The dense, confused tale of four exhausted, fatally stir-crazy astronauts in the midst of a twenty-plus-year mission to clear the universe of unfriendly alien planets. Long and windy, I couldn't decide if this was intended to be a dark comedy (as many of the promotional materials imply) or a more serious effort. In either case, I can’t say it’s a success.

Dark Star's influences and offspring are much more interesting than the film itself. Inspired by, if not directly pulling from, classic short stories by the likes of Bradbury, Asimov and Dick, it also led to several creative hallmarks of the genre. Director/producer/writer/soundtrack musician(!) John Carpenter, of course, should need no introduction. His co-writer, not to mention one of the film's stars, Dan O'Bannon, would go on to pen the sci-fi classics Alien and Total Recall. At this point in both men's careers, however, they were still throwing shit at the wall and standing back to see how much stuck.

Experimental and cheeky, Dark Star is tonally inconsistent and poorly edited, running for about thirty minutes longer than was really necessary. The effects work is painfully dated, somehow worse than the old Star Trek TV episodes of half a decade prior, and is not helped by the camera's tendency to adoringly linger well past the point of good reason. The resident alien (literally a spray-painted beach ball with chicken feet) and absurdly contrived parting shot (think Dr. Strangelove meets Dick Dale) are particularly bad, yet also somehow more memorable for their ineptitude.

I can't say I'm glad I watched this, but it keeps bubbling to the surface of my consciousness. Maybe there's something telling about that?