In sad news, word reached Harry Knowles that Dan O’Bannon, the great sci-fi screenwriter, died yesterday after a short illness. O’Bannon began his career as the writer, and special effects supervisor, of John Carpenter’s excellent debut film, the space satire “Dark Star.” This led to Alejandro Jodorowsky picking him out to supervise the FX for his aborted version of Frank Herbert’s “Dune” (there was a great article about this in a recent issue of Empire Magazine — seek it out if you can). While that never happened, O’Bannon took many of his new colleagues on to his next project — a sci-fi about a ruthless alien killing machine stalking the crew of a spaceship, called “Star Beast.”
“Star Beast,” of course, became “Alien,” one of the tautest, best-written science fiction screenplays of all time, and an absolute classic of the genre, and spawned an entire franchise, as well as innumerable rip-offs. He also went on to write a segment of the animation “Heavy Metal,” and the enjoyable Roy Scheider helicopter movie “Blue Thunder.” He was also credited on two Philip K Dick adaptations; Paul Verhoeven’s bonkers “Total Recall” and the rather terrible “Screamers.” Ridley Scott’s upcoming return to the Alien franchise will ensure that O’Bannon’s work will continue to live on, and he’ll be sorely missed.
