Saturn City | 
 enlarge | Directors: John Barry (iii), Stanley Donen
Actors: Farrah Fawcett, Kirk Douglas, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Muncke, Douglas Lambert
Category: Video
Buy Used: £41.88
Rating:  7 reviews
Language: German (Original Language)
Media: VHS Tape
EAN: 4012050022648
ASIN: B00004RN6E
Theatrical Release Date: February 15, 1980
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Creepy and excellent sci-fi fun May 3, 2007
This film isn't to the standard of Alien or other sci-fi classics. But Saturn 3 is a good story that is creepy! Harvey Keitel is perfectly cast as the mad killer who visits a far off outpost. The robot he builds learns from Harvey Keitel's mind so it ends up pretty twisted. There's a fair bit of tension, mostly helped by the gripping music. You wonder what the whole point of this will be and what that robot might want with our Farrah...
Some might say the special effects aren't all that great, well they aren't brilliant, certainly Alien (made a year or two earlier) has much better effects. With Saturn 3 you wish they'd more of an effort on the spaceships for sure. The films ending is also a little flat. But the build up is good. I recommend this film to anyone who likes a simple sci-fi story and of course anyone who likes Farrah Fawcett!
Focus on the feeling November 18, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was ten years old when this film was made. So, by the time I saw it, I was still relatively young.
This film struck a chord with me that most sci-fi does and always did, that of alienation. The whole sense of this film is one of being utterly isolated. Not only is one (if it's possible to identify with any of the characters at all - which, being at least human, one should) so very far from home, but the whole environment is one of emotionally devoid, plastic inhumanity.
We as people crave not only varied human contact, but contact with everything else about our world that is tactile and real. Plants, seas, trees, animals, air and skies. In the environment that the characters of this film inhabit, it is pre-eminently (outerspace) sci-fi, and so, devoid of these comforts.
This all goes to giving the viewer the absolute sense of isolation, of inhumanity, of being set apart from all that we know, love and that makes us comfortable and settled. From this point of view, the film achieves it's objective of totally unsettling the viewer. Factor in then the absolute epitomy of that which is inhuman. A robot. Furthermore, a robot that is not only on a crash course of destruction, threatening to steal the human character's very humanity by making them slaves to it's will, but a robot whose 'controller' is himself seemingly as utterly inhuman as his machine. No matter where one looks, there is no escape, there is no mercy, there is no humanity.
For me as a child, and for me as an adult now, the overriding sense of this film far outweighs any lack of quality acting or failings in the script that there *may* be. In fact, for me these things are irrelevant for what the film conveys emotionally. Hence, 4 stars.
One final thing. The sight of a young Harvey Keitel in very tight leather, that surely could only be peeled off, is a true delectation to behold.
 Saturn 3, a planet to avoid. March 23, 2004
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
With a cast consisting of the heroicly chinned Kirk Douglas, eye candy Farah Fawcett, and the usually dependable Harvey Kietel I watched Saturn 3 hoping to discover a hidden gem that might have been overlooked amongst other higher profile sci-fi films of the late 70's like Star Wars and Alien. Sadly it quickly became apparent that this was not to be. The space scenes are cringeworthy, with wobbly spacecraft moving drunkenly across the screen in way that conjours up memories of Button Moon's hayday, not what you'd expect from a movie with a reported $10million budget. In fact in general if it wasn't for the number of wrinkles on Douglas' face (or indeed his buttocks in an entirely unneccessary nude scene) you could easily mistake this film as having come from the early / mid 70's rather than 1980. The acting doesn't do much to make up for this either. Keitel is more robotic than his mechanical counterpart and bizarrely all his dialogue has been over-dubbed by an English stage actor named Roy Dotrice. Meanwhile Douglas is going through the motions and Fawcett shows more flesh than acting ability. Finally there's the robot 'Hector' who looks like a distant ancestor of Johnny 5 from Short Circuit, doesn't appear to have much in the way of weaponry apart from a vice-like grip and plods along at a speed that would allow his victims time to stop for a toilet break or cup of coffee in-between the chase scenes. All this amounts to is a film with little going for it that only succeeds in highlighting just how good the classic sci-fi films of the same period really were.
 An underrated gem December 10, 2000
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
When I first saw Saturn 3 on it's release I really enjoyed it. I seemed to be in a minority of one. It looks like I still am. For some reason everybody ignores the wonderfully understated Keitel in this. Also, for some reason, no-one appreciates one of the weirdest, most unhinged robots in movie history. It's a wonderful study of obsession run amok and it's all the more dangerous because the robot is completely warped. And, contrary to current opinion, Kirk Douglas and Farrah F. aren't as miscast as you might think. The whole point is he's a square-jawed hero and she's a screaming blonde. How do they cope when Hector (who's like an earlier incarnation of The Bad Lieutenant) turns up? They don't. It's Brad and Janet for real. I love it, I'm only sorry no-one else does.
 Kirk & Farah cash-in on the sci-fi bandwagon July 19, 2000
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Kirk Douglas and Farah Fawcett cash-in on the sci-fi boom of the late-70's/early-80's to poor, miscast effect in this 1980 addition to the genre. The plot is at best average (although much more could have been done with the basic idea), the scripting is terrible, the special effects are somewhat mediocre and the robot (Hector, a kind of malevolent Robbie the Robot) is plain ridiculous, albeit of an admittedly original design. As with the reviewers below, this is certainly not 'one to buy', although if you're interested in 'periphery sci-fi' movies such as this, I guess this could be your thing on a rainy week-night if you have'nt any paint to watch drying. Plus Points ? - I've never been the biggest fan of Farah Fawcett, but she does look pretty tasty in this one !
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