SATURN 3 (1980)

The film opens in outer space... a loud orchestra bursts into life... a gigantic spaceship drifts into the screen above our heads...

No prizes for guessing where the sci-fi horror SATURN 3 took its inspiration. The aim seems to have been to create a claustrophobic horror-thriller but within a STAR WARS-style setting. That might sound like a nutty thing to do and to be honest it's a pretty nutty film. I'd call it a failure but that would be to gloss over how much fun there is to be had watching this turkey.

Firstly the visuals... despite being made three years after George Lucas's groundbreaking sci-fi event, SATURN 3 somehow manages to look much, much cheaper whether it be the flimsy spaceships, the second-rate set design or the futuristic settings that look like LOGAN'S RUN might have done if it had run out of money half-way through. That comparison is only compounded by the presence of LOGAN'S RUN's support player Farrah Fawcett in the female lead role.

There are really only three principle cast members to speak of. Fawcett is accompanied by Kirk Douglas, who somehow manages to be not just her work colleague but also her lover, despite looking more like her dad. They're joined in their solitary, isolated Saturn base by a newcomer, Harvey Keitel.

Keitel is equally aghast at the sight of Fawcett and Douglas being an item, and decides to move in on her. Unfortunately he's also moving in on the work they're doing too. And he's a psycho. And he talks like a robotic William Shatner. And he has a killer robot with him.

The combination of half-finished STAR WARS knock-off material and brightly-lit LOGAN'S RUN sets certainly lend the film an interesting look, which is helped by the accompanying electronic score (just like LOGAN'S RUN again!) but now we have the added fun of a totally insane robo-Shatner as well.

So that's the set-up - Fawcett hangs around looking pretty, Douglas runs around with mad staring eyes and Keitel tries to kill them both with a mental and stupid looking robot. The fact that it's poorly written, shot and edited or that the enticing electronic score is used entirely inappropriately can't completely stop it being fun. In fact, if anything, it just makes it more of an enjoyable experience, particularly since the premise seems mainly to be "let's make it look like STAR WARS, but with nudity and violence". It's ironic that this makes it more adult and yet more juvenile at the same time.

So it may have failed to make the same impact as Lucas's baby, but look at it this way. STAR WARS gave us crap TV spin-offs and ATTACK OF THE CLONES; SATURN 3 has severed body parts and a naked Farrah Fawcett.

So which one is really the more important movie?