8mm Forum: Dark Star Feature 4 x 400ft

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Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on April 19, 2016, 01:47 AM:

This must be one of the best "cheap n cheerful" sci-fi/comedy films ever.
We first picked up the 2 x 400ft double album of this film many years ago but i always wanted the full feature, one day here in Plymouth from our very own movieland international Roger rang me with a copy, £80. A bargain.
Being an Iver film we were half expecting this one to have started fading, what a great surprise to see that it's as good now as when we bought it.
I am sure many of you know the plot with the talking bomb that just wants to blow up after several malfunctions and of course that comical Alien which happens to be beech ball with Webb feet, thats what i call a budget alien, & it works so well.The film has got the right mix of science fiction and comedy and made on a budget of just $60.000 when John Carpenter and Dan O' Bannon were film students.
John Carpenter and Dan Bannon wrote the screenplay while film students at the University of Southern California. Six years later, the basic "Beachball with Claws" sub-plot of the film was reworked from comedy to horror, and became the basis (along with an unpublished story about gremlins aboard a B-17) for the O' Bannon-scripted science fiction horror classic, Alien.
The super 8 copy we have is very very good considering how old this must be now, there is no fade and colours are very vibrant, very few marks on this copy, the only bit of criticism i can come up with is that it isn't quite pin sharp, but it is far from soft, generally a good overall image. Sound is good, & through our old pioneer stereo amp the added bass gives the film so much more woomfff, especially those deep motor sounds as the bombs go in and out, the electric storm and the light speed sequence before the title, all sound so good with that volume cranked up.
As always these images are taken during projection so the colours and focus are nowhere near as good as the actual film.

[ May 08, 2016, 04:45 AM: Message edited by: Tom Photiou ]

Posted by Adrian Winchester (Member # 248) on April 19, 2016, 06:34 AM:

Tom - you're modest about the screen shots but they look very good to me! What a nice rarity, particularly with such good colour. The 2 x 400' seems to be not quite so difficult to find, so I wonder if at least some of these have similarly good colour.

Incidentally, you frequently say "we" so I was curious regarding who the other person is? Spouses who are keen on film collecting seem fairly rare, so I don't want to assume this without knowing!

Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on April 19, 2016, 11:54 AM:

Those Potter SC1081 computer magnetic tape units in shot one remind me of work. I loaded and unloaded hundreds of tapes on those and cleaned the heads and columns with Arklone (Di-cloro-di-flouro-ethane). Thank goodness it was a well air conditioned area to take the fumes away.

Posted by Stuart Reid (Member # 1460) on April 19, 2016, 12:26 PM:

Tom, I wonder if that's the actual print I rented all those years back!!!

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on April 19, 2016, 12:29 PM:

Adrian, it is my older Brother who was the first in the family to get a projector, when i was just 8, a Eumig P8 standard 8 and a 50ft b/w silent copy of the Virginian, (an extract from Shenandoah).Now we both have our own collections but always swop films, every Thursday night is our film night, all the rest i am on my own or with the Wife when viewing. And these days we always say "our films".
We did have the 2 x 400ft version of this, it was actually a good cut down concentrating only on the beginning destruction of a planet, then the electro magnetic storm leading onto the damaged bomb which they needed to talk out of blowing everything up. The print quality was as good as the feature to. It made an excellent 600ft cut down. [Wink]

Hey Stuart, i dont think it was an ex library print, i got this one on his last year in business before Roger fell ill.

Posted by Stuart Reid (Member # 1460) on April 19, 2016, 03:57 PM:

Aww, well it's a beauty of a print Tom, i'm quite envious!

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on April 19, 2016, 04:01 PM:

Thank you, [Wink]

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on April 20, 2016, 12:16 PM:

Glorious color on that!!! I wonder if "Dark Star" was one of the 4X400ft that all prints were on low fade, (well, it LOOK like low fade!)

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on April 20, 2016, 02:51 PM:

Hi Osi, hope so, its looking good for the age thats for sure. Of course with it being all set in space with so much black, fade is the last thing this film needs, fingers crossed for another 20 years. [Wink]

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