Guilty pressure… Saturn 3 (1980)

The great film critic, Roger Ebert really hated this film and just felt it was dumb, citing as evidence the scene in which the two main characters, on the run from a psychotic robot, break a hole in the floor of their space station so that it will fall into the hyper-cold waters below. Surely the air pressure would render such action suicidal mused Ebert and, thinking about it, he was probably right unless the station formed an air-tight seal over the cavern…?

There is so much pressure to not like this film but you know I always like to find something even in the most lost of causes…

Saturn 3 was, improbably, directed by Stanley Donen who also directed Singing in the Rain… it has a script from Martin Amis (who later based his 80’s masterpiece Money on the experience) and features Harvey Keitel dubbed with an mid-Atlantic English accent (courtesy of Roy Dotrice)… in truth it’s a bit of a muddle but not one that isn’t fun to watch.

Kirk Douglas

Kirk Douglas is in it for a start and, even at the age of 64, he’s a believable action hero – even a leading man. I think his performance is full of warmth and wit overcoming the obstacles this compromised production placed in front of him. Harvey Keitel also puts in a string performance, with lots of dark moody looks and method intensity although he is majorly under-minded by the decision to dub his lines: what on earth was wrong with his accent?!

Farrah Fawcett

Now, Farrah Fawcett is easily the least able of the three leads but she puts in a decent enough stint and is also exceptionally good looking to the point at which you sometimes forget to watch her acting. (In fairness it should be remembered that Ms Fawcett was later nominated for four Emmys for her dramatic work on The Burning Bed, Extremities and others…).

Against all this is a robot with a tiny head…

The big spaceship arrives...

Saturn 3 was based on a story by John Barry, the production designer who devised the visuals for George Lucas’ Star Wars and Richard Donner’s Superman, who hoped to make his directorial debut with the film. Various production chops and changes resulted in Donen directing and initially he was so disappointed in the end result that he asked for his name to be taken off the credits…

The film opens with an attempt at space operatics as a laughably giant spaceship hoves into view in orbit around Saturn. On board there is an unseemly rush to launch a probe, shadowy figures emerge in a large hanger - echoing the emergence of the aliens in Close Encounters – whilst the call goes out for the probe’s Captain Harding (voiced by UFO’s Ed Bishop!); you’d expect things to be better organised.

The Captain is late for take-off!

As Harding is getting dressed in his spacesuit he encounters Benson (Keitel) a man who just failed to make the grade for this mission – being judged unstable. He soon demonstrates how “unstable” as he opens the airlock and Harding is swept out to his doom. Benson makes the take off in time and heads down to Saturn’s third moon – which could be Atlas, an outer ring “shepherd” – where, for some reason, there is a base working on the production of hydroponic food for an Earth choked by pollution and, drug-dependent, over-population.

The base is run by Major Adam (Douglas) and his partner Alex (Fawcett) who, along with their dog Sally, have been alone for three years – Alex has never been to Earth whilst the much older Adam has spent time there.

Harvey Keitel keeps schtum...

They welcome Benson who proves somewhat socially maladjusted, not interested in small talk but clearly impressed with Alex… He has a canister with him that is later found to contain artificially grown brain tissue: it is to be used in the construction of a robot designed to improve efficiency on the base.

Whilst Adam and Alex continue with their daily routines, exercising, taking communal showers and generally living in relaxed inter-planetary idyll, Benson constructs his robot. You wonder why the couple are not more concerned with his strangeness: he’s clearly loopy.

But, they find out soon enough, as the robot is completed and named Hector… at first the mechanoid appears harmless as Adam easily defeats it at chess and it shows its control in extracting s shard of rock from Alex’s eye – in a genuinely unsettling moment.

Hector's steady hand comes to the rescue... this time...

But, as Benson begins to inject Hector with his own consciousness, it takes on his psychotic elements. Sally is killed and Hector attacks Alex only to release her on her command… but the respite is not for long and the robot attacks all three of the humans who only just manage to bring it to ground – Douglas still making his heroic moves with style!

Hector is disassembled and left in pieces in the lab and, as Adam and Alex work on what to do with the bonkers Benson he arrives in their quarters and tries to wrest Alex away from her older lover. Adam easily bests the younger man and has to be restrained by Alex from finishing him off.

Whilst the humans argue, Hector re-assembles and sets off in pursuit of his “instinctive” revenge. With Benson’s “brain” he is set to fulfil his prime directive in the bloodiest and most barbaric way… will anyone get off the planetoid alive?!

Alex is menaced by Hector

Dusty verdict: The endgame is played out in convincing fashion although, as monsters go, Hector is no match for Ridley Scott’s Alien or Kubrick’s Hal.

It’s entertaining in an undemanding way but full of the aforementioned holes: neither science fiction in the detailed way of 2001 (Arthur C Clarke was rather more of a scientist than Barry or Amis…) or Alien and not science fantasy like the grown-up version of Star Wars the producers maybe wanted.

Hector's tiny head

Much was made of Ms Fawcett’s revealing costumes in the film’s publicity and it does feel as if she is an adornment as much as an active participant in the story. That said there’s a slight spark between her and Douglas and she looks so vulnerable next to the rapacious stare of Mr Keitel… such a shame he was robbed of his voice!

The angelic adornment...

The music by Elmer Bernstein is suitably space operatic and lifts some of the grander visuals even when the interior scenes resemble a low-budget TV series.

