Outland (1981)

 

100 best Science Fiction Movies, Empire Magazine list

 

#94. Outland (1981)

 

Critic Ian Nathan perceptively referred to Director Peter Hyman as a “journeyman’s journeyman,” and he is in both in the contemporary meaning (a worker or sports player who is reliable but not outstanding) and the historical (a trained worker who is employed by someone else).  

 

Hyams’ been hugely successful in all the cinema hats he’s worn, Writer/Director/Cinematographer/Producer, and made a number of fine films, but he has almost never carved out new paths. He completely comfortable following current trends; accepting, without complaint, projects that could never be better than mediocre no matter what he brought to them. When praised, which he is often and deservedly, the word “Artist” is never used.

 

I have to say, I have not liked any of his work I’ve seen since the dawn of the 1990s and the beginning of his collaborations with Actor Jean-Claude Van Damme. Better were his early Crime Thrillers (starting with “Busting” (1974)), often stylish if shambolistic, and his first three SF films (“Capricorn One” (1978), this film, and “2010: the Year We make Contact” (1984)) were standouts, each an improvement on the one before.

 

There are links between Hyman’s three very different SF movies:

 

First, all were part of the post-“Star Wars” (1976) SF boom, all made Space Travel central to their plots, but none aped “Star Wars” like some many others were doing at the time.

 

Second, all never-the-less aped something or other instead: “Capricorn One” was solidly entrenched in the troupes of its era’s Conspiracy Thrillers. “Outland” was a quasi-remake of the classic Western “High Noon” (1952), its look was heavily-influenced by “Alien” (1976), and had a near-identical score by the same composer, Jerry Goldsmith. And, finally, “2010 …” was the sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968).

 

After “2010…” Hymans abandoned the genre for a decade, maybe because, though “2010…” was successful in the box-office and may have been his career-best film, it was also inevitably doomed to be under-rated because the bar was set too impossibly high -- I mean, setting oneself up to be compared to Kubrick? Utter madness!

 

“Outland,” though it wasn’t very successful, displayed such strong story-telling it must’ve been what earned Hymans the “2010…” gig. Like “2001…” it’s a Space-film set in the orbit of Jupiter, had an exceptionally well-realized SF environment, and took powerful advantage of a new film technology that was the most recent improvement of techniques Kubrick employed in “2001…”

 

“Outland” is an appealing curiosity piece, a Space-based Western. In theory, a mixture of the Western and SF should be natural as the two genres have so many overlapping themes: Both often concern the expansion of our civilization into a new environment, coping with inadequate supply lines, utilizing new resources, adapting to the landscape, taming that same landscape, the conflict between the pioneers and the aboriginals, the conflict between the pioneers and the later arrives who except more civilized institutions, and the conflict between Institutions of Authority and Libertarianism. Unfortunately, the as genres have such different approaches to these themes that their mixing generally results in the lamest cliches from the Western in the context of a lack of commitment to the SF elements (right now, I’m thinking of the very disappointing “Moon Two Zero” (1969) but there are many other examples).

 

“Outland” is an exception. Hyams described the beginning of the project this way:

 

“I wanted to do a Western. Everybody said, 'You can't do a Western; Westerns are dead; nobody will do a Western.' I remember thinking it was weird that this genre that had endured for so long was just gone. But then I woke up and came to the conclusion – obviously after other people – that it was actually alive and well, but in outer space. I wanted to make a film about the frontier. Not the wonder of it or the glamour of it: I wanted to do something about Dodge City and how hard life was. I wrote it, and by great fortune Sean Connery wanted to do it. And how many chances do you get to work with Sean Connery?”

 

(Hymans wasn’t exactly wrong, but premature, when he said Westerns were disappearing. Director Sergio Leone made his last Western in 1971, “Duck You Sucker!” Actor/Producer John Wayne made his last in 1976, “The Shootist,” and then died. Actor/Director/Producer Clint Eastwood, who was already working mostly outside the genre, walked away from it after 1980, after the almost anti-Western “Bronco Billy.” 1980 also saw the most historic disaster of Western genre, “Heaven’s Gate,” which bankrupted a major studio and ended the era called “The New Hollywood.” On-the-other-hand, smaller-scale Westerns kept coming out in respectable numbers, and a major revival began in 1985 with Eastwood returning to the form, “Pale Rider,” and Lawrence Kasdan embracing it for the first time, “Silverado,” both of which were successful, and both were throwbacks to earlier forms of the genre.)

