RIP Dan O’Bannon

Updated on December 18, 2009 By Ken Begg 8 Comments

One of the bigger names in modern sci-fi movies, O’Bannon is most famous for writing the screenplay for Alien (a film I must admit I don’t love as much as others do), as well writing or co-writing John Carpenter’s student film Dark Star–in which fellow film student O’Bannon acted–, Dead & Buried, Blue Thunder, The Return of the Living Dead, Lifeforce (oops) and several others.  His last script seemed to be for the 1998 Rutgar Hauer horror flick Bleeders.

Mr. O’Bannon was just 63 at the time of his passing yesterday.

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  • David Fullam

    I will be so glad to say goodbye to 2009. We lost too many good o0njes this year.

  • Lifeforce was good, darn it. Especially the extended version. Way better than its source material.

    O’Bannon also directed The Resurrected, one of the better Lovecraft movies.

    Of course, you may doubt my word, having just read my little defense of <b<Liveforce, but still, at least I’m not defending Manos: The Hand of Fate

    Yet.

  • BeckoningChasm

    Hey, I liked Lifeforce too, though not the extended cut. The US cut just moves, moves, moves which is one of its strengths. And The Resurrected does do Lovecraft well.

    What I liked about Mr. O’Bannon’s work was that he never seemed to take the easy, cliche-ridden way. His stuff tended to have integrity and a real sense of a storyteller at work.

  • R. DIttmar

    While we’re celebrating the man’s work, let me put in a good word for Dead & Buried. It’s a tremendously creepy “what the hell is going on here?” movie that’s well worth going out of your way to track down if you haven’t seen it. And while it is very clever the whole way through, it also has the single best “jump” moment ever put in a horror movie. If you’re not climbing down from the roof after it happens then you’re – well – dead & buried.

  • Food

    He gave us some good fun stuff! Rest well, sir. You’ve earned it.

  • On the other hand, Bleeders does Lovecraft very poorly.

    But I agree that he will be missed. I am not a Lifeforce fan, but loved The Resurrected and (duh) Dark Star.

    And Return of the Living Dead is probably the second most influential zombie movie ever made. Even today the concept that zombies eat brains derives from that film. Also it was the first movie with “fast” zombies, and it didn’t do it with that damn shakey-cam.

  • R. Dittmar

    And Return of the Living Dead is probably the second most influential zombie movie ever made.”

    I’ll go you one better and say that’s it’s one of the best genre films ever made period. I can’t praise it enough. It’s better than anything Romero has ever done outside of the original Night of the Living Dead. It manages to perfectly blend outright fright with a certain amount of comedy – something the misbegotten sequel utterly failed at. It also manages to be a thinking man’s horror movie like the original NOTLD. It’s easy to miss this with all that’s going on in the movie but the more times I’ve seen it, the more and more disturbed I’ve become at the notion that two of the protagonists were walking around dead during the entire picture. I’ve always argued that the best zombie films have theological/Lovecraftian overtones and that little wrinkle from ROTLD has always stuck in my head. What does it say about the great reward in the afterlife if in fact you can be walking around fully functional while being dead at the same time?

  • The Rev. D.D.

    Not a flawless record, but RotLD pretty much forgives all lesser movies he was a part of. Simply marvelous.

    Add one of only two non-Yuzna and friends Lovecraft movies that doesn’t suck, the only movie that nearly made me panic due to fright and confusion (the Alien chestburster scene–I may have been a bit too young for it, admittedly), the imperfect but rarely boring Lifeforce, and probably the best spoken-of genre movie I’ve not yet seen (D&B), and we did truly lose a fine one this week.

    Rest well, my good man.