Capricorn One

Starring:Elliott Gould, James Brolin, Brenda Vaccaro, Sam Waterston, O.J. Simpson, Hal Holbrook, Karen Black, Telly Savalas, David Huddleston, David Doyle, Lee Bryant, Denise Nicholas, Robert Walden, James Sikking, Alan Fudge, James Karen, Virginia Kaiser, Nancy Malone, Hank Stohl, Norman Bartold
Director: Peter Hyams
Studio: Lions Gate
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

Thanks to repeated showings on cable television and home video, this speculative thriller has built quite a loyal following since its release in 1978. The provocative "what if?" scenario still packs a punch, even if it is not always believable. James Brolin, Sam Waterston, and O.J. Simpson star as three astronauts who agree to spare the government embarrassment by faking their historic landing on Mars after their spacecraft is determined to be unsafe for blastoff. When a scheming mission controller (Hal Holbrook) plots to kill the astronauts in a staged capsule fire, the trio embarks on a dangerous mission to expose the truth. Elliott Gould costars as the journalist determined to crack the conspiracy, and director Peter Hyams turns up the tension with an exciting chase sequence involving Telly Savalas as an eccentric barnstormer who comes to Gould's aid in his attempt rescue the hoax mission's sole survivor. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews:

Capricorn One and Executive Action .......2007-05-04

These are both great movies because they shatter the myths of our times.

From fake moon landing to the assassinations of liberals -- and all the way to an appointed president and 9/11 -- we are asked to believe in coincidence rather than conspiracy. Is this conspiracy-free America?
Are we unlike every other nation; a gene pool set apart, free from violence, genocide, desires to enslave? Our true history suggests otherwise.

On the other hand, there is the propaganda of white male history which is the "Dick and Jane" version of reality which denies conspiracy in America.
What of the genocide of the native America? The enslavement of Africans in America? Our CIA run amuck all over the world? Vietnam and today's Iraq-nam. Warprofiteers aren't part of today's reality? There is no Halliburton ripping off our soldiers?

JFK released the seeds of a counter-revolution which, like feminism, continues to spread and grow.

If you want more insight into the struggles for and against democracy in America -- and there are those who consider democracy a threat to their view of the world -- see both of these movies. The original "Executive Action" with Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan and a sensational cast, not yet on DVD. And, Capricorn One which is the tale of a moon landing more than 40 years ago which more than likely never happened.

For today and the reality of Global Warming we need yet another movie to shatter the myths of wealth, to question why our natural resources are in the hands of private families? To challenge the value of nature, animal-life, humanity being weighed against the yardstick of a dollar bill.

Capricorn One -- with a great cast -- is a cult movie for every good reason!! See it.

Outstanding Action Conspiracy Adventure.......2007-03-06

This is one of the best conspiracy action movies ever filmed. The plot concerning the government faking a manned mission to Mars and a down and out reporter trying to expose the conspiracy is really quite simple. But it is the energy of the script, convincing performances, an outstanding Jerry Goldsmith score and just the plain audacity that a government would even try to pull off such a hoax that gets the viewers' blood boiling. O.J. Simpson, Sam Waterston and James Brolin are excellent as the three beleaguered astronauts who reluctantly go along with the conspiracy. I cannot think of a more diverse trio of actors to play these astronauts but they really make this film convincing. Elliott Gould as the reporter is perfectly cast bringing his best attributes to that role. Telly Savalas almost steals this film with a very colorful performance as an open cockpit pilot who helps Elliott Gould track down the astronauts while being chased by machine gun firing helicopters hot on his heels through curvaceous ravines. This sequence is an extremely exciting. This is director Peter Hyams' best film to date. The one cohesive element that really stands out is Jerry Goldsmith's powerhouse of a theme that literally drives the action and the drama and hits a responsive emotional chord that I remember to this day.

Great concept...lousy writing.......2007-02-22

The concept is terrific:

A struggling NASA, faced with opponents in Congress and a bad track record, decides that it can't afford any more "screwups" as NASA head Hal Holbrook's character puts it. When it's discovered that corner cutting would result in a malfunctioning life support system that would leave a trio of astronauts, NASA's backers decide they'll fake the planned Mars landing to save the program. They ensure the astronauts will go along with it by claiming their families are aboard a single plane armed with a bomb which will be detonated if they don't play along.

Why the movie fails:
Plot holes you could drive a bus through.
**** SPOILERS AHEAD ****

Elliot Gould's reporter character has his car tampered with by the baddies resulting in no brakes and (somehow) a gas pedal that keeps pushing itself down(?!?) Despite speeds reaching 100 miles an hour, he manages to avoid running into another car or any other obstruction in busy traffic until reaching a boat bridge, which is opening as he reaches it (at 100MPH). Gould plunges into the water car and all and not only manages to escape drowning, but doesn't appear to be significantly hurt.

A chase scene late in the movie finds Brubaker clinging to the wing of a cropduster as he, Gould and a minor character are attacked by shooting helicopters. Brubaker manages to hang onto the plane's wing despite barrel rolls, dives and loop-de-loops as they try to evade the copters.

