Capricorn One

According to conspiracy theorists, Kubrick shot the Moon landings. Peter Hyams is in some respects a better candidate. His Capricorn One is all about a faked journey into space, and is undoubtedly the inspiration behind many of the whisperings about Nasa making the whole thing up.

Why does Kubrick get name-checked so much more often than Hyams then? Probably because Kubrick is a better film-maker, even though the space sections of his 2001: A Space Odyssey look far more obviously bogus than Hyams’s later mission-to-Mars movie. 1977’s Capricorn One is also a bit of a mess, whereas 2001, for all the messing around, is not.

Hyams does his best work early on and in the final moments. Early: we follow the astronauts into the space craft, quipping nervously as they go, and watch as the launch sequence is initiated and the rocket lifts off while white-shirted Nasa techies in serried rows stare intently at their screens. It’s all hyper-plausible. Late: a really excellent chase sequence, with one man hanging off the wing of a crop-duster, two men in the cockpit, and two sinister black helicopters in hot pursuit.

In between is where the trouble lies, for us and the space travellers – the astronauts are not heading for Mars, as they believe. Instead Nasa has got wind of a technical snafu and rather than cancel the mission – and potentially lose their funding from a political establishment no longer interested in space – fakes the whole thing.

But it all goes wrong. The astronauts are not in on the deception and are unhappy about being deprived of their moment of glory. A remote air force base is no substitute for the surface of Mars. Eventually they make a run for it across the bleak desert wastes of Red Rock Canyon (ironically a good stand-in for the red planet). Followed by a shoe-gazing reporter who has got wind of something “off” about the whole thing.

There are a lot of a stories being told here. First the decision to fake the whole thing and how that all happened. Then the nuts and bolts of faking a space mission. The astronauts’ experiences at the mothballed air base where they are being held and their escape dressed in white Nasa spacesuits. The astronaut’s wife who’s guessed something is not adding up. The reporter trying to tie it all together. None of them gets enough room to be fully developed and the result is, sadly, more cold buffet than satisfying meal.

Elliott Gould is top-billed and shuffles around like a refugee from All the President’s Men. And had Hyams stuck with that idea – a Woodward and Bernstein stand-in investigates a high-level space conspiracy – this would be a much better film. Or if he’d stuck with the astronauts, played by James Brolin, OJ Simpson and Sam Waterston, that would also have been an interesting way to tackle a faked mission. But only Brolin – here painted as the manliest and most all-American of the three – gets much in the way of dialogue, though the other two acquit themselves well with limited screen time.

Hal Holbrook is also good as the slippery Nasa guy who is the face of the conspiracy. Brenda Vaccaro is too, as the loyal wife smelling something rotten in the state of Nasa. And poor Karen Black, who should be the Woodward to Gould’s Bernstein (or vice versa), is largely sidelined as a fellow reporter. Their two scenes in the movie are the best thing in it – there’s a sparky screwball energy and we get a sense of what might have been had they been allowed more screen time together.

The Mars stuff? Almost convincing and certainly good enough for the blurry TV screens of the era. Hyams excels at the technical stuff. A runaway car sequence mid-movie and the climactic nod to Hitchcock in a cropduster scene featuring Telly Savalas as a wise-cracking pilot, Gould in the passenger seat and Brolin hanging off the wing for dear life – the sort of thing Tom Cruise probably watches while having his breakfast smoothie.

So frustrating. This film should be really good but is merely OK. The good bits, though, are very very good. And thanks to the cinematography of Bill Butler (The Conversation, Jaws) and the score by the legendary Jerry Goldsmith, it all nearly reaches escape velocity.

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© Steve Morrissey 2025