Mick Hartley

Dan O'Bannon, the man who wrote Alien, and who pretty much single-handedly moved sci-fi cinema out its pushing-back-the-frontiers Flash Gordon era to bring in horror, boredom, humour, and everything in between, has died in LA aged 63.

Everyone knows Alien, of course, but my favourite of his would be Dark Star, his first film - a low-budget black space comedy that he co-wrote with director John Carpenter in 1974. He appeared as Sgt. Pinback (who, as afficionados will recall, is in fact not Pinback at all, but fuel engineer Bill Froog, who put on Pinback's space suit after failing to rescue Pinback from committing suicide by wading into a fuel tank before the mission). It's a classic, under-rated movie. Red Dwarf, for one, is a direct descendant.

Here's the scene where the thermostellar bomb gets stuck in the bomb bay but thinks it's dropped, and plans to detonate. Only Descartes and Hume stand in the way of annihilation:

If you want a lengthier extract, try this – in which the trouble with the bomb starts, and we see the crew relaxing in their quarters – "For your listening enjoyment, we now present The Moonlight Melodies of Martin Sebindo and his Instellar Strings. Our first selection is the perennial favourite, When Twilight Falls on NGC 891…" Don't miss Pinback's goggle eyes at six minutes in. That's Dan O'Bannon…

[The post title refers to the end of Dark Star…here]