Saturn-3 (1980) - Most of you won't have heard of it!I took this with me to a friends recently as we were having a spooky movie night for Halloween. It's not strictly a horror, more sci-fi thriller, but as it turned out it's more of a horror than Amityville! Yawn. Anyway, we didn't watch it and it sat on the side for a week or two and I had a little timer so in the disk went.
I'd forgotten how good it is. I mean it's not the greatest story line, or the best acting, nor is it ground breaking special effects. But if you add all it's mediocrity together it makes for a very watchable feature. It does have some pretty good musical score but apparently a lot of this ended up cut from the final feature. I'd love to see what could be done with a complete re-cutting of this film.
The story is set in a nicely built 'space station' set. The usual 100m of corridor redressed and shot from every angle allows the small cast to run about through a seemingly large underground station without it getting too repetitive Lots of swooshy sci-fi airlock doors and decontamination rooms etc. The space scenes are well handled with a curious underwater sensation when flying through Saturn's rings although the ships look a bit Gerry Anderson / Starblazer at times and I'm dying to know how he squeezed so many robot components into a landing module that looks the size of a bubble car sat on a dustbin.
Harvey Kietel doesn't really act in this, since his character is so bland and flat of personality his main task was to NOT act. We'll forgive him as he has done a bit better since.
Farrah Fawcett runs around looking pretty and damsel in distressy as is demanded. Farrah, for those who don't know, was THE pin up of the late 70s, starring in Charlie's Angels and being the subject of one of the biggest selling posters of all
time, which sold over 12million copies.
Kirk Douglas (As the male half of the couple) manages to do a pretty good impression of an aging tough guy who Kietel discribes as 'obsolete'. If you don't know him but he seems familiar, he's the father of Michael (Sex Addict) Douglas of Romancing the Stone fame. No doubt he did a few other films too. ;-)
There is also a dog but that ends badly so we won't go there but for his short part in the film he did a great job of being dog-like.
Should You See it?
I think, if you like sci-fi at all then this should appeal on some level. If you are spooked or intrigued by the idea of computer / robot rogues then you'll appreciate it, or simply if you want to see Farah Fawcett briefly naked. Oh and you can giggle at the scooby-doo like scenes where the 'people' are running from the robot that sort of lollops along like a zombie.
In short it's like Swiss Cheese, it's, well, cheesy and full of holes; but that alone doesn't make it a bad film. Check it out.
PLOT - (Spoilers)The plot is fairly simple, a scientist fails his psych test and so murders another scientist and then, pretending to be him, ships out to Saturn's 3rd moon to install a new cutting edge robot with the couple who are stationed there to develop new food growth systems for the hungry Earth population. Besides the Scientist (Harvey Kietel) being a bit creepy and coming on to the woman in the couple (Farrah Fawcett), all seems well.
The robot, it transpires, needs programming by direct brain link to its artificial brain tissue from the scientist. Again all goes well until the scientist's murderous approach and his desire for the woman get transferred too. The resulting murderous rampaging robot story then unfolds to its destined conclusions.
