Generally speaking, there are two types of debut features. The first are the ones that provide a startlingly clear look at their creator – not quite fully formed, perhaps, but clearly a father the the man (or mother to the woman) they would become. I’m speaking here, for example, of Steven Spielberg’s startlingly assured made-for-TV Duel, or Quentin Tarantino’s breakthrough classic Reservoir Dogs. Then there are those first features whose directors would likely prefer you forgot about: works for hire (frequently made under the eye of Roger Corman) which seem to have sprung from an entirely different universe from their later works. For examples of this, see Oliver Stone’s The Hand, or perhaps James Cameron’s Piranha II: The Spawning.

Then there’s the peculiar case of Dark Star. This ingenious, zero-budget sci-fi comedy clearly provides a snapshot of a masterfully talented filmmaker – but is that filmmaker really John Carpenter?

Sure enough, it is. Before creating some of the most chilling films in horror history, Carpenter made this cockeyed oddity about a team of bored astronauts doing battle with a malevolent beach ball and a sentient, neurotic timebomb. The result plays something like a Cali-stoner version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or perhaps Tom Baker-era Doctor Who. One can imagine a moviegoer seeing big things for the film’s director within the next five years, but it’s unlikely they’d suspect that big thing to be Halloween.

Of course, genre fans know that Carpenter is more than just a scaremeister; he’s a genre-hopping maverick, whose ouevre includes everything from adventure comedies to feel-good sci-fi to Elvis biopics. But the picture becomes clearer when one takes into account the film’s other mastermind: screenwriter/star Dan O’Bannon. While less of a household name than Carpenter, O’Bannon is no less auspicious. Following the cult success of Dark Star, O’Bannon would be tapped by Alejandro Jodorowsky for his massively ambitious adaptation of Dune. While that film would fall victim to a legendary flame-out, it did put O’Bannon into contact with designer H.R. Giger. The two began collaborating, which led O’Bannon to revisit the themes of Dark Star for his most famous work: the screenplay to Ridley Scott’s beyond-classic Alien. So the next time you’re watching Ripley outwit a xenomorph, remember: its mother was a beach ball.

Dark Star
1974
dir. John Carpenter
83 min

Part of the ongoing series: Furious C