I imagine that every terrific director and actor has a film or two that they would love to delete off their resume.
Director Stanley Donen and Harvey Keitel surely would love us all to forget the 1980 science fiction bust SATURN 3.
Keitel (Taxi Driver, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs) is a homicidal weirdo who kills a pilot and takes his place in a mission to deliver a huge robot to a moon on Saturn.
The moon's only population are the May/December couple Kirk Douglas as Adam and Farrah Fawcett as Alex. They run the moonbase, play chess, make out and he tells her stories about the Earth he used to know.
Keitel sees Farrah, falls in lust and pretty soon everyone has eyes for her and its all just uncomfortable and awkward to watch.
Douglas is okay, but WAY too old for this part and NO ONE needs to see scenes of Douglas wrestling around nude with Keitel like some spacebound preview of Borat.
Keitel looks embarrassed to even be in the movie and Fawcett gives it her all, but lets be honest, she was never a great actress and this role, along with her horrendous performance in "Logans Run" probably sealed her fate for any future sci-fi flicks.
The special effects are really bad, the robot apparently cost $1m but looks like they bought it at a garage sale.
Much of the budget was cut when the producers siphoned money into their other film that year, 'Raise The Titanic" which would turn out to be one of the biggest bombs in history.
Elmer Bernstein's music score was mostly thrown out and isn't bad, but its barely used, at the beginning and last 20 minutes.
Director Stanley Donen made "Singing in the Rain" and "Two For The Road" and took over mid-film when production designer John Barry was fired after filming started.
Douglas seemed to be the only one proud of the movie, which was a complete flop and only gained late night notoriety on basic cable for glimpses of Fawcett topless.
A painful 90 minutes long, its a boring, stupid mess of clumsy storytelling and lazy writing.
SATURN 3 gets an F.
Commenti