During the fake Mars landing, the astronauts don't "bounce" as they would in weaker gravity...they walk just like they would on Earth. Perhaps the script's writer believes we'll have "weighted" spacesuits by that point in time, but it isn't addressed in the script.

I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting but you get the point...too little attention spent on the actual script once the basic plot was arrived at.

I gave it two stars anyway because the action sequences ARE good to watch, but there's too much disbelief to suspend to really enjoy this one unless you're looking for a movie you can laugh at Mystery Science Theater 3000 style...

Houston, we have a problem!.......2007-02-18

The 1970s were a time rife with left-wing conspiracy theories. Why not? The New Left hippie counterculture of the 1960s was just starting to settle down into "real" life, that dull drudgery of working every day for the man and paying bills so you can squirt out a couple of kids who'll soak up every spare dime you've got yet still hate you when they reach adolescence. Yay! To keep the experience real, the ex-hippies made sure to believe in every half-baked kook conspiracy that came down the pike. The conspiracy to kill JFK. The conspiracy to kill RFK. The conspiracy to kill MLK, Jr. Alien invaders. The evil goings on over at the CIA. J. Edgar Hoover in a dress. Anything was fair game for the acidheads. Heck, they're still up to their old tricks today with the hoodoo about global warming (Yeah, right. They said it'd ice over in the 1970s--if overpopulation didn't kill us off first) and the whole Election 2000 imbroglio. The election of George W. Bush and the concomitant misadventures in Iraq will provide conspiracy scenarios well into the middle of the century--or until the last Baby Boomer in the last pair of Depends coughs out their last breath.

All of this nonsense brings us to Peter Hyams's 1978 conspiracy thriller "Capricorn One," a lesser entry in the 1970s "paranoia will destroy ya" subgenre. It's notable today for the presence of one O.J. Simpson, sans bloody glove and any knowledge that in roughly fifteen years he'll kill his ex-wife and her male companion. There might've been a white Bronco somewhere in the movie--I don't remember. What I do know is this: "Capricorn One" is an entertaining, if somewhat laughable jaunt, through the recesses of Hollywood paranoia, New Left fantasy, and Hal Holbrook's Mark Twain haircut. The plot, if you choose to accept it, deals with three astronauts--Colonel Charles Brubaker (James Brolin), Commander John Walker (Simpson), and Lt. Colonel Peter Willis (Sam Waterston)--and their sudden realization that the much anticipated trip to Mars ain't going to happen. Instead of disappointing the public, however, the government goes through the motions of a launch but stashes the astronauts away in an airplane hanger out in the desert. They plan on faking the Mars landing. The hanger has television cameras, a fake lander, a bogus landscape, and enough government secrecy to keep everything under wraps for years. Or maybe not.

Of course, some young shooter at mission control notices some glitch in the computer system that doesn't seem right. He properly notifies his superiors of the problem but is troubled when they don't seem that concerned. He mentions it in passing to his reporter friend Robert Caulfield (Elliot Gould). Caulfield doesn't think it's anything to get excited about until his buddy suddenly disappears without a trace, and bad things start happening to him. Like cops showing up at your apartment and finding drugs you didn't know you had in the bathroom, or driving your car down the road only to discover the brakes are suddenly nonexistent. These are the seminal markers of government conspiracy, and Caulfield (a true journalist/leftist/hero/ in the vein of Woodward and Bernstein) knows this. The rest of "Capricorn One" turns into a race between Caulfield on the one hand, doggedly trying to uncover the evil government conspiracy, and on the other hand the three astronauts trying to save their lives because certain developments suddenly make them think that the government might not want any witnesses around. Come to think of it, does the government ever want anyone around to witness its nefarious schemes and manipulations? Nah.

I noted that "Capricorn One" is a laughable jaunt, and it is. Elliot Gould is a hoot as the over the top reporter Caulfield. A throbbing forehead vein in human form, Gould's character chomps at the bit to prove the big bad government is pulling yet another sleazy scam. He screams at his boss, the man, and anyone that stands in his way. Only by posing heroically and running a lot can Caulfield get to the bottom of the faked Capricorn mission. It's unintentionally hilarious. I mean, the speeded up reels of his car careening through town without brakes evokes memories of the Keystone Kops, and the slow motion run with him and Brubaker at the end has to be one of the most feminine conclusions I've ever seen in a film. No wonder both of these chaps ended up married to Barbra Streisand. Yet the film does offer a few thrills (including a plane chase with Telly Savalas) and some good acting from Hal Holbrook as Dr. James Kelloway, a NASA scientist torn between his loyalties to the astronauts and his attachments to the space program. The movie has some good dialogue too, mostly seen in a monologue delivered by Holbrook at the beginning of the film.

