Saturn 3 (1980)

Okay, so I have seen three bad movies starring Farrah Fawcett and I think I have nailed down the problem.  She’s not a bad actress, she has a nice screen presence.  I think the problem may be representation.  All three of her films up to this point, Somebody Killer Her Husband (1978), Sunburn (1979) and now Saturn 3 all have the same goal: dress her up in as little as possible, and don’t worry about the details.  I sense that she was a much smarter actress than this, but then again, I might have suspect that any actress would have been smarter than a movie like Saturn 3.

The goal of the producers of Saturn 3 is to make movie that achieves two things: 1.) suck off the success of Star Wars, and 2.) give the viewer a sort-of Playboy scenario with sex robots.  It gleefully does both of these things but succeeds only with the former.

Saturn 3 has its origins over in England with Sir Lew Grade, a philanthropist who shoehorned his way into the movie business obviously for the money.  He wants to sell you what’s profitable, not what’s good.  Thus far, his only success was bankrolling The Muppet Movie, but the rest of his list of credits runs the sublime to the ridiculous: Capricorn One (1977), The Boys from Brazil (1978), Movie Movie (1978) and Killer Fish (1979).  It says something of either his taste or his greed that these movies aim for the lowest common denominator.

Okay, so here’s a scenario fit for Playboy After Dark, but don’t get your hopes up.  Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett are the only crew members aboard “Saturn 3”, a research station which is currently orbiting Saturn.  They are expecting a visitor named Captain James, but he’s been dispatched by an imposter named Benson (Harvey Keitel).  Along with him, Benson has brought his robot named Hector who will inevitably spend the back half of Saturn 3 chasing Douglas and Fawcett around the research station.  How do they stop him?  They remove some of the floor panels so that Hector will fall in and they can’t trap him.  Wow!  We’re in the infinity of space and we’re using traps fit for a safari adventure.

This movie chucks logic out the airlock.  It disregards the most obvious questions that the audience is asking:

1. ) How do you open an airlock the sucks out the villain but keeps the heroes intact?
2.) How do you build a research station just outside of Saturn without having be destroyed in 10 seconds by all of the flying debris?
3.) Could the people close to Farrah have found a movie that required her to do more than run around in her underwear? 
4.) How did a movie this dumb get distribution?
5.) Why is this directed by Stanley Donen, the man behind Singin’ in the Rain?

Why am I still talking about Saturn 3?
I’ve got things to do.

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