Something is very very wrong on "Saturn 3" (1980)...

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 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 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; 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, 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…

https://musingsofamiddleagedgeek.blog/2025/02/01/something-is-very-very-wrong-on-saturn-3-1980/