1981: OUTLAND

What’s it about?

Two weeks after being assigned to a remote mining outpost on one of Saturn’s moons, space cop Sean Connery begins investigating a string of strange suicides when workers begin offing themselves in gruesome ways. Although there doesn’t seem to be any other explanation for the deaths, the outpost’s doctor soon reveals that the suicides (which everybody says are the kind of thing that “just happens” in deep space) have increased more than ten-fold over the past year.

When an experimental stimulant with deadly side effects turns up in the blood of one victim, Connery investigates the drug dealing underworld of the outpost. The trail leads him straight to the mine’s operator, Peter Boyle. But as Connery gets closer to the truth, his friends begin deserting him while Boyle calls in for reinforcements.

Is it any good?

I didn’t really expect to enjoy OUTLAND very much. Sean Connery is such a big superstar, that I figured any sci-fi movie where he played a space cop would be something I would have heard more about if it were even halfway enjoyable. I’m not really sure how to explain the lack of awareness around the movie since Wikipedia tells me that it’s been available on VHS and DVD for over ten years. But since OUTLAND is in fact at least halfway enjoyable, I can only conclude that this is a case of there being more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy, Horatio. It makes me wonder what else is out there that nobody has really talked about in ages.

I don’t want to oversell OUTLAND here -- it’s not exactly what I would call a lost gem. It does some of its broad strokes very well, but the details are often less than compelling. The relationship between Connery and most of the other characters -- his wife, the other marshals reporting to him, Peter Boyle’s mine boss -- are all pretty interesting. It’s repeatedly suggested that Connery has been given this assignment because he’s not really fit for any other duty. We never learn any details about his past to justify this, but we do get the sense that nobody thinks he’s that good of a cop.

In fact, Boyle’s drug smuggling operation relies heavily on the apathy or corruptibility of the marshals stationed at the mine. There are only a couple thousand people in the whole place, so secrets aren’t easy to keep. Boyle imports the stimulants to keep his workforce producing at maximum efficiency -- which nets him big bonuses from his bosses. The extravagant suicides (which mostly involve workers exposing themselves to the vacuum of space one way or another) are a side effect of the drug, and over the past year about sixty workers have taken their own lives as a result of the drug.

The other key to Boyle’s scheme is the willingness of his superiors to turn a blind eye to the shady source of his success. There’s a strong anti-corporate undercurrent in OUTLAND which is very similar to that in ALIEN (1979). Both movies imagine a future where labor and management are at odds with one another, and where management ultimately has the upper hand. Of course, once you’ve signed up for a tour of duty on a space freighter or a mine on a moon of Saturn, there’s not much you can do if you decide you’re getting a bum deal once you’re there. The reveal of the callousness of the corporation in OUTLAND didn’t make me nearly as queasy as the similar reveal in ALIEN, however. That’s probably because it’s impossible to imagine that anybody else besides the corporation is behind the mysterious deaths in OUTLAND right from the beginning. Connery thinks there’s something fishy going on from the start, and so immediately the corporation becomes the prime target of suspicion. In ALIEN, on the other hand, there's no reason to suspect the corporation is complicit until deep into the movie when the danger's been heightened significantly.

Once Connery gets on the scent, Boyle doesn’t do much to hide his guilt. Things quickly get violent as Boyle decides that the quickest way to solve the problem is just to eliminate the nosey marshal who isn’t playing along as expected. OUTLAND is often compared to HIGH NOON (1952), and this part of the movie is a big reason why. I was also reminded of 3:10 TO YUMA (1957), and I’m sure there are plenty of other westerns that would fit the pattern as well.

What happens is that Connery decides he won’t roll over. Instead, he’ll stand up to the corrupt powers simply because it's the only way to prove to himself that he's not the useless, cowardly cop everybody thinks he is. So he refuses to back down even when it becomes clear that nobody else will stand with him. The most blatant reference (homage? rip off?) to HIGH NOON comes when Boyle calls for a couple of enforcers to come down on the next supply shuttle. Connery then spends the next several scenes in front of a giant clock counting down the arrival of the shuttle. It’s impossible to think of anything else besides HIGH NOON during this part of the movie, but it’s also a relatively short sequence, so suggestions that OUTLAND is simply “HIGH NOON in space” don’t really ring true to me. It's more like a space mystery/conspiracy thriller with HIGH NOON shoved in the middle.

