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PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
Dark Star (1974)

Dark Star (1974)

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Released 10-Dec-2001

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Science Fiction Menu Animation & Audio
Theatrical Trailer
Rating Rated G
Year Of Production 1974
Running Time 82:30 (Case: 80)
RSDL / Flipper No/No Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region Coding 1,2,3,4,5,6 Directed By John Carpenter
Studio
Distributor

Beyond Home Entertainment
Starring Brian Narelle
Dre Pahich
Cal Kuniholme
Dan O'Bannon
Joe Saunders
Case Amaray-Transparent
RPI $32.95 Music John Carpenter


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame None English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio 1.66:1
16x9 Enhancement
Not 16x9 Enhanced
Video Format 576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio 1.85:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures Yes
Subtitles None Smoking Yes
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits No

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

    Dark Star is the wacky story of four astronauts; Doolittle (Brain Narelle); Boiler (Cal Kuniholm); Talby (Dre Pahich); and Pinback (Dan O'Bannon), who have been in space searching out and destroying unstable planets. Destruction of the planets is carried out by the use of  intelligent Thermostellar bombs. Given that the crew has been on this mission for 20 very monotonous years, with only themselves and a very beach-ball like alien for company, it's not entirely surprising that the whole crew is now more than a little loopy. One of the Thermostellar bombs malfunctions when the ship encounters an asteroid storm and wants to detonate while still attached to the ship. Try as they might, the crew is unable to talk the bomb out of detonating and so seeks the advice of Commander Powell (Joe Saunders) who is being kept in a cryogenic chamber due to an earlier accident. Commander Powell advises Doolittle to teach the bomb "phenomenology" in order to get the bomb to question whether it had received a valid detonation order. This works for a while but sets the bomb thinking and this ultimately has unfortunate consequences for the entire crew.

    Dark Star is the result of a collaboration between John Carpenter who directed, produced and co-wrote the screenplay and Dan O'Bannon who co-wrote, edited and produced this low budget student project which has become somewhat of a cult classic. John Carpenter is perhaps better known for his work in horror movies, particularly the Halloween series as well as various other well-known horror titles. Dan O'Bannon is probably best known as the writer of Alien and if you are watching closely you'll see at least one idea (see 18:36) carried over from this film into his later work in Alien.

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Transfer Quality

Video

    The video quality leaves a lot to be desired. However, I believe that it would be unfair to blame this totally on the transfer, as what we have here is a 25 year old low budget student film which has not had the benefit of remastering. On the other hand, it appears that in making the transfer no effort has been put into cleaning up any of the the numerous deficiencies in the source material.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.66:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced. The original aspect ratio was 1.85:1.

    At no time could this transfer be called sharp as it basically exhibited a slightly soft appearance for the entire length of the movie. While this effect is undoubtedly exacerbated by the lack of 16x9 enhancement, I believe that given the low budget nature of this movie as well as the use of 16mm film, what we see is true to the source materials rather than being introduced by the transfer. Shadow detail is non-existent and any item that was not adequately lit appears completely black. On a positive note, there was no low level noise evident. Some minor edge enhancement is seen occasionally but this is not a big issue with this disc.

    The colour palette of this movie is interesting in that many parts of the ship are lit in monochromatic colours. For example, the computer room is green, Pinback's music room is yellow, the alien's cell is red. During the scenes with monochromatic lighting, everything takes on the colour of the lighting. At other times under normal lighting, the picture exhibits a washed-out look.

   Film artefacts abound in this transfer. Small white and black marks, scratches and hairs are plentiful and continuously present. Reel change marks are also present. There was some minor aliasing noted occasionally such as on the computer display at 52:09. Just for good measure, there is some minor telecine wobble. No MPEG artefacts were noted.

    There are no subtitles on this disc.

    As this is a single sided single layered disc, there is no layer change to worry about.

Video Ratings Summary
Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio can be described as very basic and the overall quality was pretty terrible, which isn't totally surprising given that this film was made on a shoestring budget. In addition to the occasional very noticeable clicks and pops there is audible background hiss apparent throughout the movie. From time to time there is also distortion evident. It seems  that no effort has been put into cleaning up the audio in this transfer either.

    Only one audio track was provided on this disc, this being an English Dolby Digital 2.0 track.

    Despite the terrible quality, this didn't impact on the dialogue which I found to be always understandable.

    I didn't note any particular problems with audio sync on this disc.

    The music is limited to a few snatches here and there of very 1960s sounding tunes as well as plenty of what I usually refer to as "sci-fi creepy" music that was the standard for films of this genre that were made in the 1950s & 60s. If you're a fan of old sci-fi films you'll know exactly the type of sounds that I'm referring to.

    The surround channels were completely superfluous as all the sound that really mattered was delivered from the centre speaker. This was not unexpected given that the original soundtrack for this movie was monophonic and that no effort to remaster the soundtrack has been attempted for this transfer.

    It's worth having your system set to redirect low frequencies to the subwoofer for this disc to take advantage of the quite powerful bass that is present.

Audio Ratings Summary
Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Extras

    Only a bare minimum of extras is included.

Menu

    The menu is presented in a ratio of 1.66:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced. The menu has both animation and audio.

Theatrical Trailer

    The trailer runs for 2:27 and is similar in quality to the movie. Like the movie it is also presented in an aspect ratio of 1.66:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced. Audio is Dolby Digital 2.0.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

    The Region 1 version contains both the original theatrical cut and the Director's cut whereas the Region 4 release has only the longer theatrical cut. Although we miss out on the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack by all accounts the quality of this is no better than our Dolby Digital 2.0 version. On this basis, unless you're a stickler for correct aspect ratios, there doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to choose one version over the other.

Summary

    Dark Star, is a classic science fiction/comedy movie which will, despite the poor video and audio quality, still find a place in the movie collections of many interested in the sci-fi movie genre.

    The video quality is poor.

    The audio quality is not the best either but is still adequate to get the story across.

    The extras are limited to a theatrical trailer.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Peter Cole (Surely you've got something better to do than read my bio)
Friday, January 04, 2002
Review Equipment
DVDPioneer DV-515, using S-Video output
DisplaySony VPL-WV10HT LCD Projector on to 100" (254 cm) 16:9 ratio Screen. Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 720p.
Audio DecoderBuilt in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials.
AmplificationYamaha RXV-995
SpeakersFront L&R - B&W DM603, Centre - B&W LCR6, Rear L&R - B&W DM602, Sub - Yamaha YST-SW300

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