Oh my God. Capricorn One is the cheesiest movie ever!

Cafe Society
1

I hadn’t seen this movie in ages. Probably about ten years. I remembered it as a classic 1970s conspiracy thriller, full of suspense and intrigue. Then a couple days ago it made its way to the top of my Netflix cue and I popped it into the DVD player.

What a piece of crap.

First, I had somehow managed to block from my mind the fact that one of the astronauts is none other than world-class thespian OJ Simpson.

First there’s Elliot Gould’s spectacular non-performance as the investigative journalist Uncovering The Truth. The highlight of his portrayal is when he’s been framed for drug posession (after he survives plunging off a bridge in his sabotaged car) and manages to draw this conclusion: “You guys are the ones behind all of this. You mothers.” You’d think he would at least try to be a little pissed off.

Then there’s the obnoxious runner involving Gould’s hot reporter partner, played by Karen Black, who keeps insisting that Gould wants to jump her.

There are the miniatures of helicopters, jets and cropdusters that all have the wrong proportions to one another and make no sense in the perspective of the plates stuck behind them.

But my favorite bit of cheesiness concerns the helicopter chase wherein the bad guys are tracking down the three astronauts who threaten to uncover their evil plot. There are two helicopters, and they’re always flying right next to each other. You’d think they’d realize that, “Hey, we have helicopters, let’s search two places at once!” But no. Then there’s one scene where the two helicopters come into frame, rising above a cliff, turn to look at one another, and then continue on. WTF was that all about?

Finally, at the very end, heroic astronaut James Brolin shows up at his own funural to reveal the truth. They wanted a slow-mo of him running through the cemetary towards his non-widow. But they didn’t bother to overcrank the camera, no, they just played it back at half speed! OK, that’s not so bad when you’re doing 12 frames a second, but then on every subsequent cut, they slow it down more, until the last shot of the movie is James running towards the camera at a whopping four frames per second.

Man, that was cheesy.

2

I still think Johnny Cochran should have shown this movie to the jury to demonstrate that his client’s protestations of innocence were not – could not be – acting.

3

My gosh!!!
O.J. was innocent!!!

4

I always notice the rating my cable/satellite guide gives movies. When I lived in England, I noticed last year they gave this movie 4/4 stars. This puts it in company of *The Godfather * and Schindler’s list. This really puzzled me. Did anyone not recently screen the movie or was this a dig at US hubris from some anonymous Sky TV reviewer?

I need to add the Sky TV ratings were always spot on for me, with this one exception. Nice thread.

5

Capricorn One is Citizen Kane compared to Saturn 3. Read Ebert’s review to get a real feel for its outstanding badness.

6

Isn’t it obvious? Capricorn One deserves such a high rating because it’s a true documentary about how NASA faked the moon landings.

7

In your heart, you know it’s flat! :smiley:

8

And of course that final slow-motion run of Brolin and Gould gives one time to contemplate the cosmic significance of the fact that they are the current and former husbands of Barbra Streisand.

Well, it’s gotta be significant somehow.

9

Thanks to a rush of blood in a petrol station, I own this on DVD. Yes, it is pathetic but at least you get Jerry Goldsmith’s music (small consolation). WTF are petrol stations doing selling DVDs anyway?

10

Man, back in the day when Elliot Gould could open a movie.

Not only did I used to love this movie, I even had the novelisation. And read it. More than once.

11

Waiting for blood-rush victims, obviously.

12

Your review forgot to mention that this movie also features Hal “Deep Throat” Holbrook, Telly “Kojak” Savalas, and Sam “Jack McCoy” Waterston.

13

If anything, the special effects in the movie should be proof positive that hollywood did NOT, in fact, have the ability to fake the moon landings. They couldn’t even fake faking them.

14

[Leslie Nielsen] I realise that… now. [/LN]

15

Be careful when you start your car in the morning…

16

Perverts !!

17

I loved this film when it came out. A few years ago I bought the DVD. Yeah, it’s cheesy, but so were a lot of films back then. It’s not as bad as some people are making out to be, but it’s not exactly at the top of my viewing list.

But it did give us a great joke.

‘Your mother was on the roof…’

[sub]Spoiler tag fixed – Uke[/sub]

18

:smack:

19

You forgot David “The bigger of the Lebowskis” Huddleston.

20

Actually that Sam Waterson cliff climbing scene is my favorite, most memorable scene in the movie.

Given the time, post-Watergate, post-Vietnam when fearing government conspiracy was rampant, the movie wasn’t all that bad.

But speaking of the cliff scene, I always kind of wondered about their logic to head in 3 different compass directions (west, east, north, or whatever they chose). Given that the pattern is so easily recognized once one is caught (as the evil Holbrook character deduces), you would have thought they might have been better off either 1) having one guy follow another, about a mile or so behind or 2) had at least one pick a non-compass point direction (like north-west). Seems they could have bought some time with either of these options.