Mars Needs Women

Went into this movie expecting Tommy Kirk to do a reprise of his Gogo the Teenage Martian role from 1964's 'Pajama Party'. Instead, we get Dop, a seriously serious 'medical missionary' from the dying red planet, who needs five voluptuous young earth women 'unmarried ... of good health ... and possessing the common indicators of fertility and reproduction'.

The boys from Mars had tried the usual method of standard alien abduction in the movie's opening scenes, snagging a tennis-playing ingenue, a woman taking a shower, and a girl in a restaurant waiting for her beau to get back from the cigarette machine. WE NEVER SEE THESE THREE WOMEN AGAIN. Dop explains this ominously but matter-of-factly to blustering Army Colonel Robert 'Bob' Page: "We have attempted to seize three women by transponder. We have been unsuccessful." Could be the problem was using a transPONDER instead of a transPORTER -- since transPONDERS receive radio signals, not flesh-and-blood females.

So the five Martians decide on the sensible, low-tech direct approach -- hypnosis and kidnapping. And Dop is nonplussed when Colonel Page considers this "an overt action of ... war!" The Martian fellow (successfully) transports himself back to his ship and prepares for their one-UFO invasion.

In the words of the nameless network news announcer " ... the most powerful nation on earth is humbled by five men in a space cylinder hurtling toward the approximate vicinity of ... Houston, Texas."

For the next few minutes, we get to watch exciting stock footage of the X-15 and fighter jets trying to intercept the Martian craft, while Colonel Bob and his aide stare blankly at a loudspeaker explaining all the action.

The aliens land secretly and cautiously debark from their saucer, armed with Ray-O-Vac flashlights and harpoon guns. No wonder they misused the transponder.

Their immediate invasion plans call for securing "earth apparel, an automobile, currency, and a city map" of Houston. Martian operative 'Fellow 3' successfully appropriates the needed currency and map by raiding the nearby Phillips 66 gas station.

The boys' criteria for appropriate female specimens is not unlike Dr. Bill Cortner's search for the perfect body on which to attach his fiancé's severed head in "The Brain That Wouldn't Die". They round up an airline stewardess, a buxom co-ed artist, a homecoming queen (who bears a haunting resemblance to Marilyn Quayle), a stripper (played by local Texas burlesque legend, Bubbles Cash), and Pulitzer Prize-winning geneticist Marjorie Bolen, who, as 'Fellow-2' puts it, "happens to be blessed physically, too -- anatomically-speaking."

Dr. Bolen is played by the 'physically-blessed' Yvonne Craig, who is more recognizable in her skin-tight Batgirl costume from the '60s Batman TV show. Dr. Bolen melts at the insightful DNA questions that Dop asks at her news conference. Soon the Pulitzer-Prizewinner and the Invader from Mars are holding hands at a planetarium, where Dop delivers a heartsick soliloquy about his dying planet.

This movie is ripe with inadvertently funny lines delivered in dead seriousness, like:

"Do not -- repeat -- DO NOT eat any of the earth food."

"You are now, for all practical purposes -- earth men."

"Our time is short ... considering that in the next 20 hours, each of us must survey, choose, examine the medical records of, and abduct a female meeting the exacting qualifications of Operation Sleep-Freeze."

"Dr. Marjorie Bolen turned out to be a stunning brunette, who found it hard to hide her charm behind her horn-rimmed spectacles."

"Tonight: 'Sex and Outer Space' -- A News Conference On Extra-Terrestrial Reproduction by Dr. Marjorie Bolen, One of America's Leading Authorities On Space Medicine, in the Coronado Suite, 10:00 P.M. Only Newsmen with proper press credentials admitted."

"The exotic dancer is secured."

'Mars Needs Women' owes a lot to other great cheesy movies, like the aforementioned 'Brain That Wouldn't', and especially 'Teenagers From Outer Space', and even anticipates 'Revenge of the Nerds', when the geek geneticist wins the day with LUV. Watch this, then chase it down with 'Pajama Party', for a real 60's spaceman/bodacious babe overdose. 4 of 10.

A genetic problem on Mars has decreased their female population so that there is only 1 female born to every 100 males. They believe that they can solve their problems by acquiring a few choice females from the Earth, for scientific study experimentation, and they're prepared to get the women whether they receive cooperation or not.

