Saturn 3 [Blu-ray]

After making do with a region 2 dvd (cropped image; no extras), I was surprised and relieved to see Saturn 3 finally getting a release 33 years after its theatrical run. Shout! Factory has come out with what is certainly the best release of Saturn 3 ever. This set includes two discs- one blu ray, one dvd. The blu ray image is excellent and sharp (Farrah and Hector look great; beautiful, eerie quasi-futuristic corridors of the moonbase), in widescreen with excellent sound, nicely balancing Hector's creepy sounds and Elmer Bernstein's odd, electronic/symphonic score. The blu ray extras are generous, including an interview with the English actor who dubbed Harvey Kietel's part in the film, an extended `blue dreamers' scene, and added scenes/bits from the network televised version of the film (though they're not of high quality). The commentary, though from fans of the film (Greg Moss of the Saturn 4 Fan Page; film critic David Bradley) as opposed to cast/crew directly involved with the film production, is informative (they certainly did their homework) and answers some questions I had about this troubled production (which Kirk Douglas made no mention of in his autobiography). There's also an interview with Colin Chilvers (who should have been on the commentary) concerning special effects and other matters(great robotic FX, admittedly so-so spaceship sequences; cast tensions).Granted, some of the effects and dialogue may make more contemporary/CGI-savvy audiences cringe and scoff, but this may be a cult film for certain generations who watched it (or wanted to) back in 1980. Nothing seems to be missing here (compared to my old region 2 disc). All those hokey moments- three characters arguing over 'shared sex' ideas from terrible old Earth, spaceships flying through meteor-showered rings of Saturn (picture 'bread balls underwater'), all kinds of creepy and nasty things occur with the big, clumsy, tube-tied android Hector at its center, are on display, looking better than ever. Kirk Douglas is great as usual, Farrah is lovely but seemingly ditzy, and Harvey Keitel is creepy but not quite himself due to a robotic performance and dubbing. But...DO get hold of this sadly, nearly-forgotten semi-sexy sci-fi/horror flick and appreciate something you may have been too young to see at the time (as I had been). Loosen up and enjoy it- don't take it seriously!

Mo

I want to give this film three stars, but, I'm keeping in mind that it was made in the late 70s as an adult version of Star Wars or Silent Running, and keeping with the market trend of Alien at the time.It's actually a fairly well acted film, and other than Hector's design, the art direction is pretty decent as well. If I had one nitpick with this movie it's the SFX space shots. Those seem grandiose with the bombastic score, and somewhat dated. Which is a shame, because Outland and Alien were both contemporaries of this movie, and had better space shots. Heck, Star Wars came out years earlier and had better space shots, as did 2001 which came out over ten years before. So, one is left to wonder what happened in the SFX department.The story is pretty good, the creepy atmosphere is there, yet the film isn't overly scary as these kind of films go; i.e. psychopath terrorizes locals kind of thing. Even the science, what little there is, is fairly on point.There's of course Farrah Fawcet's famous nude scenes, which was played up by word of mouth at the time. She was a beautiful girl, of that there was no doubt.I guess my only other nitpick is that I didn't get a sense of resolution for the entire story, in sptie of the climamx and the ending (with yet another sub-standard series of space SFX shots). Still, take it for what it is, a kind of roboit psycho goes on a rampage in space.Not bad for a scifi film of its time. It could have been better in the SFX department, but is otherwise respectable fare.Give it a shot.

