Although I had fallen in love with films that featured helicopters (don't worry I would discover girls around the same time) like CAPRICORN ONE and APOCALYPSE NOW (and let's not forget John Badham's 1982 BLUE THUNDER which I saw as well), that passion wasn't enough to make me want to fly in an actual helicopter. I've been on vacations where helicopter rides are offered to fly over the Grand Canyon or around Maui, but I have always decided to keep my feet on good old Mother Earth. I lived my helicopter obsession vicariously by going to see films with helicopters in them.
Besides having no knowledge of what black helicopters symbolized, I didn't realize at the time that CAPRICORN ONE was another addition to the conspiracy film genre. Conspiracy films were all the rage in the 1970s after JFK's assassination and Watergate in films like David Miller's EXECUTIVE ACTION (1973), Francis Coppola's THE CONVERSATON (1974), Alan J. Pakula's THE PARALLAX VIEW (also 1974), Pakula's ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1975), and William Richert's WINTER KILLS (1979). CAPRICORN ONE takes itself a little less seriously and tackles a far flung but interesting conspiracy theory that the Apollo moon landings was fake. For me, it didn't hurt that CAPRICORN ONE also had an out of control car flying off a bridge and a wild helicopter/crop duster aerial chase finale.
Written and directed by Peter Hyams, CAPRICORN ONE begins on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral as the rocket Capricorn One prepares to lift off into space with the first manned flight to Mars. Dignitaries like Vice President Price (James Karen) and Senator Hollis Peaker (David Huddleston), a key proponent of the Mars program, watch from the grandstands. The three astronauts that will be flying to Mars enter the capsule for final checks: Colonel Charles Brubaker (James Brolin), Lieutenant Colonel Peter Willis (Sam Waterston), and John Walker (O.J. Simpson). Seconds before liftoff, the three astronauts are surreptiously escorted out of the capsule and whisked away by private jet to an undisclosed desert location.
Waiting in a windowless conference room, they are met by the director of Capricorn One project Dr. James Kelloway (Hal Holbrook). Kelloway briefs the three men that a few months earlier it was discovered that the life support system to keep the astronauts breathing during their long flight to Mars didn't work. The men would have died. Congress wants to scrap the program. Failure is not an option if the program wants to continue. Kelloway takes the men to an empty hangar that has been turned into a Mars movie set with a mock space capsule and Landing Module with a fake Mars horizon. Kelloway's plan is to film a few televised transmissions to deceive the public and Congress. The astronauts balk at the idea. Kelloway hints that their families are currently on a plane back to Houston. An accident could happen to them if they don't agree. "There are people out there, forces out there, who have a lot to lose," Kelloway tells them. "It's gotten too big." The astronauts reluctantly agree to the charade.
Covering the historic space flight are TV reporters Robert Caulfield (Elliot Gould) and Judy Drinkwater (Karen Black). They interview Brubaker's wife Kay (Brenda Vaccaro) outside her home. She's very proud of her husband. Two months later at Mission Control, one of the technicians on the project Elliot Whitter (Robert Webber) notices the transmissions seem to be coming not millions of miles away but closer to home. Capricorn One lands on Mars. Whitter still notices the anomaly and brings it up with Kelloway who brushes it off as a malfunction of his equipment. Reporter Caulfield meets his friend Whitter for a game of pool at a bar where Whitter tells him his weird finding and Kelloway's blasé reaction. Caulfield's called away for a phone call. When he returns, Whitter is gone. Caulfield goes to check on Whitter at Mission Control. Whitter and his workstation are gone. Meanwhile, the astronauts fake their first steps onto Mars, filmed at the remote facility. Capricorn One begins its return back to earth after completing its mission. The astronauts give one last transmission from the fake capsule, talking to their wives. Brubaker makes a strange reference about returning to a vacation spot that his wife doesn't quite understand. Caufield notices her bewilderment. Caulfield goes to Whitter's apartment. A strange lady now lives there.
The astronauts begin to fly back to the rendezvous location for the staged splash down. At Mission Control, the heat shield for the space capsule fails upon reentry. Kelloway announces to the world the three astronauts are dead. The jet detours back to the secret desert facility. Brubaker, Willis, and Walker figure out that they're now supposed to be dead. Caulfield visits Kay Brubaker and asks about her husband's cryptic promise. She says Brubaker got the vacation spot mixed up. They went to a fake western movie set called Flat Rock and not Yosemite. As Caulfield begins to search for the truth, his car is sabotaged, he's shot at, and arrested on a fake drug possession charge. Brubaker, Willis, and Walker break out of their confinement, steal and then crash land the Lear jet somewhere in the desert, and split up to survive. They will be pursued by two ominous green military helicopters trying to stop them from revealing to the world what really happened. Caufield discovers the fake Mars movie set. He hires a nearby crop duster pilot named Albain (Telly Savalas) to help him find the astronauts resulting in a terrific chase through canyons and over mesas after they rescue Brubaker in the film's tense, action packed finale.
