Brilliant! A crude, sardonic, hyperbolic yet revealing sketch of space travel filled with wacky, lackadaisical characters, nihilistic through and through. In Carpenter's debut film (which was actually a student project) he shows us how the lack of budget can be a massive boost to one's creativity. (I love Pinback's crazy video diary and the melancholic dead Captain and the stubborn philosophical bomb and of course the strangely bittersweet ending ("What's my first name??" lmao
It’s rare when a director’s vile and sadistic self is exposed so fully in his work. Those who sing praise of this movie can only be blind followers of so-called canon.