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Daniel Thomas O'Bannon (September 30, 1946 – December 17, 2009) was an American film screenwriter, director and visual effects supervisor, most closely associated in the science fiction and horror genres.
Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Dan O'Bannon, based on a story by O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett. It follows a spaceship crew who investigate a derelict spaceship and are hunted by deadly extraterrestrial creature.
Dan O’Bannon, the acclaimed science fiction/horror film screenwriter who was best known for writing the blockbuster hit “Alien” and who also directed and wrote the zombie fest “The Return of...
Dec 21, 2009 · Dan O’Bannon, whose screenplays for “Alien,” “Total Recall,” “The Return of the Living Dead” and other films made him a cult hero among science fiction aficionados, died on Thursday in Santa...
- Plot
- Cast
- Production
- Release
- Reception
- References and Use of Samples
- Soundtrack
- Further Reading
- External Links
In the mid-22nd century, mankind has begun to colonize interstellar space. Armed with artificially intelligent Thermostellar Triggering Devices, which can talk and reason, the scout ship Dark Starsearches for "unstable planets" which might threaten future colonization. Twenty years into their mission, the Dark Star has aged and suffers malfunctions...
Brian Narelle as Lieutenant DoolittleCal Kuniholm as BoilerAndreijah "Dre" Pahich as TalbyScreenplay
The screenplay was written by John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon while film students at the University of Southern California. Initially titled The Electric Dutchman, the original concept was Carpenter's, while O'Bannon "flesh[ed] out many of the original ideas" and contributing many of the funniest moments. According to O'Bannon, "The ending was copped from Ray Bradbury's story Kaleidoscope", found in the short story collection The Illustrated Man (1951). O'Bannon references one of his USC teac...
Filming, Reshoots and Edits
The film began as a 45-minute 16mm student project with a final budget of six thousand dollars. Beginning with an initial budget of one thousand dollars from USC in late 1970, Carpenter and O'Bannon completed the first version of the film in early 1972. Carpenter had to replace the voice of Pahich (who spoke with a heavy accent) with his own as Talby. To achieve feature film length, an additional fifty minutes were filmed in 1973, with the support of Canadian distributor Jack Murphy (credited...
Special effects
Many special effects were done by Dan O'Bannon, ship design was by Ron Cobb, model work by O'Bannon and Greg Jein, and animation was done by Bob Greenberg. Cobb drew the original design for the Dark Star ship on a napkin while eating at the International House of Pancakes. To depict the transit of the Dark Star ship into hyperspace, O'Bannon devised an animated effect in which stars in space turn into streaks of light while the spaceship appears to be motionless. He created this effect by tra...
The completed film premiered on March 30, 1974 at Filmex, the Los Angeles International Film Exposition, for which Carpenter described the film as "Waiting for Godot in outer space." Harris sold the film to Bryanston Pictures, who released it to fifty theatres on January 16, 1975. Following the success of Alien and Halloween, Dark Star was re-relea...
Audience reactions
While greeted enthusiastically by the crowd at Filmex, the film was not well received upon its initial theatrical release. Carpenter and O'Bannon reported nearly empty theatres and a lack of reaction to the film's humor. The home video cassette revolution of the early 1980s saw Dark Star become a cult filmamong sci-fi fans.
Critical response
An early review from Variety, recalled by Carpenter as "the first bad review I got", described the film as "a limp parody of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey that warrants attention only for some remarkably believable special effects achieved with very little money." After its re-release in 1979, Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, writing: "Dark Star is one of the damnedest science fiction movies I've ever seen, a berserk combination of space opera, intelligent bombs, a...
Influence
The "Beachball with Claws" segment of the film was reworked by Dan O'Bannon into the science fiction-horror film Alien (1979). After witnessing audiences failing to laugh at parts of Dark Starwhich were intended as humorous, O'Bannon commented, "If I can't make them laugh, then maybe I can make them scream." Doug Naylor has said in interviews that Dark Star was the inspiration for Dave Hollins: Space Cadet, the radio sketches that evolved into science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf. Dark Star has a...
Indie rock band Pinbackadopted its name from the character Sergeant Pinback, and often used samples from the movie in its early work.British synth-pop band Erasure sampled dialogue from this film (along with Barbarella) in their song, "Sweet, Sweet Baby", the B-side to "Drama!", the debut single off their album, Wild!(1989).The Human League used a sample from the film at the end of "Circus of Death", the b-side of their debut single, "Being Boiled".The music for Dark Star is chiefly a pure electronic score created by Carpenter using a modular synthesizer. The song played during the opening and closing credits is "Benson, Arizona". The music was written by John Carpenter, while the lyrics were written by Bill Taylor, concerning a man who travels the galaxy at light speed and misses his beloved...
Holdstock, Robert. Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Octopus Books, 1978, pp. 80–81. ISBN 0-7064-0756-3Cinefex magazine, issue 2, Aug 1980. Article by Brad Munson: "Greg Jein, Miniature Giant". (Discusses Dark Star, among other subjects.)Fantastic Films magazine, Oct 1978, vol. 1 no. 4, pages 52–58, 68–69. James Delson interviews Greg Jein, about Dark Starand other projects Jein had worked on.Fantastic Films magazine, Sep 1979, issue 10, pages 7–17, 29–30. Dan O'Bannon discusses Dark Star and Alien, other subjects. (Article was later reprinted in "The very best of Fantastic Films", Spec...Dark Star at the American Film Institute CatalogDark Star at IMDbDark Star at the TCM Movie DatabaseDark Star at AllMovieDaniel Thomas "Dan" O'Bannon (September 30, 1946 – December 17, 2009) was an American screenwriter, director and actor who co-wrote the 1979 film Alien with Ronald Shusett. He was known for his work in the science fiction and horror genres.
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Dec 17, 2009 · Daniel Thomas "Dan" O'Bannon (September 30, 1946 – December 17, 2009) was an American screenwriter and director of science fiction and horror films. He is best known for his work on "Alien" (1979), "The Return of the Living Dead" (1985) and "Total Recall" (1990).
