Каприкорн-1: Фальсификация Марса

1977 thriller film by Peter Hyams
the Good Riddance album

Capricorn One is a 1978 British produced American thriller film in which a reporter discovers that a supposed Mars landing by a crewed mission to the planet has been faked via a conspiracy involving the government and—under duress—the crew themselves. It was written and directed by Peter Hyams and produced by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment. It stars Elliott Gould as the reporter, and James Brolin, Sam Waterston, and O. J. Simpson as the astronauts. Hal Holbrook plays a senior NASA official who goes along with governmental and corporate interests and helps to fake the mission. The music score was created by Jerry Goldsmith.

Capricorn One—the first crewed mission to Mars—is on the launch pad. Just before liftoff, astronauts Charles Brubaker, Peter Willis, and John Walker are suddenly removed from the spacecraft. Bewildered, they are flown to an abandoned military base in the desert. The launch proceeds on schedule, with the public unaware the spacecraft is empty. At the base, NASA official James Kelloway informs the astronauts that a faulty life support system would have killed them in flight. He says they must help counterfeit the televised footage during the flight to and from Mars. Another failed space mission would result in NASA's funding being cut and private contractors losing millions in profits. Kelloway threatens their families to force their cooperation. The astronauts remain captive during the flight and appear to be filmed after landing on Mars, although they are actually inside of a makeshift TV studio at the base. At the command center, only a few officials know about the conspiracy until an alert technician, Elliot Whitter, notices that ground control receives the crew's televised transmissions before the spacecraft telemetry arrives. Whitter reports this to his supervisors, including Kelloway, but is told it is due to a faulty workstation. Whitter partially shares his concerns with a TV journalist friend, Robert Caulfield. Whitter suddenly vanishes, and when Caulfield goes to Whitter's apartment the next day, he discovers someone else living there and that all evidence of Whitter's recent life has been erased. As Caulfield investigates, several attempts are made on his life. Upon returning to Earth, the empty spacecraft burns up during atmospheric reentry due to a faulty heat shield, which would have killed the astronauts had they been on board. The astronauts realize officials will need to kill them to keep the hoax a secret. They escape in a small jet which quickly runs out of fuel, forcing a crash landing in the desert. They split up on foot to increase their chances of finding help and exposing the plot. Kelloway sends helicopters after them. Willis and Walker are found, while Brubaker evades capture. Caulfield interviews Brubaker's "widow" after reviewing a televised conversation between the astronauts and their wives. Mrs. Brubaker had seemed confused when her husband mentioned their last family vacation. She explains that the family had actually gone to a different location, where a western movie was being filmed. Brubaker was intrigued by how special effects and technology made it seem real. Caulfield believes Brubaker would never make such a mistake and may have been sending his wife a message. Caulfield goes to the deserted western movie set and is shot at. As he investigates further, federal agents break into his home, arresting him for possessing cocaine that they planted there. His exasperated boss bails Caulfield out, then fires him. A reporter friend tells Caulfield about an abandoned military base located 300 miles (480 km) from Houston. The base is deserted, but Caulfield finds Brubaker's necklace and medallion and concludes the astronauts were there. Caulfield hires a crop dusting pilot named Albain to search the desert. They spot and follow two helicopters to a closed isolated gas station where Brubaker is hiding. They rescue him as he attempts to escape his pursuers. The helicopters chase their plane through a canyon but crash when Albain blinds them with crop spray. Ultimately, Caulfield and Brubaker arrive at the astronauts' memorial service, where Kelloway and Brubaker's wife see them and live network TV coverage exposes the truth.

Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film "an expensive, stylistically bankrupt suspense melodrama" while describing much of its screenplay as "humorless comic strip stuff." Conversely, Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three and a half stars out of four and called it "a surprisingly good thriller" with a runaway car sequence "that provides some of the best action footage I've seen in a long time." Variety faulted the film's "underdeveloped script" and "scattershot casting", calling the duo of Savalas and Gould "a bullseye" but Waterston and Simpson lacking in "group chemistry". Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times thought the beginning of the film was the best part, and what follows "is wildly uneven, veering between the serious and the merely silly, and ending up likely to please only the least demanding." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote, "Capricorn One harks back to the old adventure serials, but Hyams doesn't have remotely enough wit or technique to achieve a fresh stylization of vintage formulas." Richard Combs of The Monthly Film Bulletin stated "Somewhere within this flabby, overproduced fantasy about space age double dealing and Watergate type sleuthing lives a smaller, tighter film—and a much wittier satire on the space program and technologies, like Hollywood, designed to deceive and manipulate. The trouble is that this more ideal version is not really struggling to get out but wallowing complacently in the limitless excess that has become the Lew Grade trademark." In a retrospective review, AllMovie critic Donald Guarisco wrote: "This agreeable high concept effort is one of Peter Hyams' most accomplished films. The script's conspiracy theory premise requires a major suspension of disbelief, but Hyams makes it worthwhile for those willing to make that leap." Capricorn One holds a 65% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 23 reviews, with an average rating of 6.2/10. The site's consensus states: "A string of questionable plot contrivances threaten to bury its story, but Capricorn One manages to unfurl an amusing, sharply cynical conspiracy yarn."

Two novelizations of the film were written and published by separate authors. The first was written by Ken Follett (under the pseudonym Bernard L. Ross) and published in the United Kingdom; the other was written by Ron Goulart and published in the United States. The Follett novel is notable for giving Robert Caulfield more development than the movie does, including giving him something of a relationship with CBS reporter Judy Drinkwater (who has more time in the book than in the movie) and ending the book with him and Judy. The story saves his career and results in his being employed by CBS. Clips from the faked Mars landing scenes have been used for illustration purposes in various Moon landing hoax conspiracy documentaries, notably the Fox TV show Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon and Bart Sibrel's film A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon (2001). The latter also features a still shot from the hoax scene on the DVD's front cover. In 2020–2021, Capricorn One was used as part of an internet prank. A viral video purported to be released by WikiLeaks was uploaded to BitChute, Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms and blogs with a title: "Wikileaks releases Moon landing cut scene filmed in Nevada desert". In fact, WikiLeaks released no such video. Close inspection revealed this prank video to be made using clips from Capricorn One and even various film reels shot on the set of Capricorn One, which were then cut and spliced with stock footage from the Apollo missions and training sessions.