******SATURNIAN-SIZED SPOILERS!******

From my preteen and early teen years eagerly devouring every copy of “Starlog” magazine in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were a lot of movies that caught my attention, even though I often I lacked the means (i.e. transportation) to see them whenever I wished. That, and my parents weren’t keen on taking me to see them, since they had little-to-no interest in science-fiction. A few of these movies I’d catch on TV later on. Some made me glad I’d avoided paying to see them (“Starcrash,” “Battle Beyond The Stars”), while others made me wish I’d caught them in their original theatrical runs (“ALIEN,” “Outland”).  As of this week, at the tender age of 58, I finally got around to seeing (in its entirety) one of those movies I’d read about in Starlog way back when; 1980’s “Saturn 3,” which I only dimly remember catching a few minutes of on TV over the decades.

Recently finding a used Blu-Ray copy at a used records/bookstore in my city (thank you, DBZ Records & Books!), I was able to see “Saturn 3” projected digitally at home on a retractable 7 ft/2-meter screen; which adequately approximated a theatrical experience. “Saturn 3” turned out to be more or less as bad as I remember from snippets I’ve seen and read about; with the late Kirk Douglas (“20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” “The Final Countdown”) and the late Farrah Fawcett (“Logan’s Run”) playing a May-December couple growing food hydroponically (and lackadaisically) for a half-starved Earth from one of Saturn’s moons. Their blissful isolated existence is interrupted by a serpent arriving in their ‘garden of Eden’ played by Harvey Keitel (dubbed by British actor Roy Dotrice), who assembles a tall, capricious robot which copies his own lecherous, killer mind and trashes their paradise.

Despite this movie’s many shortcomings (which I’ll get to soon), there is also something compellingly camp and hilarious about “Saturn 3,” too. It’s so ill-conceived and godawful that it sorta falls into the ‘so-bad-its-good’ category. So, get some popcorn and buckle up, as Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett prepare to battle a killer robot named Hector in…

“Saturn 3” (1980)

Note: Ed Bishop played “Colonel Ed Straker” in the short-lived Gerry Anderson live-action TV series “UFO” (1970), which some fans think of as the spiritual predecessor to the somewhat more successful two-season series “Space: 1999” (1975-1977).

Note: Captain Benson’s Tethys lander spacecraft has an automatic sinister vibe to it; like an Apollo lunar lander designed by Darth Vader. The real-life Saturnian moon of Tethys remained a mystery until the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 fly-bys of Saturn in 1980 and 1981. Tethys, the fifth largest moon of Saturn, is the third moon out from Saturn, hence, “Saturn 3” (I guess “Tethys” isn’t as catchy a title). Of course, many more moons have been discovered in Saturnian space since, with the current count at 146 as of this writing; leaving Saturn with the most moons of any planet in our solar system. 

Note: Other than convenience for swapping the actors out with stuntpersons or doubles, is there any reason why the Spaceways personnel wear all encompassing helmets that don’t allow their comrades to see their faces?  They look like half-assed Star Wars stormtroopers.

Note: Yes, Harvey Keitel’s voice was re-dubbed by British actor Roy Dotrice (“Space: 1999,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Amadeus”), who did a mid-Atlantic accent that doesn’t sound even vaguely like Keitel, an actor with a very memorable voice (“From Dusk Till Dawn,” “Taxi Driver,” “Reservoir Dogs”).  The reasons for this re-dubbing vary on where you find your information, but the consensus is that Keitel refused to return to Shepperton Studios in England for post-production, forcing director Stanley Donen to dub over his entire performance. 

Note: Casual drug use, particularly hallucinogenics, seemed to be the way of the future back in the ‘Studio 54’-era of the late 1970s; hence the “blue sleepers” which Spencer offers to Alex, and which Adam later slices in half for he and his lover to trip on (there is a hilarious deleted scene of their trip together on the Shout! Factory Blu-Ray bonus features).

Note: The connector ports in the back of the neck feel like one of the few sci-fi elements of this stupid script which might actually become reality soon, with Neuralinks, which I will have absolutely nothing to do with, if at all possible. That creep Elon Musk is already in our heads far too much for my comfort level these days, thank you very much…

Note: Spencer’s barging in on Alex and Adam’s having sex isn’t played with the kind of outrage you’d see in real human beings. Instead, his casual intrusion is treated with the same minor irritation of your cat accidentally knocking over a half-empty wastebasket. It’s also half-explained in dialogue somewhere that people from Earth are simply a lot ruder in the 22nd century…

Note: Playing chess with computers/machines is a sci-fi cliché these days (“Star Trek,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “WarGames”), though in the 1970s it was still kinda newish. My late dad loved chess, and one of his favorite toys was his electronic chess board, which allowed him to play with a near-Bobby Fischer level opponent (whose challenge level could be adjusted) whenever he wanted. 

Note: There are many shots of Farrah Fawcett showering, or running around in nighties and other sexy attire, so old-school fans of her famous poster are well-serviced with this movie.

Note: The image of poor terrier Sally cut to pieces and lying in a pool of her own movie blood on the grated station’s floor is rather grisly. Clearly this movie was aiming for an “ALIEN”-vibe, but it falls short of that goal with its own goofiness and utter lack of verisimilitude. 

Note: Adam is a rotten commander.  He just assumes the sociopath who built this nearly unstoppable robot is going to responsibly disassemble the damn thing. A worthwhile commander would’ve overseen the disassembly, and thrown each of the pieces (including its brain) into a vat of acid; which we learn they have at their disposal on Saturn 3.  As for the disabled comms due to the moon’s eclipse? Has no one in the vicinity of Saturnian space ever heard of using communications satellites (which can be very small and cheap) for getting around that inconvenience?

