SATURN 3 (1980)

In the distant future, Earth is even more fucked up than it is now and depends on food research performed on research stations placed all over the solar system. One such research station is located on Saturn's third moon, Tethys.  It's a small station and for the last three years, it's only been manned by Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett who, despite their age differences, have been banging.  A lot.  So much so, in fact, that haven't been getting enough work done and somebody is being sent to check in on them.  Unfortunately, that person is brutally murdered and then impersonated by the crazy as a shithouse rat Harvey Keitel...who happens to bring along his 8 foot tall robot buddy, Hector.  Also, for some nutty reason, Keitel has been doing mind melding experiments with Hector.  So, yeah, that's right, Hector the robot is also insane.

I love thrillers set in space, so once I figured out what the story was, I got pretty excited...and then disappointed when nothing happened.  Yeah, there's some running around and hiding and a little fighting, but the whole thing is very lightweight.

Mild violence, Harvey Keitel's voice dubbed over for the entire movie (!!!), okay looking sets, lots of smoke, very brief topless moment by Farrah, slow pace, zero gore, a few drops of blood, zero tension, lame ending, mediocre acting, uneven feel to the entire movie.  You'd think that a story about an 8 foot tall killer robot chasing people around isolated building in space would be exciting, but you'd be wrong.

From what I saw on the blu-ray extras and read online, the production of SATURN 3 was a mess.  The original director, John Barry, who also came up with the original idea, was dismissed early during filming and then died soon after!  He was replaced by SINGIN' IN THE RAIN director Stanley Donen (cause, you know, when you wanna cash in on the success of the previous years' horror masterpiece ALIEN...you bring in "the King of the Hollywood musicals").  And to make matters worse, the production was scaled back due to financial difficulties with the production company, ITC Entertainment, who was simultaneously filming the legendary box office bomb RAISE THE TITANIC (it cost $40m and made $7m).  Honestly, I found the making of the film to be way more entertaining than the actual film itself.  I would love to see a well-researched full-length documentary about the making of SATURN 3.

DETECTIVE STORY (1951)

Based on a popular play of the same name (which from 1949 to 1950 ran for 581 performances on Broadway and featured Ralph Bellamy as the lead actor!  Holy fook!  I bet that was awesome!!!), DETECTIVE STORY tells the story of one day in the life of NYC police Det. Jim McLeod (Kirk Douglas).  Instead of following him around town, the events in DS are completely based around the detective's bullpen at the police station.  That sounds risky, but it's not, because DETECTIVE STORY is riveting from beginning to end.  Mainly thanks to the mature script and the intense performances by the entire cast.  And what a cast!  I just spent the last two hours going through the IMDb profiles of the films cast and crew.  That was a lot of fun.

The film opens with a detective bringing in a shoplifter.  From there, we're introduced the the layout of the police station and the fascinating cast of characters.  As the story moves along, more and more characters walk in and out of the film. There's a number of minor stories, but the main story concerns Detective McLeod and his dogged investigation of abortionist Dr. Karl Schneider (played by George Macready, who you might remember paired off against Douglas again six years later in Kubrick's masterful PATHS OF GLORY).  McLeod might hate Schneider now, but that ain't nothing compared to how much he hates him by the end of the movie! 

All of the "lesser" stories are interesting, but the person that really grabbed my attention was accused burglar Joseph Wiseman.  He might only be suspected of robbing houses, but one thing he's definitely guilty of is stealing scenes in the movie!  Holy shit, every single times he's on camera I couldn't take my eyes off of him!  He was amazing.  I'm not saying that to take away from the rest of the cast, cause everybody was great.  Wiseman just happened to be extra great.

One of the most impressive things about DETECTIVE STORY is the amount of information that's so effortlessly given to the audience.  The filmmakers did an amazing job of keeping multiple things going onscreen for the majority of the film.

By today's standards, DETECTIVE STORY is dated, but it's still a great film that deserves to be seen and admired.  Highly recommended.  Would make a very confusing double-feature with Takashi Miike's DETECTIVE STORY.

Very interesting attention to detail (and maybe even foreshadowing?) at 44:39, when Kirk Douglas goes to ask Joseph Wiseman about the monogrammed dish.