A reader remarks on my review of Dark Star:
You found a lot more meaning and more in that film than I did. Seemed more like a semi-tongue in cheek film made by a bunch of stoners who couldn’t quite keep their not-very-funny jokes together long enough to deliver real laughs. I saw it in college, and was semi-amused because it was so camp and so bad.
I think it the consistency of its awfulness. Sure, other films can be bad, but the dreadfulness of the entity relationships was so distinctly terrible and, well, noir, that I thought there had to be a little more here than met the eye.
Or maybe I just made it all up out of whole cloth.
Even then, I think the only reason we watched it was because it had a myth (true? false?) of having been the place where some of the crew who did Star Wars amazing special effects got their start.
The late Dan O’Bannon co-wrote the screenplay, was editor of the movie, played Sgt Pinback / Frug, and worked on special effects. He also contributed special effects to Star Wars, as well as the legendary chest-bursting scene in Alien. Ron Cobb did design work on both movies; incidentally, he also designed the Ecology symbol, later incorporated into the Ecology flag. Greg Jein did model work for Dark Star and various Star Trek franchise episodes.
