Review: Saturn 3 (1980)

Directed by: Stanley Donen, John Barry
Starring: Farrah Fawcett, Kirk Douglas, Harvey Keitel
Written by: Martin Amis
Music by: Elmer Bernstein
Country: United Kingdom
Available on: Blu-ray/DVD (Shout Factory)
IMDb

Saturn 3, conceived as a small-budget thriller that spun into one of the first big-budget attempts to capitalize on the success of Ridley Scott’s Alien, has a storied history as an absolute clusterfuck of a production resulting in a film that turned out the way nobody wanted it to, a film that flamed out into obscurity and embarrassment for all involved. The original director, John Barry (who had done production design for stuff like A Clockwork Orange and Phase IV), left two weeks into production; Kirk Douglas was a pain in the ass constantly trying to get naked on camera to prove he wasn’t a wrinkly old has-been; Harvey Keitel hated everything about working on the movie and didn’t bother showing up for post-production, resulting in all his lines being dubbed; and Farrah Fawcett’s attention was divided due to her marriage to The Six Million Dollar Man falling to pieces. The new director, Stanley Donen, didn’t like sci fi and had primarily worked on musicals. So yeah, production was a disaster.

The movie, about a couple of food researchers camped out on one of Saturn’s moons whose pleasant lives are disrupted by the arrival of a psychopathic astronaut from Earth and his killer robot, definitely has some problems. But, despite all the craziness, Saturn 3 is a pretty fascinating piece of work. Right from the outset, you can tell a lot of time and most of the budget went into the production design, which makes sense given Barry’s background. The sprawling, futuristic sets are actually pretty fetching and you can tell that, at one point, a lot of thought was given to the universe in which this film exists. There are hints of that in the dialog, as when Keitel’s character, Benson, casually mentions his dog-based diet and the propensity for earthlings to engage in super-casual sex. All three characters have some kind of unexplained insignia tattooed on their temple. Gravity has become more of a suggestion. But at some point, novelist Martin Amis’ original screenplay was rewritten by several uncredited script doctors who dropped most of the backstory to focus on the murder-bot. And the robot, named Hector, is pretty intimidating: an eight-foot-tall armored behemoth with a maelstrom of tubes snaking hither and yon and flushing multi-colored liquids of unknown origin, powered by a giant tube of brain matter cultivated from human fetuses. About a million bucks of the budget went into the robot’s design and construction, so it’s a good thing that element works for the most part.

For 99% of the movie, there are only three actors and each is doing something intriguing but completely divergent: Keitel is visibly apathetic while reciting lines, that were ultimately dubbed in a mid-Atlantic accent, like “No taction contact,” “That was an improper thought linkage,” and “You have a great body. May I use it?” Kirk Douglas apparently thought this was a much less serious movie, because he’s entirely flippant. Farrah Fawcett is just sort of there on set, obviously distracted by her personal drama. Chemistry between the three does not exist, but there’s nonetheless an odd alchemy going on. Saturn 3 is probably actually better off due to Keitel’s stingy distribution of fucks; his detached demeanor makes his character, who failed the mental competency test required to fly space missions, more sociopathic. It’s too bad the great Elmer Bernstein’s score went largely unused, because it’s effective where it does pop up.

Despite literally every aspect of this film being a giant mess, it manages to be interesting and produce a few really unsettling moments, such as when Hector confiscates Benson’s head. And pretty much everything Benson ever says, in his flatly intoned overdubbed voice saying things in a way no human would ever say them, is creepy as hell. Who knows how Saturn 3 would have ended up had things gone to plan. But as is usually the case, the eccentricities of the film’s production impart uniqueness that gives the flick its flavor.

Overall rating: 7 out of 10