Outland

The template is not hidden, it is stated: High Noon in space. Peter Hyams took the skeleton of that film and moved it to a mining colony on Io, a moon of Jupiter. Federal marshal O'Neil investigates a run of strange deaths, nobody helps, nobody testifies, and eventually he becomes the target. The cause of the deaths is oddly contemporary: the miners are taking an amphetamine called polydichloric euthimal. It hugely increases output and then produces psychosis, and the men kill themselves in an environment that was lethal to begin with. The villain of the film is not a monster but production pressure. Sean Connery plays the marshal, Frances Sternhagen the colony doctor and Peter Boyle the mine administrator. Jerry Goldsmith wrote the score. The effects are entirely models and analogue work, a good example of pre-digital craft. Who it is for: viewers who like dirty, cramped, industrial science-fiction design and genre hybrids. Who it is not for: anyone expecting an original story. The film does not disguise its template, announces its ending in advance, and draws all its tension from waiting.