THE STORY (contains spoilers): A mentally unbalanced astronaut (Harvey Keitel), kills a space pilot and impersonates him in order to gain access to the remote food research facility of Saturn 3. Once there, he meets innocently beautiful scientist Farrah Fawcett and her work & life partner, the aging but still rugged Kirk Douglas. Harvey gets the hots for Farrah (who wouldn't?!?) and blatantly asks for a little nookie. (Apparently on Earth you can have sex with anyone you want no questions asked, so naturally ol' Harvey thinks he's got it made.) Farrah has no desire to boink this guy and she shuts him down cold. The twitchy sexaholic doesn't take this rejection too well, however, and sets about assembling "Hector," a prototype humanoid robot to act as his electronic enforcer. To make matters worse, Hector gets his programming directly from Harvey's brain via a physical interface coupling at the base of Harvey's skull. In essence, Hector soon has all of horny Harvey's unbalanced thoughts & carnal desires, so you can guess where that's gonna lead. Understandably, neither Farrah nor Kirk are too thrilled to have robo-lunk Hector shambling about the complex and they want both the man and his machine gone. And things just get uglier from there.THOUGHTS: The best thing about this British production, regrettably, are the innovative set designs. The Saturn 3 complex is really cool-looking, featuring several non-traditional designs for doors, portals and living and working quarters. The space craft designs are also unusual; bubble-shaped and insectoid-like, rather than the traditional flying discs or pointy space needles we're used to seeing. The cinematography is very shadowy & dark, with nice, color-saturated faces and extreme cross-lighting to help make everything look more menacing and creepy. Robot villain Hector is a visual feast for the eyes. His human-yet-alien design is extremely busy and engaging. The unsettling eye stalk pod atop the huge "muscular"-looking body is very scary and threatening. Hector makes a thoroughly convincing mechanical menace, and can proudly take his place alongside the likes of HAL-1000 and The Terminator in the robotic sci-fi gallery of evil automatons. SATURN 3's story, however, is a dissatisfyingly disjointed affair, and because of it you are never quite as involved in the film as you ought to be. Still in all, the threat posed by Harvey & Hector feel real enough. The film would have almost no draw at all were it not for the strong performances from the three human leads. The tension escalates as the film moves along and it keeps you guessing to the very end, so I liked this film more than I didn't - if that makes any sense. LOL.THE BLU-RAY: This Blu-ray / DVD combo release from Shout!Factory is a nice one. The picture is solid, with little or no pixelation or artifacting and not much in the way of video noise nor dirt & grit from the original film elements. The soundmix is strong and consistent. There are a few decent extras to be found, including an brief interview with Roy Dotrice (probably best-known as 'Father' from TV's "Beauty & The Beast"), who was brought in after principal shooting to do a complete overdub of Harvey Keitel's voice, in order to make Harvey sound more British. Huh??? Very strange, but that was director Stanley Donen's idea. Weird and totally unnecessary, but it is what it is. There's also an interview with special effects director Colin Chilvers that has some interesting tidbits for fans of behind-the-scenes trivia. Additional footage edited into the broadcast TV airing is included separately, along with an extended version of the "Ecstasy" scene. The film's theatrical trailer, some TV ads and a still gallery are thrown in as well. I don't feel I missed much by not catching this first run or afterwards on cable TV, but it's nice to have finally seen this movie, and I'm glad to have it in my collection. I suspect it will be worth a re-watch every now & then. Overall... SATURN 3 was just okay, so I can only give the moody, space-horror film a modest 3 STARS.

This review is for the ITV HOME ENTERTAINMENT/SILVER COLLECTION DVD. The transfer is in one way disapointing. The 16.9 ratio is enclosed in a 4.3 ratio (ie surrounded by black bars). The problem I have with this is that my wife is HOH and needs subtitles. Well, here they are, and good ones too, but to read them properly you cannot enlarge the screen as that obliterates part of the subs. So we made do, and frankly, no real problem. For what it is, the transfer is excellent. Good colour, picture, sound and subs. No extras. The film? I do recomend you read Trevor Willsmer's review. He answers most of my questions and is very informative. My concerns were A) The casting. All 3 actors seem either uncomfortable, or a bit OTT or not very good. Kirk looks too old to be having rampant sex with the delightful (looking) Farrah Fawcett, and she, bless her, hasn't really found her acting chops. B) I wish Kirk wouldn't show off his (nude) body and do the frantic skipping excercises (look at me, I'm 64 and I can do this! ). Harvey Keitel looks and sounds extremely odd, and Mr Willsmer's review tells me why!. The best bits are the robot, genuinely scary, and the internal sets (not the models). Having got all that off my chest, I must say I did enjoy this Sci Fi romp. No time to get bored and Kirk, whilst I am not a fan, is a STAR and gives 100% in everything he does, and Farrah? Well she is very lovely to look at and she did learn her lessons and moved on to better things. Recomended with reservations. (Why did Kirk take second billing to Farrah? He was no pushover!! Answers please!)(Lastly - What exactly was Keitel's reason for being on Saturn 3??)