In any event, this sequence is also one of several that I didn’t totally buy. Connery is supposed to be the supreme legal authority at the mine -- or at least the top cop. (It’s unclear who performs judicial functions, if anybody.) Yet he’s somehow powerless to stop the arrival of a shuttle that he knows is bringing two assassins to kill him. Somebody has to have the authority to shut down the space docks -- if Connery can't use probable cause to petition for that, then who can? And even if the shuttle did end up landing, it should be a trivial exercise to deny the bad guys access to the mine. All of the other marshals are afraid to stand up to the incoming goons. But they know exactly where and when they will be arriving, so three or four guys with space shotguns should be more than enough to keep them pinned down in the shuttle airlock. Connery, however, doesn’t even try any tactics like that. He just sits back and waits for them to enter the mine.

Another thing -- when Connery is asking the workers for help against the arrival of the assassins, one of them turns him down by saying, “You’re supposed to protect us.” Yet Connery is the only marshal in the past year who has even cared about the dangerous drugs being fed to the workers. He’s not trying to take down Boyle just out of some sense of manly obligation to justice -- he’s also protecting the lives and health of all the workers. In HIGH NOON and 3:10 TO YUMA, the townspeople all tell Gary Cooper and Van Heflin that the they (the townspeople) don't have any stake in the fight. But in OUTLAND, the fight very much is the fight of the workers -- it’s Connery who doesn’t really have a stake in the game except professional duty.

I’m not going to go on listing all the little flaws of OUTLAND. I will say that the movie has a 12 year old’s notion of what happens to people when they enter low pressure environments without proper protection. (Spoiler alert: They explode and make a bloody mess.) These scenes alone should qualify OUTLAND for midnight movie status. There are also space prostitutes, improbable fights in pressure suits, some poorly placed rifle shots in sensitive environments, and one of the worst child actors I have ever seen.

Those are the details, though. As I said at the beginning of this post, the broad strokes are interesting. Translating HIGH NOON to outer space could definitely make sense, even if OUTLAND doesn’t fully get there. Connery’s marshal is a pretty neat character, and it doesn’t hurt that he taps in liberally to the tradition of western tough guys. Boyle’s drug pushing scheme is a little cartoonish for my tastes, but here again the overall conflict between productivity and safety is worth exploring.

Back when I was writing about THE BLACK HOLE (1979), I said that part of me wanted to see that movie re-made while the other part of me was sure that any re-make would only be a bigger plate of hash than the movie we already have. With OUTLAND, on the other hand, I think the prospects for a re-make are much brighter. It would have to be handled gently, but it should be easy enough to take the working skeleton of the movie, strip away the parts that haven’t aged well, and beef up the bits that are more interesting. And since very little in the movie is iconic -- except perhaps the wide-screen space helmet designs -- there shouldn’t be much temptation to include anything silly just because people will expect it. (Note: IMDb informs me that an OUTLAND re-make is in fact in some stage of pre-production, which doesn't mean much except that somebody else thinks it's worth another go.)

OUTLAND’s director, Peter Hyams, has never been one of my favorites. I didn’t look up his filmography before I watched this movie, but I have it in front of me now. It’s probably saying everything I need to say that my “favorite” of Peter Hyams’s movies until I watched OUTLAND was probably the Jean Claude van Damme movie TIMECOP (1994). He also directed the surprisingly boring CAPRICORN ONE (1978), in which three astronauts (James Brolin, Sam Watterson, and O.J. Simpson -- wrap your head around that casting if you can) are forced to fake a landing on Mars. In any event, I haven’t made it a habit of pointing out directors I don’t like, but I’m going to be hearing from Peter Hyams again when I watch 2010 (1984). Hopefully it’ll be another in the vein of OUTLAND, and not any of his numerous bad movies.