Saturn 3

Plot synopsis:
The film opens at a space station in the vicinity of the planet Saturn. An announcer is paging Captain James (Douglas Lambert) as the ship he is piloting is leaving in just a few minutes. We see James enter a locker room where he starts to put on his spacesuit and we see another figure in a spacesuit lurking in the corner wearing a helmet so we can't see his face. James addresses the figure as Benson (Harvey Keitel). Benson has apparently just failed a mental stability exam and James is replacing him on this mission. Before James is finished putting on his suit, however, Benson straps himself down and opens the airlock venting the locker room. James is killed and his body flushed out into space. Benson closes the door and then takes James's place on the mission.Benson flies the ship through the rings of Saturn and lands it on a moon at the Saturn 3 experimental food station. It is a remote and isolated underground facility crewed by just two scientists: the older Adam (played by a 64 year-old Kirk Douglas) and the beautiful young Alex (played by a 33 year-old Farrah Fawcett). Despite their age difference the two are happy as lovers.Adam and Alex escort Benson inside the facility. Despite their warm greeting, Benson seems cold. He tells them they are behind schedule on developing the new food sources that the over-populated Earth desperately needs. He has brought a new robot - HECTOR - that he will assemble and program to help speed the project. Once Hector is operational he will be so effective that one of the scientists will no longer be needed.When Alex and Benson are alone, he makes it clear that he is interested in having sex with her. She tells him she is exclusively with Adam and Benson responds that on Earth it is considered inhospitable to refuse his request. Alex, who was born in space and has never visited Earth, though she is curious about it, points out that they are not on Earth and continues to ignore his advances. He, in turn, tells her that Adam is "obsolete."Alex escorts Benson to his quarters where he tells her he will take a "blue dreamer" and get some sleep. Alex tells him she does not know what a "blue dreamer" is and Benson gives her a blue pill and suggests that she try it.Alex shows the pill to Adam who dismisses it is a sleeping/hypnotic drug used to keep people from going crazy in the isolation of space duty. Despite her negative reaction to Benson, the fact that he is from Earth and his description of the effect of the "blue dreamer" raises her interest. Reluctantly Adam agrees to try the drug with her one night (A scene was apparently filmed that shows their dream sequence, but it was cut from the final film. A still from this segment, however, showing Fawcett in a sexy, futuristic outfit, was widely circulated when the movie came out).Benson assembles the robot which stands 8-foot high and is extremely powerful. Benson can program the robot by connecting his own brain directly to it by a data port surgically implanted in the back of Benson's neck. Adam sees this and it concerns him as he believes that if Benson cannot control his thinking, improper thoughts will be encoded into Hector's brain. Later as we watch Benson training Hector we see him give Alex a lustful stare and Hector does the same.Lust is not the only thing that is transferred to Hector, but also Benson's propensity toward murder. After the robot is operational Alex finds that her dog, Sally, as been killed by being ripped asunder. The robot then grabs Alex and lifts her by her wrists into the air. Her screams attract Benson and Adam. She is able to persuade Hector to release her, but the robot then attacks Benson by dropping a piece of equipment on top of him. Adam at first wants to leave the trapped Benson for the robot to finish off, but then has a change of heart and rescues him. They all retreat to the safety of the communication room. There Adam waits till Hector needs to recharge and when the robot plugs in, he overloads it with high voltage causing it to collapse. Adam then orders Benson to disassemble the robot, pack it up and leave.Benson disassembles the robot, but Hector's brain is still active and during the night Hector commands the other simpler robots in the lab to reassemble him.The next morning, Benson storms into Alex and Adam's bedroom telling them he is leaving and taking Alex with him. A fight ignites between Benson and Adam. Adam gets the better of Benson nearly choking him, till Alex pulls him off. Benson then takes this opportunity to hit Adam over the head and drag Alex, clad only in a short, baby-doll nightie down the corridor toward his spaceship.He doesn't get far, though, as the reassembled Hector attacks him in the hallway. Alex escapes as Hector drags Benson's battered body away.Alex and Adam decide their best course of action is to try and escape the station in Benson's ship. Hector blocks their way until they set a trap for him in the lab by removing the supports beneath a section of the floor. Hector is toppled through the floor into the hydroponic pond below the lab. While he climbs out Alex and Adam don spacesuits and head out toward the ship. Hector is able to remotely detonate it before they can get on board, however.Back inside they hear Benson's voice directing them to come to him in the lab. When they arrive the find that the voice is really Hector's, who can duplicate any of their voices perfectly. Benson is apparently dead as Hector is now wearing his decapitated head as a hat.Hector knocks both Alex and Adam out and when Adam awakes back in his quarters he realizes that he has been fitted with a communications port on the back of his neck and that Hector has been probing his mind.Hector, using Benson's voice, announces that he is now running things and giving assignments. He orders Adam and Alex to come to the lab to clean it up. Adam sends Alex along and stops on the way to secret two explosive canisters and a detonator under his jacket. When he reaches the lab he challenges Hector for control of the station. When the robot comes after him he pushes both Hector and himself through the hole in the floor into the pond and detonates the charges killing himself and destroying the robot.In the final scene we see Alex on board a shuttle as it approaches Earth. She looks out the window knowing she is finally getting a chance to satisfy her curiosity about humanity's home planet.