CAPRICORN ONE was one of those surprise summer hits that movie fans were looking for after the success of Steven Spielberg's JAWS a few years earlier in 1975, a fun rollercoaster ride film that had a good hook (NASA faked a Mars landing), recognizable actors but no big movie stars, and some thrilling set pieces. I always thought CAPRICORN ONE was a Warner Brothers production but the studio only helped release it. CAPRICORN was actually an independent film financed by British impresario Sir Lew Grade and his ITC Entertainment who had produced other action films in the 70s with slightly over the hill actors like Richard Harris and Sophia Loren in THE CASSANDRA CROSSING (1976). CAPRICORN ONE had Elliott Gould (who had just reached his peak a few years earlier), James Brolin (solid but no Robert Redford), Hal Holbrook (distinguished actor), O.J. Simpson (former athlete turned actor) and Telly Savalas (no longer playing iconic TV detective KOJAK).
What sets CAPRICORN ONE apart from some other star-studded thrillers of the 70s is it's plausible plot and setting and some excellent writing by director Hyams. From the omnipresent narration by one of the flight control engineers telling us what's happening at each moment of the mission to the Houston Mission Control set, it all feels real. There are two very long, spectacular speeches in CAPRICORN ONE, one given by Hal Holbrook as Kelloway as he reveals the genesis of the Capricorn One dream to the now grounded astronauts and the reality of the program's bleak future and the other speech by David Doyle (TV's CHARLIE'S ANGELS Bosley) as Caufield's television editor Walter Loughlin fed up with bailing Caulfield out of jail for his fanciful pursuit of hair brained stories are unheard of in a thriller film.
Jerry Goldsmith's tense, suspenseful music underscores the dire predicament the astronauts are in, how high the stakes are to give a false impression that the first flight to Mars succeeded. Caufield's sabotaged car, brakeless, racing through busy streets (and even up onto crowded curbsides) with its numerous point of view shots making the audience feel like the helpless driver is hair raising. And the finale with Brubaker busting out of a broken down desert gas station to be picked up by Caulfield and Albain in a crop duster, pursued by two helicopters will literally take your breath away as the crop duster (with Brubaker hanging on the wing) dives and weaves through canyons to escape the menacing helicopter.
Conspiracy films began to emerge in the early 1970s. Some were related to the assassination of John Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963. It was a touchy subject that even caused Frank Sinatra to have his film THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962) directed by John Frankenheimer pulled from distribution after JFK's death as it was deemed to close to the real thing. But enough time had passed for filmmakers to begin exploring JFK conspiracies again. Then, Watergate happened with secret break-ins, taped conversations, and rogue members of the White House that brought down Richard Nixon's presidency. I watched the Watergate hearings as a kid. I had also watched the Apollo launches and walks on the moon. I had never heard of any conspiracy theories that the moon landings were faked. CAPRICORN ONE creatively takes the theory a step further injecting Mars for the moon.
In recent years, conspiracy theorists began floating the idea around that famed director Stanley Kubrick (2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY) had been the creative person hired by the U.S. government to film a fake moon landing. A documentary called ROOM 237 (2012) points to Kubrick's 1980 horror film THE SHINING where it's proposed Kubrick leaves hidden clues in the film that he was responsible like the young boy Danny wearing an Apollo 11 knitted sweater or the carpet pattern resembling the Apollo launching pad. In a chilling irony, the main reason in CAPRICORN ONE for NASA to fake the Mars landing and walk on the surface was the discovery that the life support system built to keep the astronauts breathing during the long journey was faulty. They would have died within three weeks. In real life, NASA engineers had warned about flaws in the Space Shuttle Challenger's joints. NASA brass ignored their warnings. On January 28, 1986, the Challenger exploded 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard, due in part to those joints.
Director Peter Hyams would have a nice little run of films with an interesting hook to them. With CAPRICORN ONE, it was what if NASA faked a Mars landing. In Hyams OUTLAND (1981) starring Sean Connery, Hyams borrows the plot of the western HIGH NOON (1952) and sets it in outer space with Connery as a federal marshal dealing with intergalactic drug smugglers with no help from authorities or his superiors. THE STAR CHAMBER (1983) starring Michael Douglas about a secret cabal of modern-day judges borrowing the methods of a 15th century English law court known as the "star chamber" to dish out their own form of justice when criminals get off on technicalities. Hyams would even tackle the unthinkable -- a sequel to Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY called 2010: THE YEAR WE MAKE CONTACT (1984) starring Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, and Helen Mirren about a joint U.S./Russian mission sent to find out what happened to the spaceship Discovery and its on-board computer HAL-9000.