To say that sci-fi thriller Saturn 3 was a troubled picture is putting it mildly. The film suffered massive budget cuts shortly before shooting because of ITC's losses on Raise the Titanic, and things didn't get any better from there. Originally set to be the directorial debut of production designer John Barry, he soon fell foul of Kirk Douglas (whose ego was already smarting from taking second billing to Farrah Fawcett in what would be the last attempt to turn her into a major big screen star) and was replaced after a few days by producer Stanley Donen. Co-star Harvey Keitel fell out with the new director and didn't stick around for post-production, leaving him very obviously dubbed by British actor Roy Dotrice, which is all the more obvious since he also voices many of the public address announcements in the early scenes. Most of Elmer Bernstein's modernistic score was thrown out (including a particularly prescient bit of disco techno funk with Gregorian chants) and the film was heavily re-edited to less than an hour-and-a-half in a failed attempt to get a lower rating. After taking a box-office beating in the States it ended up opening quietly in the UK in a double-bill with Hawk the Slayer. It's probably a miracle the film came out at all, but the scars do show.The idea isn't a particularly bad one, with Douglas and Fawcett an Adam and Eve (well, Adam and Alex) on a research station on one of Saturn's moons who find themselves with a pair of unwelcome serpents in their Eden in the form of Keitel and a robot helper, Hector. As if Keitel's designs on Fawcett and his insistence that Douglas is obsolete weren't bad enough, downloading the robot's programming directly from his brain makes things worse - Hector is a mirror image of Keitel's unstable psyche that eventually renders him literally obsolete as the biggest threat to the couple, leaving the two researchers stalked by an insane horny robot with a god complex. Unfortunately this mostly resolves itself as much running around corridors a la Alien - this being shot in 1979, it wears its influences heavily on its sleeve (even the opening shot was one of dozens of carbon copies of the huge-spaceship-passing-overhead bit from Star Wars).Modelled on a Leonardo Da Vinci drawing, Hector is a potentially interesting creation, but more as an idea than a physical presence - he doesn't really get to do that much and when walking does tend to look like a man in a headless robot suit. The other special effects in the film are highly inconsistent: some shots are fine but many of the model effects have that Derek Meddings/Gerry Anderson look that doesn't really work in live-action films, especially post-Star Wars ones. Similarly the few scenes on the moon's surface don't convince. John Barry's stamp is still very visible in some of Stuart Craig's design, not least the insect-like spacepod and suit, but the overall impression is of a mixture of some expensive elements that show up the cheaper, more rushed ones.But the biggest problem is Martin Armis' atrocious screenplay. Structurally it's relatively sound, but his tin ear for dialogue renders almost every scene laughable, not least with his pitiful attempts to create his own version of NewSpeak like "I'm close to abort time" or "I'm just not update enough for murder." Indeed, the film contains some of the worst dialogue ever written for a film, such as the immortal exchange "You have a beautifully body. May I use it." "No." "You know that's penally unsocial on Earth?" No wonder Keitel didn't want to say those lines again... (Apparently, not satisfied with a nude scene, the ever-modest Douglas made constant dialogue suggestions himself, though Hector's admiring line "That man is so virile" hit the cutting room floor.) Unfortunately this smothers the more intriguing ideas in the story and the film's at its best when it dispenses with dialogue altogether and just relies on the visuals, such as the scenes where Hector mimics his programmer or later taunts him with computer screen readouts while remaining obstinately mute.The end result is a not very good film that still has enough interesting ideas to keep you watching through its obviously truncated running time while frustrating you that it isn't nearly as good as it could have been. One film where a decent remake might not be such a bad idea... Two-and-a-half stars for effort.Carlton's DVD has no extras but does have a decent letterboxed transfer. The US Region A Blu-ray/DVD combo from Shout Factory fares a lot better, with an excellent widescreen transfer and fairly copious extras - audio commentary from a well-informed fan of thefilm, the deleted ecstasy sequence that gave he film its original unused poster design, a slew of deleted and extended scenes from the TV version (albeit copied from a poor quality off-air VHS tape), interviews with Roy Dotrice and FX man Colin Chilvers, stills gallery, trailer and TV spots.

An unstable pilot Benson(Harvey Keitel), murders his rival Captain James, and sets off in his place on a mission to a research station on one of Saturn's moons. The personnel of the research station consist of only two people, Major Adam(Kirk Douglas) and his partner Alex(Farrah Fawcett). Benson, assuming the guise of Captain James, informs the duo that he has brought a robot to help run their experimental food program. The robot is Hector, one of the new Demigod III range.Benson is soon making himself very unwelcome by lusting after Alex and engaging in long winded diatribes. When Hector is built, events takes a more dangerous turn, as the robot who gains knowledge from 'direct contact' with its creator begins to show all too human failings. The murder of Alex's beloved pooch is only the start of Hector's horrifying plans for the research station, and its occupants.It's all too easy to dismiss this film as a failure. Okay Douglas and Fawcett are both badly miscast as Adam and Alex, Douglas being particularly hammy, and Keitel delivers a rather peculiar performance as Benson, coming across as Data from Star Trek's psychopathic older brother. There is quite a lot of padding that lengthens the paper thin story. However, just to concentrate on some of the more successful aspects of the film for a minute. The set design is terrific(I've read it being dismissed as sub par in a post-Star Wars age, but I find it to be charming). There is a great, rousing music score, perhaps a bit at odds with the somewhat dull on- screen shennanigans, and the design of Hector is pretty striking. Most of the best scenes in the film involve the robot, especially good is one where the research stations resident robots under the control of Hector, rebuild the robot's damaged body. The opening, mostly silent opening sequence involving Benson's flight from the spaceship to th research station has an eerie ambience and promises much. So much for promises.You may wonder how I could give a film four stars after being quite disparaging about it. Well, despite its many flaws I really enjoyed it, and for very different reasons than I did as a sexually frustrated teenager, feverishly ogling any fleeting glimpses of Farrah's nakedness. Now, I simply lap it up as an enjoyable piece of pulp sci-fi, with the visual style taking precedence over any substance.Proceed with caution, but any lovers of 70's Science-Fiction cinema are sure to lap it up. 4 out of 5

I remember reading the book and it was excellent. They then released the film which I enjoyed very much. The star of the film is without doubt, Hector the psychopathic robot who is hell bent on taking over the complex and using the two occupants as his slaves. It's nice to watch a Sci-fi film without CGI. I enjoyed this film very much and would recommend it to anyone who wants to watch something a little different.

I brought this to replace both my old laserdisc and dvd editions. This is a great blu-ray release featuring some nice extras.