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Buffalo News (27/Jun/1993) - Fox movie 'Lifepod' inspired by classic Hitchcock thriller survivors seek villain in a stranded spacecraft

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Fox movie 'Lifepod' inspired by classic Hitchcock thriller survivors seek villain in a stranded spacecraft

WHEN A FUSION reactor core begins to melt down aboard a space-liner in the year 2169, it's extremely bad news for the 2,000 or so passengers on their way back to Earth.

Think about it. When a spaceship is disabled, it doesn't sink, cabins don't fill with water, and sharks don't circle around. It either just sits there while everybody runs out of food, water and air — or it explodes.

We get a little bit of one and a lot of the other in "Lifepod," the first big first-run attraction of the Fox network's now-weekly "Fox Monday Night at the Movies" series (8 p.m., Channel 29).

Based on Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 thriller "Lifeboat" — Hitch even gets a screen credit — "Lifepod" neatly extrapolates the John Steinbeck story idea that Hitchcock fashioned into his castaway classic. By taking a similar situation into the 22nd century, "Lifepod" manages to retain the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Hitchcock film while giving it a high-tech finish.

In the TV film, the fusion reactor accident occurs on Christmas Eve. As everyone scrambles for the nearest "lifepod," the outer-space equivalent of a rubber raft, the giant spacecraft detonates, turning into a miniature sun against the dark backdrop of the galaxy.

Only one lifepod has safely escaped the explosion, housing nine survivors in an awkward-looking craft that resembles three booster rockets strapped together. With no power to go anywhere on its own, it can only drift and wait for rescuers to spot the one lonely "orbit marker" they have to signal their whereabouts. As one pessimistic survivor remarks, "It's like sending out a message in a bottle, only here the ocean is 10 billion light-years across."

In the Hitchcock film, the disaster is caused by a German torpedo and the unmistakable villain is a German, played by Walter Slezak, who's fished out of the sea with the other castaways. There's no war in "Lifepod," but we soon learn the explosion was the act of a saboteur, perhaps a rebel from the planet Venus, where the powerful Earthcorps runs a colony and is universally hated by the colonists. The "Lifepod" villain isn't so easy to spot, so we spend lots of time guessing who the saboteur might be.

Among the survivors are Lt. Janna Mayvene (CCH Pounder), who's isolated from the others in the command quarters and can communicate with them only by electronic hookup; Daniel Banks (Robert Loggia), a member of the Earthcorps board who's returning from a fact-finding mission to Venus; Kane (Adam Storke), an escaped prisoner being returned to Earth; Clair (Jessica Tuck), a journalist who's taping their ordeal with her mini-cam; Miles Terman (Ron Silver), a former Earthcorps fraud inspector, embittered after being blinded in an accident; Parker (Stan Shaw), a ship worker who suffers a severe leg injury in the explosion; Rena (Kelli Williams), a medi-tech from the Venusian colony, and Q-Three (Ed Gale), a "little person" who has been "modified" with robotic components to work in tight spaces on board spaceships.

In one of the film's most dramatic scenes, Rena has to amputate Parker's gangrenous leg with the help of Q-Three, who has a buzz-saw attachment for his bionic arm, but without any anesthetic. It's not only the film's most outrageous scene, but also its most important, because Clair's videotape of the procedure later reveals the identity of the saboteur.

Hitchcock's film was one of those experiments in inventiveness that the cinema master enjoyed so much. His greatest challenge was finding ways to keep his camera busy on a single, confined set — a rubber raft in a studio water tank. The "Lifepod" set isn't that small, so the close quarters never really become a liability to keeping the action flowing.

Of course, Hitchcock also had another serious challenge: how to work in his usual cameo walk-on appearance without becoming a full-time cast member. He did it by posing for the "before" photo in a large reducing-aid advertisement in a newspaper one of the characters is reading.

The "Lifepod" director found it much easier to get on camera. Actor Ron Silver, a University at Buffalo graduate, makes his directorial debut while playing the important role of the blind survivor.

The updated storyline makes good use of the imagination. In one sequence, the pod drifts into a sunless orbit and the heavy, air-conditioned atmosphere inside the main chamber starts to "snow" with tiny ice flakes that the moisture-craving survivors can gather out of the air and eat like snow cones.

To generate suspense, the new storyline not only keeps us guessing about whom the traitor might be, but also raises the possibility that whoever it is might be killing them off one by one to conserve oxygen and food supplies and trying to make it look accidental.

"Lifepod" isn't a big winner in the drama department — there are no standout performances from the ensemble cast — and the characters are pretty much one-dimensional. But it's really nothing more than an action picture with an exotic sci-fi background. On that level, it's entertaining enough.

What is impressive, though, is that Fox finally is serious about competing in the Monday night movie wars against NBC and ABC, clearly attempting to carve out its own territory with movies aimed at young, urbane viewers. Because ABC and NBC never do sci-fi films, "Lifepod" amounts to an auspicious start for Fox.