Let There Be Light: The Odyssey of Dark Star (2010)
Exploring the controversial story behind John Carpenter (Halloween & The Thing) and writer Dan O Bannon's (Alien & Return of the Living Dead) from first feature film. From its humble beginnings as a USC student film, to its modern day status as a cult masterpiece. It also offers a rare glimpse inside the creative minds of two USC film students... who would eventually go on to change the way horror films are made.
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One of my all time favorites.
I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.
This excellent and illuminating documentary covers a whole lot of bases about the making of the enjoyably quirky sci-fi cult black comedy hoot "Dark Star." Starting with how John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon first met each other at the University of Southern California, this doc goes on to address such things as the movie being made as an anti-"2001" type parody, the concept of truckers in space as a precursor to "Alien" (which O'Bannon of course co-wrote), the first day of shooting, the extremely cramped and confined sets, the special effects (yep, we do indeed hear some choice stuff about the infamous beach ball alien), the elevator shaft sequence, the movie being blown up from 16mm to 35mm, the score, shooting extra scenes to pad out the running time to an acceptable feature length, the extremely catchy "Benson Arizona" country song, the distribution, the dissolve of the partnership between Carpenter and O'Bannon (O'Bannon's intense loose cannon personality and ambitions to direct eventually wore out Carpenter's patience and tolerance for him), the theatrical premiere, and the picture's current status as a cult classic. The most touching segment centers on O'Bannon's tragic untimely death. Among the folks interviewed on camera are O'Bannon (his last interview), lead actor Brian Narelle, optical effects guy Bill Taylor, associate art director Tommy Lee Wallace, distributor Jack H. Harris, filmmaker Jeff Burr, and cinematographer Douglas Knapp (his wife Cookie, who did the sultry voice of the "female" computer, is also interviewed). Carpenter's only featured as excerpts from an audio interview, but he nonetheless has a lot of interesting and opinionated things to say about the movie. Essential viewing for fans of "Dark Star."