Little red lies

Remakes are common these days for several reasons, primarily the fact that Hollywood is short on new ideas. Plus, the original story is actually pretty good, even if the movie failed to live up to its promise. Capricorn One is not exactly a classic, but it does have some great ideas, great scenes, and a great bombastic score by Jerry Goldsmith, best known for his Star Trek theme.

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If there are any great performances in the movie, it’s the helicopters. The final chase scene through desert canyons and over mountains is just the capstone. By that point the two dark helicopters have become the film’s heavies. We never see the helicopter pilots’ faces or hear their voices. Instead, the two insectoid machines seem to communicate with each other via telepathy and the pilots are only appendages. It was probably Hyams’ best visual idea in the film. —Little red lies (The Space Review)

I particularly remember a scene where an astronaut, on the run from NASA, breaks into a deserted store and tries to make a phone call. As he gets absorbed in his call, you can see the nasty helicopters approaching from a great distance. Very intense.

And the fantastic sequence of the canyon chase with the hero hanging from the wing of the biplane was re-used for an episode of my favorite TV guilty pleasures, The Fall Guy.