"Actor: Adam Beckenbaugh"

• Dark Star -- 30th Anniversary Special Edition | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Dark Star is absurd, surreal and very funny. John Carpenter once described it as "Waiting for Godot in space." (It's also, surely, one of the primary inspirations for Red Dwarf.) Made at a cost of practically nothing, the film's effects are nevertheless impressive and, along with the number of ideas crammed into its 83 minutes, ought to shame makers of science fiction films costing hundreds of times more. The story concerns the Dark Star's crew who are on a 20-year mission to destroy unstable planets and make way for future colonisation. The smart bombs they use to effect this zoom off cheerfully to do their duty. But unlike Star Trek, in which order prevails, the nerves of this crew are becoming increasingly frayed to the point of psychosis. Their captain has been killed by a radiation leak that also destroyed their toilet paper. "Don't give me any of that 'Intelligent Life' stuff," says Commander Doolittle when presented with the possibility of alien life. "Find me something I can blow up." When an asteroid storm causes a malfunction, Bomb Number 20 (the most cheerful character in the film) has to be repeatedly talked out of exploding prematurely, each time becoming more and more peevish, until they have to teach him phenomenology to make him doubt his existence. And the film's apocalyptic ending, lifted almost wholly from Ray Bradbury's story "Kaleidoscope", has the remaining crew drifting away from each other in space, each to a suitably absurd end. --Jim Gay

• Dark Star | DVD | (17/01/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The crew of the spaceship Dark Star are on a 20-year mission to destroy unstable planets and make way for future colonisation by using smart bombs which zoom off cheerfully to do their duty. But unlike the orderly inhabitants of Star Trek's Enterprise, the nerves of this crew are becoming frayed to the point of psychosis. Their captain has been killed by a radiation leak that also destroyed their toilet paper. "Don't give me any of that 'Intelligent Life' stuff", says Commander Doolittle when presented with the possibility of alien life, "Find me something I can blow up". When an asteroid storm causes a malfunction, Bomb Number 20 (the most cheerful character in the film) has to be repeatedly talked out of exploding prematurely, each time becoming more and more peevish, until they have to teach him phenomenology to make him doubt his existence. And the film's apocalyptic ending, lifted almost wholly from Ray Bradbury's short story "Kaleidoscope" has the remaining crew drifting away from each other in space, each to a suitably absurd end. Absurd, surreal and very funny. John Carpenter once described Dark Star as "Waiting for Godot in space". Made at a cost of practically nothing, the film's effects are nevertheless impressive and, along with the number of ideas crammed into its 83 minutes, ought to shame makers of science fiction films costing hundreds of times more. --Jim Gay

• Dark Star | Blu Ray | (13/10/2023) from £12.75   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Dark Star | DVD | (25/04/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £1.99

  What would you be like after 20 years aboard DARK STAR the spaced-out spaceship. The ultimate cosmic comedy! In the mid twenty-first century mankind has reached a point in its technological advances to enable colonization of the far reaches of the universe. Dark Star is a futuristic scout ship traveling far in advance of colony ships. Armed with Exponential Thermostellar Bombs it prowls the unstable planets. But there is one obstacle that its crew members did not count on - one of the ship's thinking and talking bombs is lodged in the bay threatening to destroy the entire ship and crew! Director John Carpenter and writer Dan O'Bannon combine their writing creative and technical talents to bring you this thrilling and extraordinary science fiction parody.

• Dark Star | UMD | (30/01/2006) from £4.03   |  Saving you £11.96 (296.77%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In the mid twenty-first century mankind has reached a point in its technological advances to enable colonization of the far reaches of the universe. Dark Star is a futuristic scout ship traveling far in advance of colony ships. Armed with Exponential Thermostellar Bombs it prowls the unstable planets. But there is one obstacle that its crew members did not count on - one of the ships thinking and talking bombs is lodged in the bay threatening to destroy the entire ship and crew! John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon combine their writing creative and technical talents to bring you this thrilling and extraordinary science fiction parody.