Tags: violence, murder

Review:
The talent working on this film should have meant the end product was a lot more coherent than it actually was.John Barry who was involved with a story credit but was production designer for Star Wars and Superman must have had a big hand in the set design for this film as it looks incredible.The sets are so good they are a character in themselves and lend effectively to creating a sense of isolation.The sets remind me of Alien,yes they are that good which would be testament to the brilliance of Barry.Its a shame then that the rest of the film is rarther poor.It shows glimpses of promise but seems to falter just as its picking up.An expressionless Harvey Kietel seems dubbed and gave a physically hollow performance alongside an energetic Kirk Douglas and an airhead Farrah Fawcett.The visual effects are actually OK but the film seems to be missing big chunks and i get the feeling there's a version out there on the cutting room floor that is actually a lot better than what we have here.This film could probably be remade quite successfully,it has a great premise and is lacking a quality director to see it through.
In the Saturn 3 station, Major Adam (Kirk Douglas) and the scientist Alex (Farrah Fawcett), who is also his lover and has never been on Earth, have been researching hydroponics for three years in the base alone with their dog Sally.
Meanwhile, the psychotic Captain Benson (Harvey Keitel) fails the mental test required to travel to Saturn 3 and kills his replacement, Captain James, taking his place in the mission of assembling and programming the Demi-God series robot Hector to replace one of the scientists in Saturn 3.
Now Major Adam and Alex are trapped in the station with a dangerous psychopath robot."Saturn 3" is an underrated sci-fi cult from the 80's with a dark story that has not aged.
Two lovers stationed on a remote moon base of Saturn are intruded upon by a murderous man and his malevolent 8-ft robot.Its production issues, changing of directors (one of which was the late great John Barry) and budget cuts aside for a film that was made in 1980 it feels like late 60s/70s.
There's no point whining about what 'Saturn 3' COULD have been with a script by Martin Amis, direction by Stanley Donen ('Bedazzled'), and the star power of Kirk Douglas and Harvey Keitel.
Hector is still one of the scariest movie robots of all time, even if the idea of a sex-crazed machine is a trifle ludicrous and reminiscent of all those horny BEMs on pulp magazine covers and silly flicks like 'The Brain From Planet Arous'.
Ignoring the rather bleak look of the corridors, the Saturn 3 station has that feeling of being futuristic but also familiar in a Holiday Inn-sort of way, and the launching area at the film's beginning, with that great big flaming hole image effectively acting as a rather cool backdrop.
Three good actors (Farrah Fawcett, Kirk Douglas and Harvey Keitel) come off looking like incompetent dummies in this derivative, cardboard cartoon.
There are "erudite" elements like classical references to the Roman god Saturn (at least in the title itself, and not really developed in the screenplay) and naming of the robot "Hector", of "the Demigod III series" (one of the characters constantly reminds us of Hector's bad treatment at the hands of Achilles, to wit, "Hector's body was dragged around the walls of Troy by Achilles").
