Monster Movie of the Week: Pitch Black (2000)

PITCH BLACK (2000)
Genre: Sci-Fi/Action
Director: David Twohy

THE MOVIE

Pitch Black owes a lot to the James Cameron movies and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies of the 1980’s such as Aliens and Predator. Much like the classic Schwarzenegger flicks it is a vehicle for its star, Vin Diesel, and was one of the muscled actor’s first breakout roles. It also has a hard sci-fi edge that characterized many of the action films of the ‘80’s. Creature design is handled here by the very competent Patrick Tsatopolous-who is hated by fanboys for his work on the American Godzilla movie but a decent creature designer in his own right. Pitch Black is also the start of a series of movies and multimedia projects featuring Diesel’s character Riddick and was followed with the spectacularly nerdy and self-important The Chronicles of Riddick as well as an anime movie and a well-received Xbox game, and an upcoming theatrical sequel. Pitch Black is the only entry to actually heavily feature monsters.

Pitch Black is a story of survival in which a cargo/passenger ship en route to the “Tangiers” system is struck by a meteor shower and goes down on an uninhabited desert planet. There's already a lot going on here and you can see that there is an extensive and convoluted back story, which thankfully is left for the sequel to explore. The ship is also carrying prisoner Richard Riddick and his bounty hunter captor. After the crash, Riddick escapes into the desert but the survivors have other problems to worry about in the form of carnivorous hammer-headed creatures called Bio-raptors. The good news is that the creatures are solely nocturnal and cannot survive in the light of the planet’s three suns. The bad news is that the ship crashed prior to the planet’s once-every-twenty-two-years eclipse cycle. The few remaining survivors team up with Riddick-who has a bad attitude and practically has the word “Anti-hero” tattooed across his giant pectoral muscles so you never forget: HE’S NOT A GOOD GUY-and try to escape the creatures.

At the end Riddick learns the true meaning of Christmas.

Pitch Black is a decent creature feature, with good special effects and a stylish presentation. The special lighting and filtering effects to convey the other worldliness of this tri-solar desert planet are particularly cool. Diesel is a good action hero and a worthy successor to the Stallones and Schwarzeneggers of yesteryear but he needs to learn to control his nerdy indulgences. David Twohy is a talented writer director who has a real eye for visionary and vaguely gothic sci-fi and horror. He had previously done the very cool sci-fi film The Arrival and was one of the dozens of writers to have worked on Alien 3 and Waterworld and the well-received thriller A Simple Getaway.

THE CREATURES/EFFECTS

These “Bio-raptors” are distant cousins of Giger’s Alien, but that’s okay; about a third of movie monsters from the last 30 years are as well. Patrick Tatopolous gives a unique twist to what could have been a total Alien clone, with some truly bizarre looking creatures with weird crescent-shaped heads and hammerhead protrusions on either side of their faces. The effects and design are all good if a little too slick for my tastes.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE:

To be fair, its a pretty flat movie.

SEQUELS

The Chronicles of Riddick 2004

HOME VIDEO

Widely available.

SEE ALSO

Aliens 1986

TRAILER