Saturn 3 is available on DVD from all the familiar places… but I may keep my VHS for a very rainy day…

Lou takes full responsibility...

A great future behind us… Journey to The Far Side of the Sun (1969)

The passing of Neal Armstrong was a timely reminder for those of us who grew up in the 60s that the future is not what it was.

When Gerry Anderson was in his pomp, we were in a state of perpetual improvement: life was just going to get better and better. Technology seemed to make everything possible and…we were going to the stars. The Moon first, then Mars and then beyond… science fiction was close to fact and the race for space was going to help mankind put earthly conflicts to one side as looking back on our single insignificant planet of origin we finally realised that there was a greater destiny beyond our petty disputes.

Anderson’s puppet shows tracked the technological obsessions of the decade and got more and more confident as he progressed from Stingray to Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. In all three a global entity addressed world-wide issues whether private sector or quasi-governmental… There were global threats too, but these were just confirmation of our need to act in unity.

By the end of the decade as the Moon landing approached, Anderson was successful enough to finally be trusted with a human cast to accompany the breath-taking vehicles of Derek Meddings and co… These were the men who were making our imagined future happen now.

Journey to The Far Side of the Sun (Doppelgänger in the USA) was an attempt at 2001-style inter-spatial-commentary…a look at the inner human condition from the outer-reaches of space. When I first watched the film in the 1970s it left me disappointed because there were no *real* aliens and, whilst the story arc contained the same let down this time – too literal and thin a plot – there is more than enough to enjoy the film as a whole.

Like so many plots from the time, the film starts off with space administrators arguing over how to follow up the discovery of a planet beyond the Sun. The planet is in completely synchronised orbit with the Earth, same distance from the Sun, same vector and thrust… The director of EUROSEC, Jason Webb ( played with panache by Patrick Wymark) makes a passionate case to send a manned expedition but he struggles to convince the other World powers to fund it.

Ian Hendry and Patrick Wymark

A familiar story perhaps but it just feels a little mannered, as does the character of Dr John Kane (played by the excellent Ian Hendry … a year or two from being sorted out by Michael Caine in Get Carter) who is a scientist with doubts and dubious fitness to undertake this arduous exercise.

The breakthrough is achieved and with NASA’s help, a mission is prepared to be led by experienced astronaut Colonel Glenn Ross (Roy Thinnes, who gives a good performance as a man faced with his own destiny…literally).

Roy Thinnes

We go through the routines of training and preparation which gives Anderson the opportunity to show the futuristic craft that were his stock in trade. The scenes involving all of the craft are universally excellent as you’d expect, given a bigger budget than usual and his army of un-matched effects experts.

Lynn Loring

This is the best part of the film as the enterprise builds up momentum and we look forward to the surprise of just what is on our planetary double. It also provides Anderson with the chance to develop his human assets as well with details of space cowboy’s struggling marriage – partly undermined by his enforced infertility: the chance of irradiated sperm mutating was too high.
Lynn Loring – Thinnes actual wife – plays Sharon Ross and adds some uncharacteristic adult themes to Anderson’s film. Loring was featured in several nude scenes which were eventually cut, but she displays a very human sexuality in a series of contemporary almost there fashions…

Lynn Loring

He has a more sympathetic support from his colleague Lise Hartman, a EUROSEC official (Austrian actress Loni von Friedl) at the space centre… but it’s a sub-plot that’s never really taken anywhere.
The two men are pushed by Webb and it’s hard to see this as anything other than a per functionary attempt to create some tension. The story is pretty basic and might have made a decent hour-long episode of Thunderbirds but it feels a little stretched…

Eventually we have take off and the effects are genuinely special here, not quite a match for 2001 but still pretty good, founded in science-reality and not fantasy. The long trip in suspended animation ends as the space craft approaches the mysterious planet.

For some reason I didn’t catch, they crash land (all the more mysterious given the outcome…) and are rescued by a strange being in a metallic suite.

If you haven’t seen the film look away now…

The men are surprised to find their rescuer speaking perfect English and gradually it is revealed that they have landed on a world almost exactly like our own. Everyone they left behind has a counterpart here and all presume that they had turned the craft round and not completed their mission.

Roy Thinnes...  Mirror-World

It takes some time for the realisation to dawn that this is indeed another world and the exact reverse of Earth… a mirror in every respect with hearts on the right, clocks running counter and cars on the wrong side of the road.

Kane dies and Ross is left alone trying to convince the reverse Earth Jason Webb that he needs to be returned to his Earth and this will hopefully help his double to come home…

But, it is not to be and, for some spurious vaguely-scientific reason, the landing craft of this world won’t dock with the other Earth’s space ship and Ross crashes back down to another Earth.

Roy Thinnes

The film is grasping for some profound meaning here but it is a bit thin (sorry Roy…). Whilst getting tremendously excited about the need for and experience of space travel…it’s conclusion that there’s – actually – no place like home is disappointing. It doesn’t know what to do with itself…

That aside, the acting is sincere with Thinnes, Hendry and Wymark being especially impressive. It’s also great to see future UFO stalwarts Ed Bishop and George Sewell and, indeed, some of the kit from this film were reused in that series – a far more satisfying effort form Anderson and perhaps his best.

The great Ed Bishop

UFO was all about build up and action and never really resolved itself as a story… perhaps that was what Anderson did best. He certainly did it brilliantly!

Journey to the Far Side of the Sun is now available on DVD and is well worth seeking out… but I think I’ll stick to my VHS copy... back to the future.