Review of Marooned (1969) by Kevin C — 09 Nov 2012

Marooned (AKA Space Travellers) is a space race film released in 1969 by John Sturges, who also directed film classics like The Great Escape, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and The Magnificent Seven. The film stars Gene Hackman, Richard Crenna and James Franciscus as three astronauts who are stuck in space when their engine breaks down and they're awaiting a rescue by NASA, which is headed up by Gregory Peck.

Is the film good? Well, I'd say that it's just ok. It actually has some pretty good performances and gets emotional at some points, but there's almost no score and there are long patches of boringness.

It's also a strange foreboding to what happened in reality with Apollo 13. The film they made about that particular incident was superior in every way, but this film is merely a snapshot of what could happen.

It's science fiction-ish, I suppose, but overall, it's a less than mediocre film that really wants to be more than what it is. Surprisingly it was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, which is probably one of the better films ever shown on that show.

They couldn't do much with it, but they did try their best, I guess.