Kirk Douglas, for example, seems to have accepted the role simply to enjoy some saucy nude scenes with sexy co-star Farrah Fawcett.Essentially, the story is a three-handed thriller (or, four-handed, if you count Hector the droid).
Eventually it becomes clear that neither Adam nor Benson can control the droid, and with Hector determined to kill anyone who stands in the way of himself and Alex, that becomes something of a problem.......If Saturn 3 is a story of jealousy and desire, then it needs more than a sex-starved droid to generate credibility.
Somewhere in the remote future a Human inhabited spacecraft, Saturn 3, is occupied by the stunning Alex(Farrah Fawcett) and her pre- geriatric lover, Major Adam (Kirk Douglas).
Still, having come back to it after so long, I was expecting to be greatly disappointed but actually I enjoyed it for what it is: as a sci-fi epic, it certainly brought nothing new to the table (borrowing the plot's essential life-on-a-space-station element from SILENT RUNNING [1971] and its sex-starved robot, an appropriately menacing creation, from DEMON SEED [1977]) but was nonetheless fairly engaging - with a stylish enough look courtesy of cinematographer Billy Williams and production designer Stuart Craig (though Elmer Bernstein's score is curiously forgettable) - and, thankfully, did not overstay its welcome (running for only 88 minutes).Even so, the two leads - who actually ended up Razzie nominees, as did the film!
- weren't exactly inspired (Douglas, by this time, was past his prime and, unfortunately, his stint in the sci-fi/horror genre - which also comprised HOLOCAUST 2000 [1977; the only one I've yet to catch up with, though it's been shown on Italian TV quite a few times], THE FURY [1978] and THE FINAL COUNTDOWN [1980] - is best forgotten!) but, at least, Harvey Keitel brought to it his typical intensity and intelligence - though I'm sure it's a film he'd rather forget.
Speaking of which, I recall an article in the British film magazine "Empire" comparing the fortunes of Keitel and Robert De Niro over the years: in the same year Keitel appeared in SATURN 3, De Niro reached his pinnacle with RAGING BULL, but a dozen or so years later the tables would be more or less turned...but that's another story.In the end, one has to wonder what Stanley Donen was thinking when he accepted such a project - but, then, his career had always been somewhat erratic (including at least a couple more notorious false steps with the homosexual two-hander STAIRCASE [1969] and the bootlegging comedy LUCKY LADY [1975])..
Neat cast of actors and you think it may actually have some value but on the other hand when Fawcett takes top billing over Kirk Douglas one begins to wonder.Basic plot soon falls into Evil Dude and his robot wants the girl while Ferrah screams throughout the film.
Kirk Douglas and the late Farrah Fawcett are Two lovers stationed at a remote base in the asteroid fields of Saturn, they are intruded upon by the mysterious Captain Walker Harvey Keitel(who for some unknown reason is dubbed by actor Roy Dotrice) Keitels character is retentive and sexually oppressed, on the other hand Douglas and Fawcett aren't their May to December romance will raise eyebrows!
Farrah as ever looks hot, depending on which version you view, there are some scenes which proudly display Ms Fawcett's assets:)fans will be delighted!the couples happiness is interrupted when Keitel unveils his malevolent 8-ft robot Hector who as the film progresses develops a mind and a murderous habit of his own.'Saturn Three' is a great concept but it is rather shoddy, witness some of the effects on display terrible!
Maybe he, like Kirk Douglas, has a skeleton or two in his closet that they used to blackmail them into doing the movie (this is the only LOGICAL reason I can think of).Whatever the motivations, the story is about a strangely mismatched couple (Farrah and Kirk) who man a small space station.
A class actor like Harvey Keitel is wasted in this film, and sure will try and forget his role in a movie which proved unsuccessful at the box office.Farrah Fawcett had abandoned Charlie's Angels in 1977 after just one season to better herself as an actress and move into the world of movies.
Piece of crap with Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett, 2 people in love and working in space, just the 2 of them on a remote station near Saturn.