 

Our story here is that in the Near Future humanity has expanded across the Solar System and established permeant Colonies on Planets, Moons, and Space Stations for commercial purposes. On those Colonies that are (apparently) under USA control, Law Enforcement comes in the form of Federal Marshalls. This is not a good gig, the Marshall’s are shuffled from place to place, much like lifers in the Military, but with less social support and more unpleasant working conditions.

 

Our Hero is Federal Marshal William O'Niel (Connery), an experienced man of rank but only mediocre reputation, and his professional circumstances have placed strain on marriage. His assignment to Con-Am 27, a mining outpost on the Jovian Moon of Io, proves to be the marriage’s breaking point; only about two weeks into the assignment (a half-hour into the film), while William was at work, his wife, Carol (Kika Markham), breaks up with him via an electronic message and jumps on a departing Space Ship with their son Paul (Nicholas Barnes).

 

Ending a Marriage via message and running off with a child seems pretty cold, but in fairness to Carol, Con-Am 27 is a hell-hole. It’s dirty, noisy, crowded, and smelly. The Miners are collectively dirtier than their environment, ignorant, mostly criminal and, as Dr. Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen), wryly observes, ''Not many people here have both oars in the water.” It is implied that as a Medical Professional, Lazarus has as mediocre reputation as Lawman William, so both of them got dumped here for that reason. She also appears to be the only female on Com-Am 27 who isn’t a prostitute and there are no other children seen at all.

 

O’Neil has a few Deputies, but most are corrupt and he’s no time to establish a rapport or build trust with them before a crisis emerges. Of course, the crisis existed before his arrival, William walked into a situation that everyone else was ignoring. The most developed of these Deputies is the self-loathing Sgt. Monotone (James Sikking) who early in the film made it clear that William shouldn’t expect much help from him or anyone else:

 

William : “How deep are you in?”

Montone : “Not too deep... I'm paid to look the other way.”

William : “I get it. You don't do anything bad; you just don't do anything good, right?”

 

After a violent incident early in the film -- one of the Miners had a psychotic episode, threatened a prostitute, and landed up dead – Lazarus tells William that there’ve been dozens of suicides in the last few months, but she’s not been authorized to do autopsies on any of them.

 

The rest is pretty easy to figure out (this film, which is also a Crime Thriller, is quite happy to race along with an all-but twist-free plot). The Company is selling extremely dangerous amphetamines to increase production and this is having a devastating impact on the workers. The main player behind this is the General Manager, Mark Sheppard (Peter Boyle), who loves to boast that productivity has broken all records since he took over. As Mark’s exploitations remain wholly unchallenged and the workers undefended, this obviously isn’t a Union shop.

 

Mark’s so contemptuous in his attitude towards William that he almost immediately drops all pretense of being anything but a Mafioso. He is surprised that he can’t pay-off William as he did the last Marshall, but barely displays anger, William is simply too insignificant in his eyes to warrant rage; Mark simply hires a few Killers to come to Io to eliminate William. Everyone one knows when the Killers’ Space Ship is scheduled to arrive, but no one will lift a finger to help William, especially not his Deputies.

 

The Western elements in this film are undisguised. To make the Future Moon Colony seem more like Deadwood, North Dakota in the 1870s, Human miners are more central to the operations than Robots and conventional projectile-based weapons (I mean shotguns) are used in the pressurized environments. Both of these are dubious conceits, but not the film’s biggest Scientific Errors by a long shot. The Colony’s Saloon has swinging doors. In addition to the plot similarities to “High Noon,” Hymans choose to use that film’s narrative devise of constantly glancing to a wall-clock ticking down the time until the Killers’ arrival.

 

When first released, Hymans took special pride in being the first Director to employ a technique called IntroVision, an advanced form of Front-Projection. For decades, the three main ways to place an Actor in the context of an invented environment were giant sets, Chroma Key (setting the person against an evenly-lit, monochromatic background, usually a Blue Screen, then replacing the monochromatic background with the artificial environment during post-production) and Rear-Projection (which Chroma Key grew out of, the key difference being that Rear-Projection is done in-camera with the artificial environment visible to the actors as a camera behind the background screen is projecting the artificial environment during filming). When Kubrick made “2001…” he employed huge sets, but avoided Chroma Key because it often displayed an exaggerated grain and a blue halo around the actors. He similarly evaded Rear-Projection because the backgrounds frequently appeared washed-out. Instead, during the film’s prologue, he reversed the Rear-Projection idea with Front-Projection (the camera projecting on the screen as in front of it but still, most likely, behind the Actors) because he could make it better-looking.  IntroVision was essentially an improvement on Kubrick’s technique.

