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I had watched this as a kid on local TV in the early 1980s (when only black-and-white sets still existed in Malta!) and, even if I knew it was no great shakes, some sequences from it (Kirk Douglas' nude fight with Harvey Keitel and the climax, for instance) have stayed with me ever since! Still, having come back to it after so long, I was expecting to be greatly disappointed but actually I enjoyed it for what it is: as a sci-fi epic, it certainly brought nothing new to the table (borrowing the plot's essential life-on-a-space-station element from SILENT RUNNING [1971] and its sex-starved robot, an appropriately menacing creation, from DEMON SEED [1977]) but was nonetheless fairly engaging - with a stylish enough look courtesy of cinematographer Billy Williams and production designer Stuart Craig (though Elmer Bernstein's score is curiously forgettable) - and, thankfully, did not overstay its welcome (running for only 88 minutes).Even so, the two leads - who actually ended up Razzie nominees, as did the film! - weren't exactly inspired (Douglas, by this time, was past his prime and, unfortunately, his stint in the sci-fi/horror genre - which also comprised HOLOCAUST 2000 [1977; the only one I've yet to catch up with, though it's been shown on Italian TV quite a few times], THE FURY [1978] and THE FINAL COUNTDOWN [1980] - is best forgotten!) but, at least, Harvey Keitel brought to it his typical intensity and intelligence - though I'm sure it's a film he'd rather forget. Speaking of which, I recall an article in the British film magazine "Empire" comparing the fortunes of Keitel and Robert De Niro over the years: in the same year Keitel appeared in SATURN 3, De Niro reached his pinnacle with RAGING BULL, but a dozen or so years later the tables would be more or less turned...but that's another story.In the end, one has to wonder what Stanley Donen was thinking when he accepted such a project - but, then, his career had always been somewhat erratic (including at least a couple more notorious false steps with the homosexual two-hander STAIRCASE [1969] and the bootlegging comedy LUCKY LADY [1975]).
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