Capricorn One (1978) on Netflix
PG19782h 3mActionSci-FiThriller
Astronauts Charles Brubaker, Peter Willis and John Walker are pulled off the Capricorn One spacecraft before liftoff. The Mars mission launches empty. Reporter Robert Caulfield hears a tip.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.8/1027,636 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes65%
Trailer
Plot summary
Capricorn One is to be the first crewed flight to Mars. Moments before liftoff, astronauts Charles Brubaker, Peter Willis and John Walker are ordered out of the spacecraft and flown in secret to a disused military base in the desert, while the launch goes ahead as planned. There Dr. James Kelloway of NASA explains that the capsule's life-support system was faulty and would have killed them in flight, that another failed mission would cost the agency its funding, and that the flight must be broadcast from a set built to resemble the Martian surface. He threatens their families to secure their silence. The public knows nothing of the empty spacecraft. At mission control, the technician Elliot Whitter grows uneasy about the data and shares his worries with his friend, the television journalist Robert Caulfield.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Capricorn One (1978)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Clips of Capricorn One's faked Mars landing turned up later in real Moon landing hoax documentaries, among them the Fox TV show Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon and Bart Sibrel's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon (2001), whose DVD cover carries a still from the hoax scene.
- In 2020-2021 a viral video claiming to be a WikiLeaks release showed a "Moon landing cut scene" supposedly filmed in the Nevada desert; WikiLeaks had released no such video, and the prank was made from Capricorn One clips and set reels spliced with Apollo mission footage.
- Candice Bergen was announced in September 1976 as part of the cast alongside Elliott Gould, O. J. Simpson, James Brolin and Brenda Vaccaro, but she pulled out and was replaced by Karen Black.
- Peter Hyams wrote the Capricorn One script in 1972, but no one wanted to make it, and interest in the film was only re-activated by the Watergate scandal.
