Saturn 3 (1980)
Kirk Douglas seems underutilized here. Farah Fawcett is, well..., I have a better opinion of her now than I did then, but she is still not very good here. She seems to be here only as eye candy and to scream. I can't even tell you what it is her character was supposed to be doing here.
Harvey Keitel has called this movie the "nadir of his career" and he certainly seems like he is only going through the motions here. He has even been redubbed for this. I didn't even remember he was in this, to be honest.
The plot is super simple. Harvey Keitel brings an experimental robot to an outpost near Saturn (Saturn 3) and he passes on his crazy to the robot.
The outpost is researching new food alternatives for Earth and is run by Douglas and Fawcett who are also a couple. Yeah, he was twice her age in this.
They have trouble with Keitel from the start and then trouble with the robot, and then everyone is fighting everyone else. Despite being newer than 1979's Alien, the sets look more like a 1970s sci-fi movie.
I remember seeing this one on TV a while back, I thought it had some other scenes. Checking good old Wikipedia there were other scenes when it aired on NBC.
The movie is, or could have been, an Alien rip-off, but there are not enough people on the station and thus not a high enough body count. It could be remade today an would be much better.
October 2021
Viewed: 22
First Time Views: 9.5
Wow, there's a film I haven't seen for decades. Until you mentioned it, I'd completely forgotten Harvey Keitel was in it. Mostly I remember Farah Fawcett because, well, Farah Fawcett.
ReplyDeleteI was 14 when this came out, and mostly remember it for the amount of buzz it caused in school when some of my classmates who'd seen it insisted that it was full of nude scenes and had some nearly-X sex scenes with Fawcett. The rumor got so out of control in the course of a week that some of the teachers and parents got involved and the grade above mine had an assembly where they not only debunked the story but told everyone anyone starting something like this again would be in detention till hell froze over.
ReplyDeleteI think part of the reason for the whole mess was our screwy school structure. Back then my town only had two buildings, with K-6 in one and 7-12 in the other - so you had largely clueless 12 and 13 year-olds lumped in willy-nilly with horny and much-less-innocent kids in the 17-18 range. Took them till teh late 90s to finally establish a proper middle school, and even then all they did was expand the former Jr-Sr high and then cut it in half internally.
Even having lived through it I find it kind of hard to imagine an era when people would get so hot and bothered over Fawcett, but I wasn't one of the (apparently) numerous people who grew up fantasizing about her either. She sure can't act, and this gentleman does not prefer blondes.
Not enough horror, perhaps, but not a bad entry into the "runaway robot" genre. Harvey Keitel is very menacing, and the fact that the space hippies are more-or-less okay with him gives one the idea that folks living in space are generally messed up. Which is kind of cool.
ReplyDeleteAnd the pills! The pills!
; )
It's funny that you didn't mention the heavy-handed "Garden of Eden" allegory through this film: idyllic couple finds their paradise shattered by an unwanted tempter. Combine that with Douglas' character's fragile aging male ego (probably a little close to home for the actor) being threatened by the younger man, and the movie gets to be more than a rampaging robot in space film. It's still a stinker, mind you, but it had some delightful pretentions.
ReplyDelete@WQRobb,
ReplyDeleteYou are right. I totally missed that! There is even the hint that Farrah's character never wore clothes if she could avoid it.