Dark Star (1974)

04 Jul 2023

Rating: 2.5/5

— Do you think we’ll ever find intelligent life out there? — Who cares?

A team of astronauts is on a mission to seek and destroy intelligent life, lest it interferes with colonization attempts — a sort of anti-Star Trek

The bedroom graffiti scene took me out of the movie — it wasn’t until after the movie was over that I considered that it was supposed to suggest that they behave like teenage boys

It wasn’t until The Barber of Seville started playing during the beach ball alien scene that I realized the movie was supposed to be funny. Thankfully, O’Bannon’s failure at comedy led him to the more successful Alien

Overall, I don’t think much of this works conceptually — it tries to combine the AI philosophy of 2001 with the black comedy of Dr. Strangelove, but the writers don’t have the comedic chops or sufficiently competent actors to pull it off — but the special effects and visuals are creative and cool, especially for how low budget the movie seems to be

Stray Thoughts


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