Mars Needs Women

After seeing what a bunch of stiffs they send in search of fertile earth females, it's no wonder the martian females lost both interest and their ability to reproduce. This movie looks like it was thrown together in the makers spare time and the script is completely lacking in anything even remotely interesting. If you can make it all the way through this movie without stopping it and switching over to something more enjoyable, then you're a better man than I. I guess it would be a good movie to watch if you needed something to help you sleep though...

I am not quite where to start or how to explain what it was that did not convulse me about this movie as it to others. Somehow, if you cut out that terrrrrible actor playing a military type early on, the rest of it doesn't seem so bad. I think once a movie hits a bad not early on, the audience is unforgiving of the rest. You must admit the stoic acting style of the Martians didn't really seem that far off from one might expect from such a movie. There WERE a couple of lines that Tommy Kirk really blew, I have to admit, but for the most part, his acting on this one did grow on you. The story line which was bare thin, and the pacing which was on the sedated side were actually pleasant to watch if you might be in the right mood, which I was (in the middle of the night.) There was just something I can't put my finger on. Sure, the movie really tried hard to be a serious movie, but for the sometimes silly lines, it came off well. And there must be something to say about the fact that this was not a theater released feature. It was a TV movie. I can't imagine that they would WANT to give them more than $20k to pull it off. And there is where it might have started to go wrong. With a few subtle re-writes, and perhaps if they hired better actors in some minor roles (that otherwise needed serious acting lessons) this might have been a really good movie. I don't know anything about the director, so I might just be blowing my horn in the wrong direction. Yet, I think they did the best they could with what they were given. I do believe that TOMMY KIRK pulled it off quite nicely especially near the end. My favorite scenes were then, at the end and what I feel might be everyone's favorite scene, the one at the strip club, but not for merely the skin shown, but for Alien #5, CAL DUGGAN's expressions as he watched the dancer doff her outfit. I was very entertained by that! And I wanted to repeat, that I got to enjoy the easy pace of the movie sometime during the middle. It became what shall I say? comfortable and peaceful? Especially since we were watching a small American town in that era, it was right on the money. I know, because I was there in the 60s and I remember the pace of life was oh so much slower than it is today. Would I recommend this to everyone? OK I will admit that no, I wouldn't. But to a fan of sci-fi and especially 50s/60s sci-fi, I would say yes, why not, give it a try.

I was born in Dallas and lived there 50 years. I am almost certain that this movie was filmed entirely in Dallas and a suburb: Richardson. The opening "Space Center" scene was filmed in the Antenna Bldg. at Collins Radio. I worked on the various computers and tape drives depicted in that scene. I worked there in 1973 after it was sold to Rockwell International. The airport scene was at Dallas Love Field (with a man reading the Houston Chronicle). Additional footage was shot at the Southland Ice Plant at White Rock Lake, where they made ice for "7-11" convenience stores, Southern Methodist University Homecoming game (Homecoming Queen was an abductee), Dallas Fair Park (Planetarium, Lagoon, and Science Bldg.), Gypsy Room on Harry Hines Blvd., and the Southland Life Bldg. in downtown Dallas.

This is one of those movies that will make you laugh for no apparent reason. You have to love the movies that were never made to be taken serious. Pure entertainment. But, this film has a sense of sophistication and the appearances that actual research was done. Great entertainment, just don't dig too deep. Pop some popcorn, sit back and laugh. The only thing missing is 3-D glasses. Honestly, the acting is not to terrible for a 60's drive in movie. With this title, it is guaranteed to be one of those films that kids of today will watch merely because they think it's different. The film is a perfect model for the "hipsters" of our generation. Whatever works though. So, when you finish your Pedro The Lion CD and feel depressed, pop in this tape. It will make you happy (and hip).

That's right...this IS an astounding movie, though not in the way director Larry Buchanan probably intended it. The only one of Buchanan's AIP-TV flicks that isn't a remake of an earlier movie, it has all the ingredients of a Z-grade mess: start with former Disney standby Tommy Kirk as the bland leader of a Martian expedition, add Batgirl Yvonne Craig as a scientist who (for some strange reason) falls in love with our favorite Matian, sprinkle in some aggressively-dull footage of a local (Dallas) football game, stir-in enough double-entendres and leering by the male cast to make you gouge your eyes out, and you've got...not much!

