[Inspector Abberline]

Saturn 3 (1980)

Its an hard life for good old Kirk Douglas as Adam,alone on a planet with only Farrah Fawcett as company.especially when she's usually wearing very little. Then along comes Harvey Keitel as Captain Benson (minus his voice and dubbed by Roy Dotrice),Keitel has also brought along a friend in the shape of Hector, an eight foot tall metallic robot who has the hots for Farrah.In a bout of robot revolt Hector decides to kill Captain Benson,he also manages to cut his hand off,and go on the rampage.A game of cat and mouse ensues with Hector after Kirk and Farrah,so lots of shots of those two running through ventilation tunnels and peering up through floor grates. Based on a story by Martin Amis,you would of thought this film plot would of been a lot more interesting than it really is.Instead of the pedestrian and rather plodding space opera it turned out to be. Harvey Keitel performance is pretty hard to judge,but he looks bored and having his voice dubbed doesn't help much either.That said the film is not a complete disaster,I did like the set design of the main spaceship with all the blue lighting in the corridors,and the robot Hector is a pretty formidable robot and does look quite menacing in several scenes.Also Elmer Bernstein musical score is a damn site better than the film deserves.Apparently there are a couple of scenes Sir Lew Grade had snipped before release,both involving the death of Harvey Keitel's character,one scene has him being mutilated by Hector.Of course when a film has more than one directed credited to it,both Stanley Donen and John Barry are listed as director,plus rumour has it Kirk Douglas shot the odd scene then in the words of Monty Python "There's trouble at t'mill. Definitely a missed opportunity at what could of been at least a fun bit of sci- fi hokum.