Dan O'Bannon (1946–2009)

Classic horror movie, basically a haunted house flick set on a spaceship--a creepy, slimey, don't-go-looking-for-the-cat spaceship. As with many great monster movies, you don't really get a good look at the beast...until it's too damned late. Best new monster in ages.

Back in the days before video, DVDs and film streaming, we had to rely for our films on whatever would get shown on television, and if you sought something a bit out of the ordinary, you had to look to film clubs, private showings and independent cinema (especially out of London). For all these, 'Dark Star' was meat and drink. It would turn up on BBC2 late on a Friday or Saturday night, often in some sort of cult film stream; 16mm prints would be shown at student film nights, festivals and show more conventions; it was a science fiction film satire that many of us grew up on. Now, with all the multiple sources for films, it is virtually unknown because it never achieved widespread distribution; and young film-makers rarely get the chance to see a film as inventive and ingenious as this.

The story is that John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon set out to make a spoof science fiction film as students on a shoestring budget. They came to the attention of Jack Harris, a proper Hollywood producer, who was astounded at what they had achieved and backed the project - even so, its budget was miniscule even by 1974 standards.

Repeated viewing makes some of the filming tricks seem obvious now - the "lift shaft" that's actually a packing crate on a trolley in a bare corridor; the bombs that are HO scale model railway freight containers. But the script shows a rare talent for comedic satire and Dan O'Bannon as Sergeant Pinback steals most of the show. There are mystical elements to the plot, though they now seems rather seventies hippy themes. And there is considerable debate over the final scenes, where one of the astronauts left after the final destruction of the ship begins to circle the universe in the company of the Phoenix Asteroids, whilst another burns up in a planetary atmosphere like a falling star; many have identified this as a direct lift from a Ray Bradbury short story (moral: if you're going to borrow, borrow from the best).

But this is an astonishing film that all lovers of science fiction should see. show less

Scathingly hilarious from beginning to end. Favorite weirdo scifi double-header - this and "A Boy and his Dog." It will separate the hard-core believers from the dilettantes.

After all the books on storytelling, fiction writing, and screenwriting I've read I wondered if this would really add anything new. But O'Bannon has written the scripts for two of my favorite movies so I couldn't exactly ignore this when I saw it was coming out.

What you get here is not so much anything "new" (as if you could expect that with storytelling anyway), but rather O'Bannon's own formulation of the traditional three-act dramatic narrative. As is often the case when an insightful show more practitioner recasts "standard wisdom" with a pragmatic bent, there are plenty of gems to be found that help to clarify and lock into place many time-tested bits of orthodoxy.

The book itself is written in a way that doesn't take itself too seriously, but at the same time conveys interesting lessons (complete with do-it-yourself exercises) and practical how-to advice on constructing a gripping story. Recommended if you're interested in screenwriting or storytelling. show less