SATURN 3 (1980)

SATURN 3 (1980)

Tagline: some thing is watching.... waiting... and wanting on.... SATURN 3

(Horror, Adventure, Sci-Fi) [R]

I am not malfunctioning – you are

In this one, Benson steals a vessel and equipment to get to a space base in the asteroid clusters of Saturn. When he gets there only two people are on the base Alex and Adam and they have no plans of leaving. Both Alex and Adam are suspicious of Benson’s intentions when it becomes clear he’s built a giant freakin AI robot that has a lot of his emotions and memory. One of those emotions is affection for Alex which she does not return for either Benson or the robot. How far will Adam go to save himself and Alex from the new terror on Saturn 3? 

First off, Farrah Fawcett who plays Alex in this has taken on some interesting roles but was also one of the original Charlie’s Angels from that TV show of the same name. Among those interesting roles were a few sci-fi flicks. This one and the more famous LOGAN’S RUN. The giant robot in this which was named Hector was a towering 8 feet and cost just over $1 million dollars to make. In spite of spending all that money, it still took 20 people to animate Hector in the movie. It seems like for a million dollars this thing should have been able to not only move by itself but make your coffee and regulate the amount of creamer it used. In any regard, the sets themselves are stunning and when it comes to “looks” this movie had a lot of fantastic elements.

If I had some complaints about this thing, it’s that the entire movie feels very claustrophobic. It also feels largely hopeless. By the time we do get a glimmer of hope, the movie ends. The story itself is also very slow-moving and there is only so much you can do in this setting where you really only have 3 people interacting the whole time. In that sense, it’s a lot like 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE. Both movies self-restrict just by giving themselves “one location” settings with a very small cast. 

Acting wise everyone is solid, and as I eluded to earlier, we only really have 3 actors in this entire movie if you don’t include Hector. Farrah Fawcett delivers a very solid performance as Alex and about halfway through you kind of realize she’s driving this movie more than Hector or Adam are. Kirk Douglas (20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA) is also solid as Adam, but admittedly his age difference with Farrah in this movie is a distraction. The two are 31 years apart which is really just a number, but it has you questioning the entire movie why Alex hasn’t tried to leave the base and meet someone a little closer to her age. From the storyline, it looks like they were not originally a couple when they got to the base, but became one. To the movie's credit, they do address the age difference. Harvey Keitel who plays Benson is also solid and definitely creepy in this. Harvey by the way is still acting. He is set to star in the new NATIONAL TREASURE TV series kicking off in December 2022. 

I do wish they had given the robot a face and that the storyline was better. A lot of it revolves around using drugs to avoid boredom basically. Having said that, the ending is pretty intense and pretty crazy, I don’t know if the outcome made me feel better about the movie as a whole. While this thing has a certain beauty to it, there just isn’t enough going on to make me want to recommend it, unless you are just trying to watch a bunch of 1980s space-related horror flicks. 

This one is a 3 out of 7 which is hard for me to say given the amount of effort it took to produce. 

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