Note: Another scene/bit of this otherwise laughably silly movie that I actually found compelling was the brain of Hector somehow hacking into the other two dummy robots of the station to aid in its own reassembly.  A rare thumbs-up for this scene in an otherwise terrible, yet perversely entertaining film.

Note: This is the point where the badly misused Harvey Keitel (one of the greatest actors of his generation) officially exits the movie entirely, since the voice of his character—and the voice that Hector adopts for itself—is of actor Roy Dotrice, of course.

Note: And exit Kirk Douglas (1916-2020) from the movie, as well. The legendary Kirk Douglas (“Spartacus,” “Ace in the Hole”) lived to the age of 103, even after suffering a debilitating stroke in 1996. Sadly, he even outlived his much-younger costar Farrah Fawcett, who tragically died of cancer in 2009, at the age of 62. 

Note: The ending leaves many loose ends.  With Alex heading for Earth in a Spaceways shuttle, who’s tending the agricultural station on Saturn 3 (remember that whole ‘starving Earth’ thing)?  What was Captain Spencer’s motive in building Hector in the first place?  Was Hector’s creation worth murdering Captain James?  I’d hate to think there was a longer version of production designer-turned-writer John Barry’s one and only script that answered some of these questions, since one of the beautiful things about this film is its relatively short, easy-to-digest 85 minute runtime (96 minutes, if you watch the version shown on broadcast TV; which included deleted scenes to fill a two-hour broadcast time slot).

The End.

Summing It Up

With a $10 million production budget (big money in those days), “Saturn 3” was cowritten and conceived of by production designer-by-trade John Barry (“Star Wars,” “Superman: The Movie,” “A Clockwork Orange”) and directed by Stanley Donen (“Singing in the Rain,” “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”). Despite its high talent pedigree, it ends up being a weird, terribly-dated little movie with random bits of high-end craftsmanship. If one can ignore the subpar, downright amateurish special effects (surprising in the post-Star Wars era), the movie’s elaborate set designs look like something Ken Adams might’ve fabricated for a big-budget, late-1970s Bond film. Tonally, “Saturn 3” feels more like the kind of schlocky, micro-budgeted space-horror flick that the late Roger Corman and company might’ve punched out in two weeks; and for a tiny fraction of the money.  

Another major issue in this wrongheaded movie is the relationship between Adam, as played by a then-63 year-old Kirk Douglas, and Alex, as played by a then-32 year old, post-“Charlie’s Angels” Farrah Fawcett. Douglas (1916-2020) was still very fit for his age in this movie, and the late Fawcett (1947-2009) was the pinup girl at that time. What makes their relationship so creepy and weird isn’t the 30-odd year age gap so much as the massive disparity in life experience. “Major” Adam is a military man who’s been around the solar system a few times, while his infantilized lover, Alex, hasn’t even seen Earth; growing up almost entirely on space farming habitats. In his condescending, Hugh Hefner-way, Adam treats Alex more like a sexy, exploitable pet than an adult human being.  And neither of these two pampered space squatters seem to know jack about science, let alone farming. I almost can’t blame the evil Captain Benson for trying to light a fire under their lazy asses.

Speak of the devil, the talented Harvey Keitel (“Taxi Driver,” “From Dusk Till Dawn,” “Pulp Fiction”) is badly misused as the evil, unfeeling Frankenstein-like creator of the robot, Hector. The actor apparently wouldn’t return to the UK for post-production ADR work on the film (can’t blame him), so all of his dialogue was dubbed by British actor Roy Dotrice (“Space: 1999,” “Amadeus”); who adopted a mid-Atlantic accent for the character.  While the looping is competently done, it just feels wrong for Keitel; whose voice is so well known to film aficionados these days.  Keitel’s Captain Benson is supposed to be the murderous, lecherous serpent in the movie’s Garden of Eden, but the character has no clear agenda for assembling Hector; other than to bully Adam and sexually intimidate Alex.  We don’t see his prized creation—which kills its creator, of course—do much actual hydroponics work either, other than clumsily manipulate a few tools that any decent automation could’ve, though it does extract a painful metal chip out of a terrified Alex’s eye. 

Which brings us to the movie’s true nemesis–the big, bad, robotic AI, incongruously-named “Hector” (for no apparent reason, apparently). Clearly the robot was meant to be this movie’s HAL-9000 (“2001: A Space Odyssey”), but it has none of the guile, reasoning, or purpose of HAL. Hector isn’t trying to salvage a critical mission, nor make contact with alien intelligence. It simply adopts its deranged creator’s personality through a neural link between them; turning it into a generic robotic menace. That’s about it.  We see near the end of the movie that Hector wants to make Alex and Adam its meat puppets, but this idea isn’t well-defined enough. Even Hector’s dying creator wonders why the robot is sexually harassing Alex, since it doesn’t even have genitalia. It might’ve been more interesting if Hector tried to start an AI revolt with the station’s other two robots (which it remotely controls for its reassembly), but it doesn’t. Hector is a menace without a motive. As movie villainy goes, Hector is simply boring. 

With an unjustified amount of money and talent both in front of and behind the cameras, “Saturn 3” does manage to mix some potent booster fuel for unintentional laughs (and a few well-earned cringes), making it ripe for a future Rifftrax or Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment someday.  The film more than lives up to its surprisingly observant tagline of “Something is wrong on Saturn 3.” Indeed. Many things, in fact…

Where to Watch

As of this writing, “Saturn 3” is available to stream via Tubi, Crackle, Philo, and other streaming platforms. The movie can also be purchased on a Blu-Ray/DVD combo pack (with deleted scenes) from Shout! Factory (prices vary).