On Saturn 3, two scientists Adam(Kirk Douglas) and his lover and partner Alex(Farrah Fawcett, 1947-2009) are living there because Earth is very much overcrowded over the years.
There as elsewhere, Douglas looks like he's having the time of his life - huh huh, I'm in the shower with Farrah Fawcett - only they're being MENACED BY KILLER ROBOTS for Christ's sake, and there he is winking at us.
Kirk Douglas must have signed on to show that world that at age 64 he could still kick butt, look fairly decent shirtless, and grab the babe.Farah Fawcett was trying to prove that she was more than just a "Charlie's Angel," yet she seems to have simply changed locations, as she still seems like a "bimbo in space." Harvey Keitel, one of filmdom's best character actors, was just getting his feet wet.
Some musical cues are nabbed from 2001, while the opening "overhead starship" shot is a direct crib from Star Wars, only on a fraction of the budget.Keitel's psychotic Benson arranges to be placed on a Saturnian moon with Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett.
Of course, Douglas and Fawcett are so insipid you spend the whole of the film wishing they would get wiped out, as painfully as possible.The robot, Hector, is actually quite effective, though the voyages through Saturn's rings have to be seen to be ...
The cast like Farrah Fawchett, Harvey Keitel, and Kirk Douglas are good, the robot was freak and does offer a couple of gore scenes.A very much watchable effort from ITC ( the company that brought you "The Dark Crystal", " The Last Unicorn" and "Company of Wolves"), but don't expect this to be a classic like " The Terminator" or "Alien".5/10..
It was, admittedly, made in Britain rather than in Hollywood, but had a legendary American director in Stanley Donen and a legendary American leading man in Kirk Douglas.The immense success of the original "Star Wars" in 1977 had led to a vogue for science fiction, previously a little-regarded film genre associated with cheap fifties B-movie shockers.
It might have been nice had we gotten to know the characters a little bit better, so our rooting interest could be stronger.Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett play Adam and Alex, two lovers working in an underground space station on Saturns' third moon, Titan.
Saturn 3 (1980) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Adam (Kirk Douglas) and Alex (Farrah Fawcett) are lovers who are working on a space station right outside of Saturn.
What they don't know is that Benson has killed the real Captain that they were expecting and he's brought on board a new robot that can think and act for itself.SATURN 3 is a film that was released to some really awful reviews with most critics calling it one of the worst films of the year.
I will admit that the film is really dumb and there's an even bigger problem with the screenplay and that's the fact that we don't really know why Benson wanted on the spaceship and we really don't know why the robot goes crazy.Speaking of the crazy robot, the final twenty-minutes of the movie are basically like a slasher as Alex and Adam must run, hide and try to fight the robot that is after them.
Two lovers (Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett) stationed at a remote base in the asteroid fields of Saturn are intruded upon by a retentive technocrat (Harvey Keitel) from Earth and his charge: a malevolent eight foot robot.
Once there however, things get ugly when the robot's mind becomes polluted by Benson's thoughts & tries to have its way with the female scientist working there.Film Review: When ALIEN came out during the sci-fi boom of the very late 1970s / early 1980s, Stanley Donen (a director who specialised in light musicals) took over a trouble-ridden project & turned it into one of the biggest critical flops that 1980 has ever seen.
Since then, Saturn 3 has become a minor cult favourite for fans of Farrah Fawcett.The film's plot – loony space pilot flies to a remote outpost, starts having fantasies about the local babe & struggles to contain his insanity with a robot (which is technically a cyborg due to its organic brain) that is psychically connected to his brain – is quite interesting but quickly collapses into pretentiousness due to a script that runs over everything with a Biblical overtone that makes the whole thing unintentionally hilarious.The best thing about the film is the visual effects.
The best acting by far in this turkey belongs to the robot, who proves to be a real scene-stealer, whether by displaying unsportsmanlike behaviour after losing a game of chess, tearing apart the station's resident pooch (probably saving it from Keitel's appetite – they eat dogs where he comes from) & lusting after Fawcett.The film has had a bad time at the box office, only managing to draw some really negative reviews upon its release..
