Yippee ki yay marshal

Sean Connery is William O’Niel a federal marshal assigned to outpost Con-Am 27 on Io, one of Jupiter’s moons. His tour of duty is one year. He’s been there two weeks. His job is to keep the peace on the lawless mining outpost. It is a company mine. The company is Conglomerates Amalgamated. There has been a death. Someone with space sickness has ripped open their spacesuit. Then there is another death. A miner enters an elevator to the outside without a spacesuit.

O’Niel goes to the mine’s doctor. Dr. Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen) is a pip. And not too helpful. O’Niel wants to know how many deaths there have been in the last 6 months. It’s 28. And the 6 months before was 2. Another worker, Sagan, takes a prostitute hostage. Another marshal kills him.

Dr. Lazarus finds traces of a drug in Sagan’s system. Polydichloric euthimal is a strong amphetamine. It allows the miners to work continuously without any sleep for days until they just burn out and go psychotic. O’Niel finds out that the workers are getting the drug from Mark Shepard (Peter Boyle) the mine manager. And sergeant Montone (James Sikking) is in on it. O’Neil catches Shepard’s dealer. Someone kills the dealer. O’Niel stops the next drug shipment coming in. Now Shepard orders hit men. And O’Niel knows they are coming.

"Outland" was released in 1981 and was directed by Peter Hyams. Peter wanted to do a western, however, no one was doing westerns and no one was going to westerns so he put his western in outer space. Why not. Outer space is the new frontier right. “The final frontier.” They need law and order there right? So why not a sheriff in outer space. Why not indeed. I wonder if that makes it a weird west sub-genre movie. “Outland” is one of those sneak up on you movies. You never heard of it. But it’s a Science Fiction movie and is has Sean Connery. So you give it a try.

I liked the movie when it first came out. I still like it. There’s corporate greed, corruption. Two things you find everywhere. Even in space. A lot of people compared it to “High Noon”. I don’t know if that’s fair or not. To me it’s more like the Lone Ranger. And Dr. Lazarus is Tonto. Either way, a frontier is a frontier whether it’s in Texas or Outer space.

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