Marooned ** (1969, Gregory Peck, Richard Crenna, David Janssen, James Franciscus, Gene Hackman, Lee Grant, Nancy Kovak, Mariette Hartley) – Classic Movie Review 8587

Director John Sturges’s well-crafted but slow and sombre 1969 Sci-Fi space adventure Marooned finds a fine cast headed by Gregory Peck, Richard Crenna, David Janssen, James Franciscus, Gene Hackman, Lee Grant, Nancy Kovak and Mariette Hartley is cast away in a story about three American astronauts who are stranded in space when their retro rockets will not fire.

NASA decides to mount a rescue attempt, hampered by a hurricane on Earth and astronauts’ diminishing air supply in their capsule in space.

Bizarrely, on the film’s release, life unfortunately imitated art as the astronauts of Apollo 13 faced a similar kind of fate.

There are solid to strong performances, conscientious direction by John Sturges, and good to excellent special effects, winning the film an Oscar for Best Special Visual Effects (Robie Robinson), but the drama is strictly earthbound. It was also Oscar nominated for Best Cinematography (Daniel L Fapp) and Best Sound (Les Fresholtz, Arthur Piantadosi), so it is obviously a good technical achievement for its pre-CGI time. Unusually, there is no music score, only an ambient soundtrack.

Also in the cast are Scott Brady, Craig Huebing, John Carter, George Gaynes and Tom Stewart.

Marooned is directed by John Sturges, runs 134 minutes, is made by Columbia Pictures and Frankovich Productions, is released by Columbia, is written by Mayo Simon, based on the novel by Martin Caidin, is shot in Eastmancolor by Daniel L Fapp, is produced by Mike Frankovich, John Sturges and Frank Capra Jr, and is designed by Lyle R Wheeler.

It was fairly costly at $8,000,000, and flopped, grossing only $4,350,000 in the US.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8587

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com