Dark Star (1974) on Netflix
Twenty years into a mission to destroy unstable planets, the crew of the scout ship Dark Star is bored and the vessel keeps breaking down. Lieutenant Doolittle has taken over as commander.
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- Netflix2.9/5
- IMDb6.1/1030,748 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes73%
Trailer
Plot summary
Mankind has begun settling interstellar space, and the scout ship Dark Star travels from system to system, looking for unstable planets that could threaten the colonies to come. The crew numbers five, alongside a computer that runs the ship and talkative bombs, called Exponential Thermostellar Devices, built to shatter the worlds. Twenty relativistic years have passed, though the crew has aged only three, and the vessel is falling apart: radiation leaks, failing life support, random elevators, and a hull breach that wrecked the living quarters. Commander Powell died in one such accident, electrocuted by his chair, and waits in cryogenic suspension, so Lieutenant Doolittle, once a surfer from Malibu, leads. Sergeant Pinback, Boiler and Talby pass the tedium with practical jokes, a video diary, a switchblade game and a clawed alien mascot kept aboard.
Cast
- Dre Pahichas Talby
- Adam Beckenbaughas Bomb #20 (voice)
- Joe Saundersas Commander Powell (voice)
- Cookie Knappas Muttercomputer (voice)
- Alan Sheretzas Bomb #19 (voice)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Dark Star (1974)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Dan O'Bannon reworked Dark Star's mischievous beach-ball alien with claws into the creature for his later horror film Alien, after noticing that Dark Star's audiences did not laugh where the film intended them to.
- Dan O'Bannon said Dark Star's ending was borrowed from Ray Bradbury's short story "Kaleidoscope," an uncredited debt that led Bradbury, decades later, to confront actor Brian Narelle over the film during a chance encounter, even though Narelle had no part in taking the story.
- Distributor Jack H. Harris, who picked up Dark Star through a tip from John Landis, cut about 30 minutes he called "boring and unusable," had new footage shot, toned down language and blurred nude centerfolds to win a G rating; O'Bannon later said the changes turned what would have been the world's most impressive student film into its least impressive professional one.
- Writer Doug Naylor has said Dark Star directly inspired his radio sketches Dave Hollins: Space Cadet, which he later developed into the science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf.
- The real town of Benson, Arizona, named in the film's theme song, later named an actual county road "Dark Star Road" in the film's honor.