For an audience to buy into a slightly far-fetched plot like CAPRICORN ONE, it needed actors with some cache that they can trust. Director Hyams was smart to cast Elliott Gould and Hal Holbrook in the two most important leading roles. Gould who had been so good in Robert Altman's early 1970s films like MASH (1970) and THE LONG GOODBYE (1974) plays reporter Robert Caulfield, a less successful Woodward and Bernstein type reporter, cynical and bored, who stumbles across the conspiracy of the century and doggedly pursues the story while almost drowning, getting shot at, and falsely arrested. Hal Holbrook, best known for his portrayals of humorist Mark Twain on stage and Abraham Lincoln in several TV films, was sneaky good at playing mild-mannered villains. With his Midwest charm and even temperament, Holbrook's Mission director James Kelloway seems the antithesis of unscrupulous until he hints that the astronaut's families could perish if they don't follow his orders. Check out Holbrook as Dirty Harry's supervisor Lieutenant Briggs in MAGNUM FORCE (1973) in another villainous role. Holbrook also played (mostly in shadow) Woodward and Bernstein's anonymous source Deep Throat in ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN.
The three Capricorn One astronauts are played by James Brolin, Sam Waterston, and O.J. Simpson. Brolin plays Col. Charles Brubaker, the lead astronaut. Brubaker's a stoic hero who must grapple with the dilemma to preserve the Mars program he's invested so much of his life to or deal with his legacy when the lie finally comes to light. Brolin was never an A list actor but when he landed a good role in a good film he was solid whether it be in Michael Crichton's WESTWORLD (1973) or CAPRICORN ONE. Sam Waterston (THE KILLING FIELDS) as Lt. Col. Peter Willis brings some needed humor with some of the film's best one liners and jokes as they deal with their dire situation. And before he became the most famous accused celebrity murderer in history, O.J. Simpson was a decent actor after his football career. Check out Simpson in John Guillermin's THE TOWERING INFERNO (1974) or David Zucker's THE NAKED GUN (1988) and its sequels. CAPRICORN ONE is probably Simpson's best performance (until his murder trial in 1995) as astronaut John Walker.
Other familiar faces in CAPRICORN ONE include Brenda Vaccaro (MIDNIGHT COWBOY) as Brubaker's wife Kay, David Huddleston (THE BIG LEBOWSKI) as Senator Hollis Peaker, Robert Walden (TVs LOU GRANT) as the unfortunate NASA technician Elliot Whitter, and Karen Black (FIVE EASY PIECES) as Caulfield's rival TV reporter and friend Judy Drinkwater. Two actors nearly steal CAPRICORN ONE from the main stars in their brief scenes: David Doyle as Caufield's exasperated editor Walter Loughlin and Telly Savalas as the crop duster pilot Albain who sees "perverts" everywhere. A favorite character actor that Hyams would use in several of his films is James B. Sikking. In CAPRICORN ONE, Sikking is the Control Room Man at the clandestine Mars set, directing the phony Mars lunar walk, puffing on a pipe. Sikking appears in Hyams OUTLAND and THE STAR CHAMBER. Sikking would use the pipe prop extensively as SWAT leader Lt. Howard Hunter on TV's HILL STREET BLUES (1981 to 1987).
Some final CAPRICORN ONE trivia tidbits. The fictional corporation Con Amalgamate who made the faulty life support system for NASA in CAPRICORN ONE plays a big part in Hyams next film, the science fiction western OUTLAND. In OUTLAND, Con Amalgamate is the evil company represented by Peter Boyle that Sean Connery must go up against on the Jupiter moon of Io and its mining colony. And although NASA comes off as the bad guys in CAPRICORN ONE, NASA gave its full support to the making of the film, supplying the production with all kinds of equipment and expertise.
Today, summer films with their big budgets and incredible special effects are the norm for movie going audiences. Back in the mid to late 70s, Hollywood was just starting to figure out that summer was a window to release your best high concept films. Yes, audiences were on summer vacations but there were also millions of teenagers with nothing to do during the summer except to go to the movies. JAWS would be the first film to capitalize on this. CAPRICORN ONE was an anomaly, a plot driven, well written thriller that became the biggest grossing independent film of 1977. The fact that CAPRICORN ONE didn't get lost behind two other giatn summer blockbusters of 1977 called STAR WARS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND is a nice testament to CAPRICORN ONE, the little conspiracy thriller that could.
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