Saturn 3 (1980) – Review

Some films are crafted, planned and plotted so nothing is left up to chance and its meticulous director can bring the vision they have in their head to the screen in the most complete version it can be – and other movies just sort of…. happen.
Sitting firmly on the latter side of things is the glorious, sci-fi mess that is Saturn 3, a kind of Alien rip off that saw Star Wars, Clockwork Orange and Superman’s production designer John Barry suddenly thrust into the director’s chair – and then suddenly ousted from it when his lack of set experience proved to be an issue. Stepping in to fill his shoes was Stanley Donen, a season veteran whose filmography contained the likes of Funny Face, Charade and Singin’ In The Rain; but precious little sci-fi and soon, after countless disagreements with his actors, he came to realise that crafting a cinematic moment like Gene Kelly tap dancing through an iconic deluge doesn’t exactly help when you’re making a film about a horny, psychotic robot.

Deep into the distant future, Earth is badly overcrowded (no shit) and so to aid them, various stations scattered across the solar system are dedicated to conducting the researched needed to help the ailing planet. Now, why the fate of Earth has been put in the hands of pairs of researchers based 1.4974 billion km away from the people they’re trying to help is obviously none of my business, but the couple who are stationed at the remote post of Saturn 3 are in for a visit.
Enter Captain Benson, an anally retentive, pony-tailed a walking red flag in a black space suit who obviously is a few astronauts shy of a space station after we witness him straight up murder the guy who was supposed to go on this mission and take his place. His mission is to get them back schedule but within moments of arriving, he’s utterly fascinated by the dynamic of the grizzled, yet still virile Adam and his much younger colleague and lover, Alex. His fiendishly logical brain simply surmises that the far older Adam is obviously obsolete and that in turn, the blonde, doe-eyed Alex should be his by rights, while this obviously causes friction between the three, matters get more sinister when Hector gets involved.
Who’s Hector, I hear you ask? Well, Hector is a the state of the art robot of the “Demigod” class, whose torso is literally one giant brain, who has been employed to get Saturn 3 back up to speed. However, in what seems to be a massive design flaw, Hector’s knowledge is provided by a direct link to his operator’s brain – which is something of an issue when you operator has noticeable stalker tendencies.
Before you know it, Hector’s been infused with all of Benson’s psychosis which is incredibly bad news for Adam, Alex and Benson as the robot goes on a rampage thanks to his brand new god complex that could dwarf a small moon. Talk about your awkward love triangles…

Essentially another film released to capitalize on the hunger for sci-fi  that arose in the wake of Star Wars, Saturn 3 is one of those films that the less you question, the smoother your ride will be. Just cruise through it without focusing too much on the stuff that doesn’t make sense and it’s an serviceably intense psycho-thriller that comes complete with a memorably eccentric cast, however, the moment you start zeroing in on the details, the movie’s production issues become impossible to ignore.
Firstly, while the film tries to make some concessions for the casting of a 64 year-old Kirk Douglas as the chiseled lover of a 33 year-old Farrah Fawcett by Hollywood’s most infamous chin dimple mull upon his advancing years, the movie is also jam packed full of scenes of the actor jumping at the chance to prove his god-tier levels of virility. Seriously, not a scene goes by where Kirk isn’t jumping rope, stripping down to his muscly bare ass, or wrasslin’ with a 9 foot robot who must weigh at least half a ton. Acting opposite this sneering mount of leathery testosterone is Fawcett, whose naïve character essentially isn’t that different from the similarly clueless role she went on to play in The Cannonball Run – she’s essentially a prize to be won by her three suitors and it’s one she plays well, but it has less dimension than a piece of paper.

That just leaves Harvey Keitel as the mad-as-a-sack-of-frogs Captain Benson, and if you thought Kirk and Farrah were miscast, baby, you ain’t seen nothing yet. While an obviously unhinged nutcase who casually utters things like: “Your body is very beautiful. I’d like to use it.” to a woman he’s just met, may seem like a natural role for the intense actor, arguments during filming meant Keitel couldn’t be fucked to come in and provide some necessary looping. The solution? Keitel was entirely dubbed by the very British Roy Dotrice and the result could be the most unsubtle space-nutter in sci-fi history as any subtleties in the actor’s original performance are quickly blown out of the nearest airlock.
That just leaves Hector, an inhuman antagonist who stands astride the line that divides Frankenstein and Alien, if the xenomorph was constantly making uncomfortable sexual requests at Farrah Fawcett – but I guess that’s what you get when you name the series of your robot “Demigod”. Still, the creepy robot certainly looks the part, and with his little box head emerging from a metallic, buff torso, he looks like either pubity hit Wall•E like a fucking Mac truck, or Johnny-5 from Short Circuit got uncontrollably ripped from robo-steroids. However, while Johnny-5 was a perfect gentleman with Ally Sheedy, Hector is uncomfortably rapey thanks to his personality download from a raging psychopath and anyone expecting a slick, sci-fi thriller might be stunned about how dark things get – I certainly did when first I watched it at a worrying young age. Be it the strange sexual under – no wait – over currents of the plot or the weird-ass, out of the blue, moment where Hector wears Benson’s head as a hat like he’s the fucking Merietta Mangler from Con Air.

However, while all of Saturn 3’s eccentricities are certainly memorable, it’s arguably for all the wrong reasons as virtually none of it holds together. But then, when you have the director of Singin’ In The Rain violently shift genres to direct Spartacus, the Bad Lieutenant and one of Charlie’s Angel’s in a film about a robot that’s programmed with the brain of a sex offender, there’s reason to believe it ever would have.
Still, at least they didn’t visit Uranus 2…

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