 

The IntroVision was effective, but not the film’s primary virtue, for that we must move onto the performances and the more tangible environments.

 

Connery was, of course, one of the most charismatic lead Actors in the history of cinema, always an appealing Hero even when a script was as clumsy as an albatross hung around everyone’s neck. First cast in films because of his physique (he was a Body-Builder before he was an Actor), his appeal soon proved more to be his instinctual gift for infusing a wry sense of humor into his dialogue even when he wasn’t telling a joke (his version of James Bond (he first played the role in 1962) would’ve been insufferably sadistic and misogynistic if played by almost anyone else). Here he plays an aging and embittered, but still honorable, man with a lifetime of disappointments dragging at him. In a rare pleasure, he doesn’t wear a wig to cover his receding hairline as he did in almost every other film. The humor and the hair make him that much better a Hero to root for.

 

Sternhagen shines even brighter as a similar-has been, both cynical and hard-drinking. The relationship sketched between the two is nicely complex, Lazarus is obviously attracted to William and inspired by him to buck the system a little more, but she’s also respectful of boundaries given he’s a married man (albeit, a married man whose wife ran off with the kid).

 

Boyle was one of Hollywood’s great heavies, but stepped back from those roles somewhat after the scandals surrounding “Joe” (1970), wherein some fools in the Real-World started idolizing Boyle’s character, who was bigoted, violent, and vile; the character Joe was intended to be despised by the audience, but somehow it didn’t work out that way. Boyle started avoiding most violent films (he famously turned down the lead as the thuggish Hero, Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle, in “The French Connection” (1971)). He only took on a handful of violent Criminal or Hero roles in the decades to come, but whenever he did, he was always a commanding presence, and here his gutter sliminess and monumental arrogance has great hate-appeal.

 

As for the realization of the environment, it was part of a new trend, Blue-Collar Space Movies, that began with “Alien,” whose Director, Ridley Scott, started out as a Set Designer, and for which Concept Artist, Ron Cobb, contributed practical, visual, ideas that transformed cinema forever. “Outland’s” Production Designer Philip Harrison and Art Director Malcolm Middleton owe Cobb an obvious debt, and at least one Set Designer, Bill Pearson, worked on both films. Though the similarities are obvious, the seethingly real setting for “Outland’s” action was still a potent accomplishment. Com-Am 27 is both massive and claustrophobic, futuristic and worn out, confusingly maze-like and clearly purposeful. About halfway through the film there’s a remarkable foot-chase (featuring exceptionally good Steadicam work by Cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt) that in-of-itself deserves classic status.

 

Though the environment is likely the film’s greatest triumph, it may have helped create a back-lash against the film among writers of prose SF. Though “Star Wars” is notorious for its Scientific Errors, it also evoked “Flash Gordon” (comic strip first published in 1934, first film serial released in 1936), so other than making jokes about it, no one resented the goofs. “Outland,” on the other hand, promised realism, then didn’t deliver, and that pissed the hard-core SF people off, making them less-than-charitable regarding other elements. In addition to the Errors cited earlier, there is a great-looking and gory scene of explosive decompression that is flat-out absurd, and the wonderful-looking space suits would leave the wearer incapable of seeing the world outside their helmets. This wasn’t the first film that indulged either of these goofs, but the most famous for both. These days, SF films mostly avoid the explosive decompression thing, but those impractical helmets are still popular.

 

Many critics loved this film’s “High Noon” connections, but many also hated that very thing (SF Author Harlan Ellison was, as usual, the meanest of the meanies, saying Hymans had “the plotting sensitivity of a kamikaze pilot with eighteen missions to his credit”). The most important aspect of the “High Noon” connections was how the Hero was embodied. “Outland’s” William shares the same first name, and is cut from the exact same cloth, as the earlier film’s Will Kane (Gary Cooper). They are both honest Cops standing alone before seemingly indominable corruption and overwhelming force while being dogged by the cowardness and apathy of those they are trying to protect. The two Williams represent the ideal of the Law as the embodiment of Citizenship, and the activism of a Citizen as the embodiment of truest Virtue. As we are all supposed to be equal in the eyes of the Law, any Cop who looks the other way when it comes to the Rich and/or Powerful is not a Lawman, not a true Citizen, and devoid of a fundamental Virtue.

 

And this brings us to the most important difference between the two films; “High Noon” was released in a context that left it heavily-laden with political messaging even though the film had no ideological content; meanwhile “Outland” is rarely interpreted in political terms, but was, in fact, explicitly ideological.

