Rating: 
Summary: One of the best pure SF films EVER!!!
Review: If you have never seen this film, buy, buy, BUY a copy of this film in widescreen RIGHT NOW! This is pure, hardcore, no-BS sci-fi from John Carpenter (do I REALLY need to list his filmography?) and Dan O'Bannon (Alien, Return of the Living Dead). Quite simply one of the finest entries in the genre. Made on a shoestring budget and released as the second half of a double bill when Westworld was re-released in the mid-'70s, Dark Star slips underneath a lot of people's radars, but it is a breath of fresh air: funny and deeply affecting, this is sci-fi cinema at its finest.
Rating:
Summary: A masterful work of writing and directing
Review: This is one of the best movies I have ever watched. The special effects are cheesy and the acting isn't Oscar-calibre, but the writing and direction are both works of genius. I loved the interaction between the characters as they succumbed to the sever cabin fever that one would expect from four men isolated in a small spaceship for twenty years. Pinback, the janitor who was hooked onto the ship by accident just before launched, tries desperately to be the ship's cheerleader and model worker when with the crew, and privately deals with paranoid and low self-esteem after they ignore and rebuff him. Boiler has become a bully in the boredom, antagonizing Pinback and destroying ship equipment. Doolittle, thrust into the ship's command by the death of Captian Powell by equipment malfunction, leads the mission with complete lack-of-caring about it. And Tably simply withdraws from the crew, preferring to spend years simply watching the stars. The movie creates laughs many ways, from Pinback's slapstick fight with the alien 'mascot' and the elevator shaft, to the cerebral as Doolittle tries to convince Bomb 20 that it does not exist, to the extremely subtle as the crew has its 22,000th mealtime conversation. I watch this movie at least once a year since I've bought the video, and each time it makes me laugh so hard I cry. This has been one of my favorites, maybe my favorite, since I first saw it on TV about 18 years ago. It's a must see.
Rating:
Summary: A classic, but I liked the longer version better
Review: This is a great film, a classic in low-budget filmmaking, and a brilliant counterpoint to whole space travel genre.However, I'm disappointed with the "as the directors originally intended" cut, which leaves out three scenes (they are tacked on to the end of the VHS tape). I particularly miss the stir-crazy in the food storage locker scene, which was so perfect at conveying the idea of space travel as sheer boredom. The plot isn't as appropriately aimless without these scenes.
Rating:
Summary: Chilled out in space
Review: The reason i think deserves all attention from anyone serious into sci fi is because from start to finish there is a constant atmosphere that tottaly keeps you locked in.If you ever want to get in the zone watching a film and just lose it in the film and warning you will be part of the crew and what appears in space through the film is nothing short of brilliance loutenant iced up in a block floating off into space forever.The phoenix astroid man what a beauty catching one of the crew members who immenslley likes the stars sitting in his space hub admiring the view as all are bored looking upon wall's irritating each other and yes BIG CAPITAL LETTERS FOR THE SPACE BOARDING i mean come on man what other film could have such a cool thing a man in a space suit surfing in space with the planets horizon behind.This film is totally hip great sountrack and generally brill noises in and out of the ship&it go with out saying if you really like space and would love to chill in space totally dreamstate then this film rocks.the atmosphere you really pick up on and it's losing it all the way as in the wondorous space above&beyond us.Anyone who see's this film as just cheap really doesn't have a clue and probably resents hippys and prefers to stay in a pub staring at the wall like the common man last words if you love getting in the zone so to say see it but buy it first.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Movie with a very LOW budget!
Review: It's amazing what they did on this movie with a budget of only $55,000! For a big production, $55,000 is probably how much they pay for one of the main actors hairbrush! This was Dan O'Bannon's first production, he later went on to write the script for Alien and many other sci-fi films. Dan plays the character Pinback who wants to improve morale on the ship, but the others won't cooperate. The sequence with Pinback and the alien pet is one of the best scenes. Dark Star was released in 1974, but virtually nobody came. After the movies premere, Dan O'Bannon went to a local theater and asked the manager how long the line was to see the movie Dark Star. The manager wryly replied "What Line?", then Dan became heartbroken and stopped writing movies until he got the opportunity to write the script for Alien. Dark Star, in many ways, continues to be the most popular cult sci-fi movie ever filmed. It was also the lowest budget sci-fi movie that more than fully recovered the budget expenses in less than a week!
Rating: 
Summary: A comedy!