The disc I watched "Capricorn One" on had zero in the way of supplements. No trailers, no commentary tracks, no behind the scenes footage, no deleted/extended scenes. No confession from O.J. Simpson, either. It's an all right film, worth a watch once maybe, but the whole idea is sort of outdated and laughable. How sinister is a conspiracy to hide the fact that we aren't landing on Mars? Not much today, but back during the Cold War the competition with the Soviet Union over who did what first in space had serious repercussions. If the Russians thought we put men on Mars, they'd also think our nuclear weapons technology was superior as well. So when viewed that way, "Capricorn One" has a certain cachet. It also holds some allure, I'd imagine, for the nuts who think NASA faked the moon landings. And the two or three Elliot Gould fans. Give it a shot if you fall into those categories.

Great movie.......2007-02-11

This movie is "All the Presidents Men meets Apollo 13."
Capricorn 1 has it all: heroic astronauts, government conspiracy, black helicopters, a gutsy reporter, and a thrilling ending. Great cast features Elliot Gould, James Brolin, and Hal Holbrook. Totally plausible story does NOT go overboard with over-the-top conspiracies, unbelievable technology, or cheesy explosions that you might expect from 1970s Hollywood. Instead, the movie features a believable Mars Mission, credible NASA elements, great cinematography and good storyline.
Would like to have seen the characters developed a bit more, but the movie works well as-is. The only overdone cliches in this movie are the political scenes involving the Vice President. It's the typical "fat cat" politician character that is SO overused in Hollywood to this very day.
This is one of those 1970s flicks that is so good, you'd like to see it re-made but also fear that Hollywood would probably screw-up the re-make like they did with "Planet of the Apes."
Two thumbs and two toes up!

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Disaster 1970's! - A Video Scrapbook

Manufacturer: RetroFLICKS
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Product Description

The 1970's: the decade of the disaster film! Hollywood churned out one tale of cataclysmic doom after another, and audiences seemingly could not get enough. Here now is a collection of rare behind-the-scenes looks from several memorable films of that era. You'll watch the preparation and filming of exciting action sequences. You'll hear the stars - Gene Hackman, George Kennedy, Sophia Loren, Shelly Winters, Michael Caine, Henry Fonda and many more - talk about their roles. You'll see the directors and special effects experts at work, as they create cinema magic. The movies profiled: Airport '79; Capricorn One; The Cassandra Crossing; Futureworld; The Poseidon Adventure; The Swarm; The Towering Inferno. If you are a fan of 70's sci-fi, action/adventure or disaster movies, you'll want Disaster 1970's! in your collection.

Sci-Fi Collector's Pack (Capricorn One - StarGate - Millennium)

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Sci-Fi Collector's Pack (Capricorn One - StarGate - Millennium)
Starring: Kris Kristofferson , Cheryl Ladd , Daniel J. Travanti , Robert Joy , and Lloyd Bochner
Director: Michael Anderson , Peter Hyams , and Roland Emmerich
Manufacturer: Live / Artisan
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: 6305559279
Release Date: 2000-03-15

Amazon.com

Time-hoppers from the future, led by Cheryl Ladd, are abducting airline passengers about to crash, and transporting them a millennium hence in order to reseed a future blighted by environmental disaster. This is a dangerous business, plagued by the specter of accidentally creating time paradoxes, which could throw the future out of whack. Unfortunately, they've lost a couple of the stunners they use to subdue troublesome passengers, and these fall into the hands of a curious physicist (Daniel J. Travanti) and an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board (Kris Kristofferson). Cheryl Ladd must retrieve these devices before a time paradox wipes out her world, but manages to complicate things by developing a romance with Kristofferson. All of which is very intriguing, having come from the short story, "Air Raid," by science fiction luminary John Varley, who also is credited with the screenplay. The part about airline abductions to save the disastrous future is straight from the original story, and the rest is expanded (you wouldn't say extrapolated) from it. The results are not very happy. About a third of the film is maddeningly wasted by repeating action from a different point of view. Seems natural when there are disparate timelines to deal with, but here nothing is added by the conceit. Only Travanti turns in a creditable performance as the physicist, bent on proving his theories about the future. He seems hungry for discovery, which is one of the things you want from a science fiction story, that sense of awe. But here it's just, "Aw, shucks!" --Jim Gay

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Capricorn One [Region 2]
Starring: Elliott Gould , James Brolin , Brenda Vaccaro , Sam Waterston , and O.J. Simpson
Director: Peter Hyams
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Capricorn One [Region 2]
Starring: Elliott Gould , James Brolin , Brenda Vaccaro , Sam Waterston , and O.J. Simpson
Director: Peter Hyams , John Barry (III) , and Stanley Donen
ProductGroup: DVD
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Sci-Fi II Collector's Pack (Stargate/Capricorn One/Millennium)

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Sci-Fi II Collector's Pack (Stargate/Capricorn One/Millennium)
Starring: Elliott Gould , James Brolin , Brenda Vaccaro , Sam Waterston , and O.J. Simpson
Director: Peter Hyams , Michael Anderson , and Roland Emmerich
Manufacturer: Live / Artisan
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