Low budget, cheap special effects, and of course the fact that this was made in 1974 did not detract from the fun of watching this dark and deeply satirical SF movie about humans coping with the excruciating boredom of space travel, the problems with keeping aliens on your ship, and the dangers of embedding A.I. in everything, all the while poking fun at itself and SF in general. Even though the pace can be meandering by today’s ‘throw CGI at every shot’ standards, it only serves to underline the complete and utter boredom the crew of the Dark Star experience (punctuated by moments of sheer terror, it’s a Carpenter movie after all).

The computer-to-computer and later human-to-computer conversations with Bomb number 20’s A.I. who eventually comes to think it is God are great fun. John Carptenter was 26 when he made this sci-fi cult classic. He also composed the sound track and it is as dark and oppressive as the later scores for Christine and the 6 million Halloween movies, which he also directed and scored.