I feel for the technicians who worked on this. The special effects were stunning. I mean, it was expensive but you see a lot of production value on screen.
And the basic concept is very strong - Adam and Eve in space, with the serpent coming to visit. Farrah Fawcett as Eve - great.
Then they cast Kirk Douglas as Adam - and we see more of Douglas than I ever wanted to, including his backside. He's rooting Fawcett and they're meant to be happy - like a lot of movies made by middle aged men he's wise about the relationship going "you'll leave me one day and that's fine because I'm wise", when in reality surely he'd be clingy and paranoid.
You could make an interesting film about this festy old man manipulating this hot young thing and getting jealous of the hot young guy that comes along - but then they cast Harvey Keitel as the guy, who isn't hot, or at least not here with his tightly combed hair and dubbed voice. It's clear the filmmakers sympathies are with Douglas, with Fawcett as a trophy. Stanley Donen was not the right director of this (he wasn't meant to be originally - he was producing and took over when John Barry quit).
As a simple creepy-person-on-the-spaceship movie it lacks suspense. There are bright ideas - the robot, it's relationship with Keitel, the fact Fawcett has never been to Earth -and amazing effects. I wish Roger Corman had remade this, he'd do it right.
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