With unforgettable movies like Escape from New York, The Thing, They Live, Halloween and Assault on Precint 13 in his filmography, John Carpenter’s legacy as a supreme writer-director of genre cinema - and being a pretty mean synth score composer as well- is secure. The huge success of last year's Halloween, a direct sequel to his original genre-defining 1978 slasher, and which he executive produced and scored, only confirms how potent his cinematic creations remain. This year sees Deptford Cinema honour the master of cult cinema with a retrospective of his finest films, and included in the line up will be the recent remastered editions of Dark Star, The Fog, The Thing, Escape From New York, Big Trouble in Little China and They Live!
DARK STAR:
John Carpenter's pulp science fiction classic (co-written by ALIEN writer Dan O’Bannon) is brilliantly clever and funny parody of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and follows a warped intergalactic mission to blow up unstable planets. Four bored astronauts fill in time between missions catching up on their tans with the help of a sun-lamp, playing with a suspiciously plastic-looking alien mascot they are taking back to Earth and conversing with their female version of Hal. Things start to go horribly wrong when the spaceship computer misfires and a 'smart bomb' thinks it is God.
This all new Blu-ray edition has been sourced from an original 16 x 9 35mm theatrical print. The film was shot originally as 16mm, then blown up to 35mm for theatrical distribution. This new master has been subject to a new grade and extensive manual frame by frame digital restoration.
dir. John Carpenter
year. 1974
83 min
£6.00 (£4.50 conc.)
Doors 6PM
Film 6.30PM