Capricorn One (1977)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DID WHAT)

[And now a switch from a fictionalised account of a real conspiracy, to a fictional conspiracy that many people regard as being inspired by fact.]

Capricorn One (1977) Directed by Peter Hyams. With Elliott Gould, James Brolin.

Together Elliott Gould and James Brolin expose a conspiracy to fake the first manned Mars landings.

Moments before launch, officials evacuate the astronauts of NASA's eponymous mission, to a remote former military airbase.

Once there Brolin and his crew of two are reluctantly persuaded to take part in a charade to trick the American government and the rest of the world into believing that the mission was a success.

In fact, the mission was doomed to failure because cost cutting measures had resulted in an inadequate life support system.

Unfortunately for the conspiracy's organisers, one enterprising flight control center technician discovers, by running his own tests, that the crew communications don't appear to be coming from the flight vehicle.

Frustrated by his superiors' seeming indifference, the technician confides his discovery to Gould, an unreliable TV reporter with a track record for compiling reports that are more imagination than fact.

Not long after confessing his secret the technician disappears together with any evidence that he had ever existed.

Gould having been assigned, by his exasperated editor, to cover the mission, as it would supposedly provide no opportunity for his usual style of wildly imaginative reporting, has his sense for a great story further piqued by a stilted exchange between Brolin and his wife as the mission nears completion.

For the deception to succeed, Brolin and his crew have to be smuggled out to the re-entry vehicle before the naval recovery team reaches the splash down site.

However, partway through their flight the plane is diverted back to the desert base where the crew find themselves now held prisoner.

Realising that something must have gone fatally wrong during re-entry, and reasoning that NASA will therefore have to murder them in order to keep the conspiracy secret, the astronauts decide to break out and make their survival known.

The three manage to put some distance between themselves and their captors in the jet that they had flown in earlier.

But as the plane was never refueled, it isn't long before they are forced down in the desert surrounding the base, and must continue their escape on foot.

Realising that it will improve the chances of at least one of them reaching civilisation if they split up, the three head off in different directions.

However, soon the pair of gun toting black helicopters dispatched to hunt them down, catches up with Brolin's two colleagues, leaving him the only one left alive to expose the plot.

Meanwhile Gould's efforts to investigate his contact's disappearance lead him to approach Brolin's wife, and as a result finds his own life is now in danger.

With the help of a former girlfriend reporter, Gould manages to locate the now evacuated airbase, where he discovers an overlooked medallion of Brolin's that was dropped during his escape from captivity but which was missed during the cleanup operation.

In a leap of faith, Gould engages the help of an irascible crop duster with mercenary tendencies (show-stealingly portrayed by Telly Savalas) in order to hunt for evidence of the astronauts from the air.

Spotting the sinister pair of helicopters, Gould and the pilot are lead to Brolin's location, where they manage to touch down long enough to allow Brolin to climb on board the wing of the old bi-plane.

In the chase that follows, it takes all the crop duster's aerobatic skills and local knowledge to evade the 'copters and their blazing guns.

Timely deployment of a cloud of pesticide causes both pursuers to crash, leaving Gould and Brolin free to escape.

The conspiracy is finally exposed when the pair show up at Arlington National Cemetery just as the US President is delivering the eulogy on live TV at the memorial service to honour the supposedly dead Capricorn One crew.


It is an indication of the quality of acting and plausibility of the premise of this post-Watergate thriller, that, in a strange cart-before-the-horse reversal, many people now cite the movie as evidence that NASA did indeed fake the Moon landings.

The reality is, of course, that the movie was inspired by allegations that the Apollo Moon landings were faked, and the notion that NASA could ever keep a secret on such a scale is, of course, preposterous.

Conspiracy theorists might get more mileage from the fact that Barbra Streisand has been married twice, currently to James Brolin, and formerly to Elliot Gould.


Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capricorn_One
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/07/17/moon.landing.hoax/index.html
http://www.facts-about.org.uk/science-moon-landing-conspiracy-hoax-theory.htm
http://www.sptimes.com/2002/09/29/Floridian/Lunar_lunacy.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbra_Streisand#Personal_life