Post a Comment