Review: Why do so many people attack this film for it's special effects? Come on, folks! Did Spaceballs have great effects? Did Flash Gordon? And those movies weren't made by a student working on a shoestring budget. Just kick back and enjoy the film for it's humor and uniqueness...chances are, you'll never see a movie as original as this for a long time
Rating: 
Summary: This is not art, this is GARBAGE!
Review: I could not believe how POOR this film was (UNBELIEVABLY SO - DON'T BUY IT! ). I can usually tolerate anything, but this was SO BAD that I fast-forwarded through large portions of it in order to stay awake. What a waste .... I would have gotten more pleasure from watching Chitty-Chitty, Bang-Bang 100 times! .........
Rating:
Summary: Dark Star
Review: It's funny, as I read the other reviews, I struggled to think of something that wasn't said. I was especially tickled by the 1-star review by a guy who obviously didn't get it, and obviously hated it. I can certainly understand how someone would not like it, because it's not a film for everyone. It's very cerebral in parts, and really makes you concentrate to get the message between the lines. It's also very funny, very satirical, and for a low-budget sci-fi movie, the effects are occassionally very impressive. I've tried to show this film to friends who stare at the screen with their head cocked like a dog who has heard a high pitched squeak. It's an acquired taste, and if you're in the right frame of mind (and I don't necessarily mean under the influence of mind-altering substances), you'll love it. The country song "Benson Arizona" still makes me break into laughter alone. The talking bomb is one of the funniest characters to ever appear in a space movie, rivaling HAL and the robot in Fantastic Planet. Watch it with an open mind, and a room full of hard-core sci-fi fans and I think you'll come away pleased.
Rating:
Summary: Two Years Before "Star Wars"
Review: A lot of people i know who are not aware that this film was originally released in 1975 fault it for being derivative, when, actually, if anything, the shoe is on the other foot. Dan O'Bannon's special effects sequences are incredible, especially since the entire budget for the whole film wouldn't buy coffee for an effects house working on teevee commercials today; i am especially taken with the utterly convincing planet-buster bombs made from an HO-scale piggyback trailer turned upside down with engine parts from a 1/25th scale model car attached (if you look closely on a good copy you can still read the logo of the car manufacturer on the valve cover used as part of the bomb's drive mechanism). So many great lines and sequences in this film -- Pinback and the beachball and the elevator may exceed the Maximum Allowable Funny Quotient for a minor film, and Doolittle's conversation with the bomb (capable of destroying an entire planet) that plans to detonate right alongside the ship, as he leads it into beginning philosophy and convinces it that maybe it *didn't* really hear the "go" code... The theme song, "Benson Arizona", one of the more warped contry songs one will ever hear, is a hoot; the original is by Carpenter and a lyricist whose name i have lost, and SF fans have been adding verses to it for years. Watch for the "THX-1138" gag -- for many years (if not still) the only time the *whole* title has been used in a film reference. O'Bannon worked on special effects on the first "Star Wars" film, and basically borrowed his own "computer search of the blueprints" sequence from "Dark Star" for that film. The basic design of the "Dark Star" itself is by Ron Cobb, background astronomical paintings by Jim Danforth, and the design of the crew's spacesuits is determined by the fact that they used a commercially-available toy spaceman for effects shots. As an example of the sort of audience this film appeals to -- it was briefly released theatrrically in the latter Seventies; a frind here in Atlanta went to see a matinee, and realised that the only other people in the dark with him were Joey Ramone and his girlfriend.
Rating:
Summary: Wit, low humor, clever ideas: so ok the effects aren't much
Review: What if the Enterprise's Engineering Officer was a janitor who happened to come aboard just as Scotty died in an accident...and everyone pretended not to notice because they can't return to base until the mission is done? What if J. T. Kirk was killed by a short circut in his chair, and had to be put on ice, consulted as a dream-drunk oracle by his crew only in the greatest of emergencies? What would it be like to be onboard a spaceship with a homicidally bored hillbilly? What if the only 'new life' you'd encountered was a "cute" lifeform like a beachball with feet imbued with the playful malignity of a cat playing with a mouse? Have you ever wondered just how dangerous a high-tech elevator could be? What if a powerful bomb, created with the intelligence to destroy a planet, were continually thwarted in its quest to explode, and had to be repeatedly cadged and coddled into putting off its detonation until AFTER it leaves the bomb-bay? What would YOU say to it, smart guy? This film is flat out hilarious. Sure its old and the effects look hokey - it was made with a budget of next to nothing.
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