The Kirk Douglas Sci-Fi Flop That Roger Ebert Absolutely Hated

Film critics watch hundreds of movies every year, and invariably get a little cranky when they hit a patch of lousy movies. So it is occasionally therapeutic to take out one's frustrations on a film that is egregiously putrid — particularly if that film is from a serial befouler of movie theaters (I think I logged 12 blissfully uninterrupted hours of sleep after filing my pan of Paul W.S. Anderson's "Death Race").

Scathingly negative reviews are not often illuminating, but when written by masters of the craft, they can be immensely satisfying reads. When The New Yorker's Pauline Kael got a burr in her saddle, she could inveigh at length (as she did with Don Siegel's "Dirty Harry," a movie I revere) or fire off a one-sentence kill-shot (her full review of Herbert Ross' "Steel Magnolias" was published as follows: "Chalk scraping across a chalkboard for two hours"). Roger Ebert was also practiced in the skill of invective, as he demonstrated in his epic disparagement of Hervé Palud's "Little Indian, Big City" ("I detested every moronic minute of it").

Ebert's negative reviews were so entertaining that he released a collection of them titled "I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie." Read it cover to cover, and it probably won't take long for Ebert to take a shillelagh to a movie you like or even love (he kicks the tome off with "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" and, four entries later, inexplicably tears into Lewis Teague's sublime B-monster movie "Alligator"). But the book would be a bore if he only whacked at low-hanging fruit, so you grit your teeth and keep reading until he tunes up a movie you truly abhor.

And one movie that was richly deserving of Ebert's vitriol was a clumsily erotic 1980 sci-fi/horror dud starring Kirk Douglas and directed by the man who gave us "Singin' in the Rain."

When "Saturn 3" crash-landed into theaters on February 15, 1980, it was instantly derided as a rip-off of Ridley Scott's "Alien." Director Stanley Donen claims the idea for the film predated "Alien," which I buy because I don't know how you could watch that classic and think "What would actually be scarier than an acid-blooded xenomorph is a killer robot that wants to have sex with Farrah Fawcett." I mean, that would be scary for Ms. Fawcett. And her then spouse Lee Majors. And now I'm thinking how much better "Saturn 3" would be if they pitted the killer robot against the 6 Million Dollar Man.

"Saturn 3" stars Douglas and Fawcett as a pair of scientists on a research station orbiting Saturn. They are expecting the arrival of a Captain James from one of the larger space stations, but instead find themselves visited by Captain Benson (Harvey Keitel), a psychopath who killed James and is now eager to get Douglas' character out of the picture so he can have Fawcett all to himself. Benson has also brought along a robot named Hector, which is outfitted with brain tissue from human fetuses. What Douglas and Fawcett don't realize is that Hector's consciousness has been synced up with Benson's, so what he wants, it wants. And Hector is a much deadlier customer than Benson.

Ebert's one-star review of "Saturn 3" begins by lamenting the fact that science-fiction movies rarely possess the intelligence of the genre's many great novels. He ridicules the movie for forcing Douglas and Fawcett's supposedly smart characters to behave idiotically (they set a trap for Hector that all but guarantees their own deaths as well), and lays into the ITC producing team of Lord Lew Grade and Kastner. While Ebert gives them credit for giving us "The Muppet Movie," he correctly observes that quality control isn't much of a concern for them (they also churned out such turkeys as "The Legend of the Lone Ranger," "Escape to Athena" and the Lee Majors vehicle/"Jaws" knock-off "Killer Fish").

Ebert begins the final paragraph of his review thusly: "This movie is awesomely stupid, totally implausible from a scientific viewpoint, and a shameful waste of money." Though Ebert's job wasn't box office prognostication (in fact, he loathed the proliferation of box office coverage brought on by "Entertainment Tonight" in the early 1980s), he was right about "Saturn 3" being a poor investment. The film went on to gross a paltry $5 million against a $10 million budget. If it's worth watching today, it's for the gaffaw-inducing spectacle of the janky Hector, Keitel speaking with the voice of actor Roy Dotrice (who dubbed his dialogue when the "Mean Streets" star refused to participate in post-production looping), and the then 64-year-old Douglas engaging in fully nude combat.

Score one for Ebert on "Saturn 3." It's a dreadful movie. And he would break out the brass knuckles four years later when Donen debased himself again with the ultra-creepy sex comedy "Blame It On Rio."