Saturn 3

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!

It's hard to imagine a more peculiar choice of director for this sci-fi thriller than Stanley Donen. Donen made some great films in the 50s and 60s (Singin' In The Rain, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, Charade), but here he's in disappointing form. Partly that may be due to the fact that the project was originally to be directed by John Barry, but Donen "inherited" the responsibility when Barry quit due to ill health. However, Donen should not be made to shoulder all the blame. The script by Martin Amis leaves the actors to contend with some bad lines and situations. Elmer Bernstein contributes a forgettable music score which is well below his usual standard. And even the actors - all of them talented - seem indifferent to the project. 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). Saturn 3 is Titan, the third moon of Saturn (hence the name), and it is here that scientists Adam and Alex (Douglas and Fawcett) live in blissful isolation, developing food supplies for people on Earth. Adam and Alex not only work together - they sleep and shower together too, which is a pretty enviable arrangement for Adam (who is about 30 years older than his sexy assistant). Into this perfect space oasis comes psychopathic Benson (Harvey Keitel), another scientist who has recently murdered a shuttle captain. Benson has brought with him a droid named Hector, supposedly to speed up the workload. However, Hector turns out to be a particularly unstable droid, particularly when the randy robot develops a liking toward Alex. 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. If it is a sci-fi actioner, then it needs more action. If it was conceived as a sci-fi thriller then it most assuredly needs more thrills. The film emerges as a rather muddled and unappealing mess, with flashes of eroticism and very sporadic flashes of action. It marks a low point in Donen's directorial career, and is too forgettable to be remembered as a significant sci-fi work. Most of the folks associated with this one probably don't give it pride of place on their CVs.

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.

Es una película con un buen elenco terrible guion, efectos 80’s y una historia que ahora se ve trillada pero seguro hace casi 40 años era muy atractiva, no es la mejor película pero tampoco es mala es para pasar el rato y recordar el cine de sci-fi de los 80’s. Pero recuerden que los lanzamientos de Scream Factory no tienen subtítulos en español.

good middle of the road si-fi.

上映時間が100分とあることから、近頃YOUTUBEなどにアップされている独語版の未公開映像と同様のものを含む全長版なのかと思い購入しましたが、目新しい未公開映像は含まれておらず残念でした。既発のDVDの上映時間は88分、日本劇場公開時は、89分。日本での劇場公開時にあった、黒いセクシーなジャンプスーツをファラが着て見せるシーンもありません。国内で初DVD化されたときは、スクーズ収録でなかったのが、こちらは画面いっぱいに映ります。ただ、画質はまずまず（決して悪くはありませんが、一段と良くなったというわけでもない）といったところ。イタリア語5.1ch、英語2.1ch。特典として短いが、エド・ビショップのインタビュー付き。英語、イタリア語字幕なので、よくわからないのですが、出演していたのにカットされてしまったのか？ヘルメットをかぶって、宇宙艇を操縦する映像だけを使われているのか？そんな感じです。ちなみにDVDプレイヤーでは、再生不可でした。パソコンで観ることができました。まあ、イタリア語のファラというのも面白いかも（もちろん吹替えですが）。

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.