If properly fleshed out, the premise could have promise. But it's not fleshed out, and Mars Needs Women is loaded with problems. The plot as it stands makes very little logical sense. Not that this is a completely unwatchable film--it has many "so bad it's good" qualities, and my final score was a 6 out of 10.

Another problem is that the film seems extremely low budget. They barely even built any sets. Quite a few shots are just a couple of characters talking, framed tightly, against a solid-color backdrop. Most of the "fancier" shots, such as those of military aircraft flying and landing, are stock footage. The film is also full of padding--the stock footage goes on far longer than it should have. There is a scene that seems to go on forever where we just see a loudspeaker and listen to mostly unintelligible "military radio" banter. There is a striptease scene (apparently strippers are one of the prime candidates for the kind of women that Mars needs) that goes on for minutes and minutes with the stripper taking nothing off.

The Martians are just like humans for the most part, sparing the trouble of expensive make-up and sparing having to explain why Earth women would work for the task at hand. The Martian costumes are just shiny material with something like bathing caps on their heads and big headphone cups on their ears (this aspect is somewhat reminiscent of My Favorite Martian, and was even echoed in later material like Mork & Mindy, but in Mars Needs Women it doesn't have the intentional humor).

So why did I give this film a rating as high as 6 out of 10? Well, believe it or not, a few aspects of the film work as they were intended to. The whole sequence of the two Martians at the hotel, acquiring a press badge and so forth, was actually engaging and not really unintentionally funny. But most of the film is unintentionally funny, and most of it works on that level, too. You can laugh at the bad decisions made due to budget. You can laugh at the pacing. You can laugh at the hammy dialogue. You can laugh at how the Martians pick their women. And most of all, the more you spend time analyzing the ridiculous plot, the more you'll laugh.

I love this movie because it is just so darn sincere. There is not a moment in the film that suggests its author understands the ridiculousness of his premise. This wants to be a good movie, an intelligent piece of science fiction, and yet, it is called Mars Needs Women. The movie even has some literary pretensions showing.

Everything about this movie is inept, but done with such earnestness that it is reminiscent of when a cute little kid says something totally absurd and laughable with a straightforward demeanor that just makes it all that much funnier. I rank this up (or is that down) with camp classics like Glen or Glenda. I just found it very funny.

Supposedly the location is Houston the movie was all shot in the Dallas area. You get a couple skyline shots,a couple scenes at the old White Rock Lake Pump station-where the spaceship was hidden, The Athens Strip-actual name of Striptease Bar where Bubbles Cash performed in reality, Fair Park and even out at Collins Radio in Richardson where the big Radar Telescope dishes can be seen. There are also some scenes around Southern Methodist University (SMU).

It is a campy movie, really hiring an actual Striptease artist to play a stripper? So set back and laugh and try to spot bits and pieces of Dallas from almost fifty years ago!

Of all the sci-fi movies that I have seen that were filmed in Houston, this is among the best.

Mars Needs Women is watchable fun. Tommy Kirk pilots a spaceship with a crew of 4 Martian males into an abandoned ice making factory, which is spooky and heavy with the fetor of rotting chemical containers.

They have 24 hours to acquire 5 women who are both beautiful and healthy which they can use to repopulate their loathsome planet.

Tommy must assume the identity of a newspaper reporter and convince a rather strapping Yvonne (Batgirl) Craig through a series of soliloquies and expertly maneuvered tarradiddles that he is more than a bromide journalist rather he is ultimately the urbane, suave Prince Charming who can make her pretty little head swirl with thoughts beyond the realm of standardized lucubration. Behind her horn-rimmed glasses, she quivers for this alluring myrmidon from beyond the stars. He is captivated by this autochthonous siren. To want- to love- to live.

He in turn bespeaks the confusion of his soul, an embodiment of the whole piece, rightly an olla podrida of mental acuity and the most conspicuous of all jigs; that quasi-caromed, state of palpitate we mortals call seduction.

It gives us much to mull. It is to cinema what T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" was to prose; only this classic has a stripper, a groovy soundtrack, and a harpoon gun.