Outland (film)
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| Outland | |
|---|---|
 original film poster |
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| Directed by | Peter Hyams |
| Produced by | Richard A. Roth |
| Written by | Peter Hyams |
| Starring | Sean Connery Peter Boyle Frances Sternhagen James Sikking Kika Markham Clarke Peters Steven Berkoff |
| Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
| Editing by | Stuart Baird |
| Release date(s) | May 22 1981 (U.S. release) |
| Running time | 109 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Outland is a British 1981 science fiction movie directed and written by Peter Hyams. Set on Jupiter's moon Io, it has been described as a space Western[1], that is, a Western set in the future, and indeed bears obvious thematic resemblances to High Noon.
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[edit] Cast
The movie stars Sean Connery as Marshal William T. O'Niel, and Peter Boyle as the chief antagonist, Sheppard. Kika Markham plays O'Niel's wife Carol and Frances Sternhagen plays his sole ally, Doctor Lazarus.
[edit] Plot summary
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The plot summary in this article or section is too long or detailed compared to the rest of the article. Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot. |
The film's protagonist, Federal Marshal O'Niel, is assigned to a one-year tour of duty in Con Am 27, a mining outpost on the moon Io. When the Marshal investigates the violent deaths of miners he discovers that they have a common factor - the use of a dangerous amphetamine-type drug called "polydichloric euthimal" which enormously increases the miner's productivity but eventually causes psychosis (shown briefly in two grisly incidents).
O'Niel follows the trail of the dealers which leads to the outpost's administrator, Sheppard, who has been bribing O'Niel's deputy Montone to turn a blind eye to the shipping and sale of the drug. O'Niel's wife, frustrated that he considers justice more important than his family, leaves him a message pleading with him to return with her to Earth. Meanwhile, Montone is found hanging in his closet, murdered by a dealer.
O'Niel confronts Sheppard, but the administrator smugly informs him that nobody else wants the drug shipments stopped; production is up, the workers are happy, the company is happy, therefore Sheppard is happy. O'Niel vows to expose the entire scheme. However, following a second confrontation, Sheppard contracts two assassins who are brought in to murder O'Niel.
With the sole assistance of the outpost's doctor, Lazarus, O'Niel engages in a desperate kill-or-be-killed chase through the colony before dispatching the assassins.
In the final payoff scene, O'Niel strikes Sheppard. The film ends with a message sent to O'Niel's wife to the effect that he will indeed be joining her and his son for the trip back to Earth.
[edit] Production notes
Outland was the first motion picture[2] to use IntroVision, a variation on Front Projection in which the actor stands in front of a screen made of highly reflective material called Scotchlite. In Front Projection, a faint background image would be projected on to a one-way mirror mounted at a forty-five degree angle in front of the camera. This faint background image would show up clearly on the screen but not on the actor, the Scotchlite being a thousand times more reflective, enabling the actor to become his own matte.
In normal Front Projection, the image that passes through the one-way mirror is "soaked up" by black velvet, but in IntroVision the black velvet is replaced by another ScotchLite screen that reflects the same background image onto a third ScotchLite screen, this time in front of the actor. Because the same image arrives from two different sources (the mirror and the second ScotchLite screen) and is projected onto two different screens (one in front of and one behind the actor) the actor appears to interact with the background. This enabled Sean Connery's character to convincingly walk around miniature sets of the mining colony.
The film's working title was "Io" (the setting of the film), which was later changed because many people read it as the number 10.[3]
[edit] DVD release
Outland was released on DVD on November 18, 1997. It was presented in both letterbox widescreen and full frame on a double sided disc with the soundtrack remastered in Dolby 5.1 surround sound.
[edit] Features (Region 1)
- Available Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
- Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 1.0)
- Closed captioning
- "Production Notes" featurette
- Cast & Crew Biographies
- Theatrical Trailer
[edit] Features (Region 2)
- Available Subtitles: English, Arabic
- Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
[edit] Features (Region 4)
- Available Subtitles: English, Arabic, English for the Hearing Impaired
- Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
[edit] Other formats
Outland was previously released on CED disc in 1983, Laserdisc on August 28, 1991 and VHS on January 7, 1997.
[edit] Adaptations
- A comic strip adaptation of Outland illustrated by Jim Steranko appeared in Heavy Metal magazine in the June 1981 - October 1981 and January 1982 issues.
- A novelization of Outland written by Alan Dean Foster was published by Warner Books in March 1981.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Buscombe, Edward; Christopher Brookeman (1988). The BFI Companion to the Western. British Film Institute, p. 105. ISBN 0233983325.
- ^ http://www.imdb.com/company/co0065961/
- ^ Outland (film) at the Internet Movie Database
[edit] External links
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