The film genres of horror and science fiction lost one of their most well-respected practitioners when Dan O’Bannon died last week at the age of 63.
O’Bannon first broke into filmmaking as the co-writer of the SF/comedy Dark Star (1974), which was also the feature debut of his USC classmate John Carpenter, who shared screenplay credit and directed. Largely ignored at the box office, but eventually amassing a cult following, Dark Star is most notable for the attention it garnered both men from the major studios for their ability to wear multiple hats under the restriction of a minuscule budget; in addition to co-writing, O’Bannon also handled production design, special effects and even acted in the film.
Following a stint working on special effects for Star Wars (1977), O’Bannon returned to screenwriting. Reasoning that if he couldn’t get the audience to laugh, he’d do his best to scare the hell out of them, O’Bannon wrote the screenplay for Alien (1979), based on a story by himself and Ronald Shusett, and directed by Ridley Scott. Sharing many of its basic story elements with the comedic Dark Star, Alien nevertheless achieved O’Bannon’s goal of giving the audience a fright to remember, and was the unlikely source of a fan-favorite franchise that currently boasts six installments with yet another on the way.
After Alien, O’Bannon kept busy as the writer or co-writer on a number of projects, including Dead and Buried (1981), Heavy Metal (1981), Blue Thunder (1983), Lifeforce (1985), Invaders from Mars (1986), and Total Recall (1990); he also indirectly continued to collaborate with Ridley Scott when his graphic story The Long Tomorrow, illustrated by comics legend Jean “Moebius” Giraud and initially serialized in Metal Hurlant in 1976, was cited as a major influence on Scott’s Blade Runner (1982). However, it was O’Bannon’s directorial debut on Return of the Living Dead (1985) that endeared him to the hearts of horror fans worldwide. Both an unofficial sequel to, and parody of, George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, RotLD introduced the world to split dogs, punk zombies, and the most devastating acid rain imaginable.
Referring to his eclectic career, O’Bannon commented, “I have a low boredom threshold. Some writers can write the same thing over and over again and remain happy with that. However, I only enjoy doing something that I have not done before. If I’ve done it well, I don’t want to do it anymore. Once I know how to do something, it loses interest for me. I don’t care anymore.”
Dan O’Bannon passed away following a long struggle with Crohn’s Disease on December 17, 2009.
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