Enjoyable sci-fi about a murderous man(Keitel) and his funny looking robot arriving at Saturn 3 food research station where dirty old Kirk Douglas and much younger babe Farrah Fawcett spends most of the time porking each other.
It is highly Likely that John Barry directed a lot of this, and his design handiwork is evident.After seeing Space done so beautifully and economically by Ridley Scott in Aliens, this film for me was a return to my roots of Low Budget Science Fiction, which I grew up on, so I enjoyed the cheesy view of Saturn's Rings, I even loved the 2-D effect of the space station, and Donen's directing of the initial scene where you think is this going to be a musical in space?
And I first saw this in the theater, and things always look better on that huge screen, until you see it on TV and it looks Cheap.So now, 32 years after I sat in that theater and was creeped out by Harvey Keitel and his robot "Hector" - I found a fairly good transfer of that film online and got it - And I watched it last night, for the first time in 3 decades.
I think this was probably the biggest Movie role for Farah , not counting several made for TV movies like "The Burning Bed".The Saturn 3 set is convincing as a space habitat, except of course the gravity would be less than earth's, there is no mention of artificial gravity, so we have to take all that for granted in the film.The Hector concept, was the first time I had seen in a movie, that a robot had to be programmed from a human brain, and if that brain has problems: "I'm not malfunctioning, You are" as Hector tells "Benson"- So this film makes clear that a guy who giggles over murdering his captain in cold blood, if this guy is the template for Hector's Programming, then watch out - The film made this concept very clear.
His directing is fine, but along with him are Kirk Douglas (Who's often criticized for being too old to be stripped down in wearing nothing in some parts of the film, but this was made before he ACTUALLY became a decrepit, feeble old man, no offense Kirk.), Harvey Keitel (Who was unfairly dubbed by a stereotypical British dude i'm not familiar with), and Farrah Fawcet (Who's the weakest link of this film).It opens with Keitel (Dressed in a awesome space suit) taking the job to take Hector (The key robot of the film.) to Saturn 3, a sanctionary of sorts to keep Earth plenished with food.
The aging Major Adam (an able and robust performance by Kirk Douglas) and his much younger distaff partner Alex (sweetly played with charming naiveté by Farrah Fawcett) are stationed on a lone station located on one of Saturn's moons where they are working on ways to grow food for the starving masses back on Earth.
Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett man a space station on one of the rings of Saturn --- for what purpose is anyone's guess.
"Saturn 3" stars Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett as a pretty much carefree space couple, stationed in a control base on one of Saturn's Moons.
There are only two people who live on Saturn 3, reclusive lover's Adam (Kirk Douglas) & Alex (Farrah Fawcett).
The acting isn't that great, Douglas looks a little bit old for the role, the best thing I can say about Fawcett is that she's pretty to look at & Keitel complete with pony-tail is dubbed throughout so his original performance is lost.
Cue chases through the dark tunnels of their base, an attempt to destroy the robot and the final showdown between man and machine.It's a rather silly yarn that's aided by a good performance by Kirk Douglas and Harvey Keitel who oddly enough sounded dubbed in this movie.
A robotic monster, built by renegade Captain Benson(Harvey Keitel, as robotic as the monster in the film)from Earth, make life hell for Adam(Kirk Douglas)& Alex(Farrah Fawcett).
"Charade" director Stanley Donen's "Saturn 3," with Kirk Douglas, Farrah Fawcett, and Harvey Keitel, proves once again that robotsno matter how smart they areare no match for humans.
It also proves that despite his age, Kirk Douglas remains as fit and athletic as everand that Farrah Fawcett's talent is really how loud she can shriek.Although "Saturn 3" has the elements to make it a minor classic as sci-fi suspense thrillers go, the movie flounders because of awkward scripting, phony special effects, and Stanley Donen's lackluster helming.The story is set in the future, with neither date nor year provided.
The captain then takes the dead man's place on a mission to deliver a robot to an experimental food laboratory on Saturn manned by Adam (Kirk Douglas of "The War Wagon") and Alexis (Farrah Fawcett of "Charlie's Angels").
SATURN 3 is still fun to watch and I'll say it again, HECTOR is really a cool looking robot, one of the best I've ever seen in a SF movie..