 

“High Noon” was penned by Screenwriting partners Carl Foreman and Stanley Kramer and based on the short story “Tin Star” by John W. Cunningham. The controversy this film engendered circled around the fact that Writer Foreman was a former member of the Communist Party and dragged before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during their investigation of "Communist propaganda and influence" in the Motion Picture Industry. HUAC really had no serious dirt on Foreman, but they were empowered to insist he “name names” basically inform on others who were still Communists, or possible Communists, whether or not they were engaged in any criminality or acts of disloyalty to the USA. Foreman refused to name names and was labeled an "uncooperative witness."

 

Important to any thoughtful interpretation of the film is that its Villains were pretty ambiguous Agents of Evil, receiving virtually dialogue and only the barest-bones of motive, spiteful revenge. The film is not about the intents of the threat, but about the townspeople abandoning their Sheriff in his time of need, and makes no clear or even implied statement about any -isms; it was as politically agnostic as any film about the struggle to maintain Law and Order could be. Hell, this film places no faith in the virtues of Collectivism, the core moral assumption of Socialism/Communism, because Will is forced to stand alone as the Collective proved cowardly.

 

As the production was already on-going, and the script long-finished, connecting the story to HUAC’s persecution of Foreman was essentially getting a caboose somehow attached to an already moving train. It is worth noting that Actor Cooper was quite politically Conservative and saw no Communism in the film. On the other hand, the role was originally offered to Right-Wing Extremist Actor John Wayne; though no one else saw Communism in it, Wayne, the then-President of the extreme Right-Wing Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, somehow determined that this film about an Officer of the Law standing against Criminal Thuggery was somehow secretly an attack on HUAC’s Thuggery done under the Color of Law. I believe this had nothing to do with what was actually written but reflected that Wayne simply, personally, resented Foreman.

 

Foreman refusals before HUAC got him Blacklisted, a campaign forcefully advocated for by Wayne, Gossip Columnist Hedda Hooper, and Columbia Pictures President Harry Cohen. Foreman suddenly lost most of his friends, most famously Kramer, who demanded the dissolution of their up-till-then profitable partnership out of fear of “guilt by association.” (Note: Kramer’s version of events was that Foreman threatened to name him before HUAC, but I find that version of the story strains credibility). Foreman found himself unemployable in the USA and moved to England, something that Wayne took Satanic glee in, publicly proclaiming he’d "never regret having helped run Foreman out of the country."

 

So, though none of the politics emerged until after the script was finished, but circumstances weirdly tossed Foreman into a dilemma somewhat akin to Hero Will.

 

“Outland’s” similar plot is not ambiguous about the Agents of Evil, it’s explicitly a tale of out-of-control Corporate greed and abuse of the Laboring Class. It could be seen as anti-Capitalist except that our Hero Will is an Official representative of the system that the Villain Mark is subverting. It definitely has a pro-Union subtext, but it would be rather pedantic to automatically assume pro-Union is the same as anti-Capitalist. Though Hymans own politics must have been shaped by his own family members being Blacklisted during the same era as Foreman, him seems to have grown up to be a Centrist Liberal and has stated that in Hollywood almost no one is truly political.

 

Since I’m talking about political text and subtext, it’s worth bringing up another Writer/Director, but one with a far more independent spirit than Hymans, John Sayles. Sayles’ film “Matewan” (1987) features a Lawman Hero cut from the same cloth as “High Noon’s” and “Outland’s” two Williams. Its version of William is based with significant fidelity on a historical figure, Sherriff Sid Hatfield (David Statham), even though the film’s two actual leads were fictional characters. Based around the real-life Matewan Massacre of 1920, it is about the violent struggle to establish a Miner’s Union in West Virginia, so closer in theme to “Outland” than “High Noon,” but also more explicitly ideological than either, it doesn’t hide being both pro-Socialist and anti-Capitalist, and embraces the virtue of Collectivism lacking in the other two films. In the climax, Sid doesn’t stand alone against the forces of Evil and seems to have triumphed just was the two Williams did -- but then an epilogue explains Sid came to a bad end, and the specific Union that the Heroes attempted to establish floundered, soon after the events of the film.

 

Both “High Noon” and “Matewan” received significant critical praise, while “Outland’s” reviews were mixed. “High Noon” was a huge success, “Outland” barely made back its initial budget, and “Matewan” bombed. “High Noon” is now remembered as a core-classic of the Western genre, “Outland” is nearly forgotten, and “Matewan” has enjoyed a modest, but steadily growing, across the unfolding years to come.

 

Trailer:

Outland (1981) Official Trailer - Sean Connery, Peter Boyle Sci-Fi Movie HD - YouTube