100 best sci-fi movies. But this is rock-solid old-school sci-fi: thoughtful. The 25 Best Sci-Fi Movies Streaming on Netflix (2015). The list includes films as old as 1927. Saturn 3: the 1. 98. Some movies aspire to strangeness. Other movies have strangeness thrust upon them. Saturn 3, released in 1. But unlike, say, Altered States (also released in 1. Unlike Luigi Cozzi’s Contamination (1. Saturn 3 wasn’t a low- budget shocker made in a hurry, but a relatively expensive exercise created by some of the most seasoned filmmakers in the business at that time. It’s about a pair of scientists (played by Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett) who work on an orbiting outpost parked somewhere in the vicinity of Saturn. They live an isolated yet relatively comfy existence with their cute dog, until one day Harvey Keitel turns up and assembles a robot. Both Keitel and the robot turn out to be evil. You can probably guess what happens to the dog. Comedy, Romance, Sci-Fi . Weird movies by category. Top 20 Sci-Fi Comedies. 366 Weird Movies 2011 Yearbook. 366 Weird Movies 2010 Yearbook. None of those movies topped Wired staffers. Sci Fi Magazine; Closed. Movies sci-fi ssesf Movies; 47 videos. Maybe sci-fi is better known today in films for its use as pulp, but the most watched and revered science-fiction movies. You can see what Saturn 3. The bare bones of the story took the haunted house in space trappings of Alien and fused them with the rampaging AIs of 2. A Space Odyssey. One or two moments are surprisingly unsettling. To get a true idea of how strange Saturn 3 is, consider the following.. Its director was the “King of Hollywood musicals” who had no prior interest in sci- fi. Who better to direct your space horror epic than the choreographer and filmmaker behind such classic Hollywood musicals as Singin’ In The Rain and Seven Brides For Seven Brothers? It’s like getting Rob Marshall in to make a Saw sequel. To be fair to the eminent filmmaker Stanley Donen, he only ever intended to produce Saturn 3 for his old friend, John Barry. Barry - not to be confused with the composer of the same name - was the production designer behind the original Star Wars, for which he won an Oscar for Best Art Direction. Barry came up with the concept for Saturn 3, a low- budget genre movie that Donen suggested Barry direct himself. But when, two weeks into filming, Barry walked away from Saturn 3's production, Stanley Donen was forced to step in as director. Still, Donen appeared to attack his first ever sci- fi project with enthusiasm. He said he’d seen Alien a few weeks before filming began in a 1. Starlog Magazine, and that he liked the 1. Howard Hawks- Christian Nyby sci- fi horror, The Thing From Another World. There was one thing that seemed to bother Donen just a little, though: he was making a “terror movie” with only three human beings in it. Could that trio generate enough tension for an entire feature?”Alien, I guess, had about eight or nine characters, which is a nice handful,” Donen said. It was worrisome, but it was the nature of the idea. We were off and running before anyone knew what was going on..”The script was written by a young Martin Amis. While the idea for Saturn 3 was John Barry’s, Donen suggested handing the task of polishing the script to young novelist Martin Amis (son of Kingsley and author of The Rachel Papers, Dead Babies and Other People, among other things). According to this superb article about the making of Saturn 3, Amis had an interest in science fiction, but hadn’t written a screenplay before. Not that it was Amis’ fault that such a weird film came out of the creative stew. His original draft went under a completely different title - The Helper - and it was this slab of text that interested producer Lew Grade in making the movie. That script in turn managed to hook the interest of TV actress Farrah Fawcett, who years later said in an interview that The Helper was “a lot different from what we ended up shooting.”The script was also rewritten by unnamed parties after Amis had completed his draft. Writer Steve Gallagher, who wrote the novelisation of Saturn 3, described the version of the script he worked from as “terrible” and “truly inept.”“That may not be Amis’ fault,” Gallagher said. In 1. 98. 4, he penned the novel Money, which was directly inspired by his brief spell as a screenwriter on a multi- million- dollar movie. Money is about a director who embarks on a doomed attempt to make his first feature film, which undergoes a title change and sees its production mired in a series of unforeseeable setbacks - not least the antics of one Lorne Guyland, an ageing actor who's determined to take his clothes off in the movie as often as possible. Guyland, it seemed, was determined to prove that he still had a modicum of youthful virility in every scene. You've probably gathered by now that Guyland was based on Kirk Douglas. Amis admitted as much to The Independent in 2. Movie stars are funny that way, or they used to be.. Given that this nine- foot- tall spectre is supposed to replace one of the scientists on the Saturn station, you'd think that Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett's characters would be unnerved enough already. But one quick reprogram from Benson later, and Hector's turned into a rampaging monster that lusts after Fawcett. As batty as it all sounds, Hector's nevertheless a pretty cool- looking robot. Imposing, complex and eerily headless, Hector was one of the most expensive elements in Saturn 3's $1. Several versions were built, most of them radio- controlled and operated by a crew of 2. Getting Hector to do as he was told, however, brought its own challenges. Yet despite some impressive production design and some comfy slacks for Kirk Douglas to wear between shower scenes, the movie's mired by wooden dialogue and mystifying editorial decisions. Chief among them: Harvey Keitel's dialogue is entirely dubbed by British actor Roy Dotrice, veteran actor of everything from Space 1. Game Of Thrones. The story goes that Keitel refused to go back to loop in his voice during Saturn 3's post- production, so Dotrice was brought in to dub the dialogue instead. The result is a vocal performance that resembles something from an old kung- fu movie; certainly, cringe- inducing lines like . His genius is certainly there to be seen in Saturn 3's magnificent sets, and the movie constantly hints at wider, more interesting ideas that are introduced but barely explored. What are those strange insignias seemingly tattooed on the characters' faces? What ecological disaster has left the Earth in such disarray that, as Benson hints in one scene, its inhabitants have resorted to eating dogs? Accounts differ as to why Barry left the movie. There's the suggestion that he was fired when the production fell behind; another story goes that he fell out with Kirk Douglas. Whatever the reason, Barry joined the production of The Empire Strikes Back for a brief spell as a second unit director, before tragically dying of meningitis in May 1. Barry's vision for Saturn 3 certainly sounded more nuanced than the fairly straight killer robot movie we ultimately got. He imagined Hector as an innocent Frankenstein's monster - a creature that inherits the flaws of its maker. Donen himself admitted that the story was changed heavily as the movie came together; . Even as the budget mounted, it seems that nobody could quite decide what it was they were making. Was it a tense sci- fi horror, or a camp adolescent fantasy designed to appeal to young men? Shots like the one above suggest something a bit more artistic than a B- movie romp. But then again, there's also the bizarre - and now infamous - production photo of Farrah Fawcett in a decidedly kinky leather outfit and suspenders. The scene featuring that outfit was ultimately cut from the movie at Fawcett's behest, but it was frequently replicated in Saturn 3's posters and publicity stills - to the point where a partially- clad Fawcett gained more prominence than the killer robot. Fawcett's space lingerie wasn't the only thing to get snipped out of the movie. The great Elmer Bernstein's score went largely unused, and a couple of graphic scenes of violence wound up on the editing room floor - one of them depicting Benson being eviscerated by Hector. The chopping, changing and cost over- runs were such that a couple of effects shots were even cribbed from an episode of Space 1. It's fair to say that critics didn't exactly warm to Saturn 3, and the movie's tagline - . Neither broad and upbeat like Star Wars nor as claustrophobic and disturbing as Alien, it instead became one of the great oddities of 8. This is, after all, a movie which features such bizarre lines as .
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