[Inspector Abberline]

Capricorn One. (1977)
Peter Hyams writes and directs this conspiracy theory about about a mission to mars that is hoaxed because of the cost of a faulty life support system that has failed on the spacecraft that was due to take off.The three astronauts James Brolin as Colonel Charles Brubaker, USAFSam Waterston as Lieutenant Colonel Peter Willis, USAF and O. J. Simpson as Commander John Walker are whisked off to an undisclosed air base in the middle of nowhere,where a mock mars landing has been set up. Falling somewhere between All The President's Men [1976] and Parallax View, The [1974] with its determined journalist Elliott Gould as Robert Caulfield and the mid 1970's science fiction boom, Hyams manages to give us not only a great thriller but something that is so plausible it would not be a surprise what so ever if these sort of things actually happened at all. In fact Hyams lays the whole thing out so matter a factually and in such a realistic approach It would make more sense to fake it in real life.In fact im beginning to think that Tim Peake is actually hiding out in a aircraft hanger in Reading playing canasta with Bin Laden and Timothy Leary. The 1970's saw a slew of great conspiracy films,mainly because it was the age where the public started to doubt its leaders and governments and all the conspiracies that followed every scandal or assassinations.Hal Holbrook as Dr. James Kelloway is suburb as the NASA official who orchestrates the whole cover up and manages to convince the astronauts to play along with the whole scandal. James Brolin, Sam Waterston and O. J. Simpson are all excellent as the astronauts faced with another crisis as there lives are threatened when they realise the empty spaceship that went into orbit has really malfunction and every one now believes they have in fact died re entering the earth's orbit. Although different in tone this fits well with that breed of 70's film that looked at science fiction as science rather than fiction,like The Andromeda Strain,THX 1138,Silent Running and Phase IV to name a few.