****SPOILERS**** Far out story about a crew of five very human-looking Martians led by their captain Dop, Tommy Kirk, who land on Earth and gather five very attractive healthy and child-bearing young women. To bring back to Mars to help re-populate that dying planet due to the low birth-rate of females there. Called operation "Sleep Freeze" the Martians have just a few days to achieve their mission. I was prepared to get a few laughs watching the movie "Mars Needs Women" just by what it's title indicated but was surprised about just how serious and intelligent the movie was. "Mars Needs Women" is, I think, the first movie to ever even mention much less explain what DNA, Deoxyribonucleic Acid, is: The unique and individual blueprint of every single human and animal that ever lived on Earth. This in a movie released in 1967 when most people never even heard of DNA. The Martians abduct a number of women through their use of hypnosis, stewardesses exotic dancers and home-coming queens, to take with them back to Mars. Where the Martians there are desperately waiting for and eagerly wanting to impregnate them in order to save their dying race. Yeah thats all the Martians want from the young and shapely earthling. Having a good time making out with the beautiful young ladies never crossed their minds for one second. Dop falls in love with the woman that he's supposed to bring back to Mars with him the pretty as well as brilliant young Dr. Majorie Bolen, Yvonne Craig, who's a Pulitzer Prize winning author in the field of DNA and extra-terrestrial genetics. Dop has a change of heart at the end of the movie and scuttles the plan "Sleep Freeze" at the expense of his safety and well being back on Mars. The movie is much like another film about aliens who come to Earth to destroy it. Then one of them rescues the doomed Earthlings by giving up his life to save them like the plot in the movie "Teenagers from Outer Space". The movie "Mars Needs Women" is not what you might think it is, cheesy and erotic, but very serious and will surprise you in how ahead of it's time it is in the science of human DNA. How it makes up what we all are at a time when the word DNA was just three letters in the English alphabet in the minds of those who heard it.

The aptly titled "Mars Needs Women" is a rather tepid piece of science-fiction, that feels like you're watching someone on a Sunday afternoon, the movie just kind of loafs around, takes it easy, never tries to over exert itself. It's got some fine cheesy moments (And Yvonne Craig is about as sexy as they come), but overall, more of a yawn than a laugh riot. Tommy Kirk is one of the Martians desperately in need of women (I guess their bizarre pick-up moves aren't scoring the babes like they used to on Mars), and they come to Houston, TX to try to get them. Well, since Kirk's the leader, I'm sure you can assume it all goes badly, and that the effects are silly, the plot inane, and the dialogue downright awful in points. This you know. But you might not know that the Martians can teleport, but still need cars. And they can hypnotize women, yet they resort to trying to seduce them (In really awkward ways too...a planetarium for a date? Yuck.) You are probably also unaware that scene after scene go by without a single piece of dialogue or plot development (The stock footage of the aircraft scene is my favorite...five minutes of a big plane deploying a small plane, which then lands, while 5 different faceless people with near-identical voices converse on an intercom). Just so you know. At least I don't blame the Martians for wanting these women, they are all rather fetching, especially Yvonne "Call me Batgirl and I break you" Craig as a sex specialist/astronomer/geneticist/librarian (I dunno, she's like the Bionic Woman or something). Call me crazy, but I love a girl in turtle shell glasses. My own personal tastes aside, there is some good mocking material in "Mars Needs Women" but not as much as a "No Holds Barred" or a "Gymkata." Not for lightweights.

Dull as dishwater sci-fi movie about "martians" stealing women for breeding purposes is slower than a dead hamster in winter. Tommy Kirk, that wooden teenage star of such miserable classics as "Old Yeller", "Son of Flubber", "Village of the Giants", and the laughable "Ghost in the Invisible Bikini", plays Dop, a wooden martian who falls in love with Yvonne Kirk. Kirk, equally wooden, went on to play Bat Girl in the campy classic 60's Batman tv series. 5 martians follow around and kidnap several "superior" human female specimens because, as the title suggests, Mars Needs Women. They even broadcast that same message to the scientific community of earth, who are understandably flummoxed. Not a single character, setting, or action has the slightest shred of credibility; in fact, the "martians" are designated as so because they walk around in purple wet suits, carrying spear guns to pass as space weapons. Director Larry Buchanan's pedigree for schlocky films is unrivaled, including such stinkbombs as "Zontar: The Thing From Venus", "The Eye Creatures", and "Curse of the Swamp Creature". Loses camp points for being so slow and boring. MooCow says there are more fun turkeys elsewhere, proceed at your own risk. :=8/

I do not quite know why I had trouble following this film. That might not matter—all that much, except that it seems important that kidnap victims have "to be pretty special to qualify" for abduction, though the victims seem stereotypical to me. I think that I missed something somewhere. Some of the excellent film work fascinates me, which ought not to have surprised me since the cinematographer was Robert Jessup, who shot "The Acorn People", "Porky's Revenge", and many episodes of "Dallas", which is the location for much of this film. Night scenes here have a serious beauty—sometimes. A scene shot at a service station recalls "Les parapluies de Cherbourg" Apparently, director Larry Buchanan enjoyed making bad movies. He did make one here. Yvonne Craig almost makes seeing this awful movie worthwhile. I do not know if this was before she dated Elvis. Some awful movies deserve a look if you are up late, know all the informational programs on other channels by heart, and you have seen the rerun of "Antiques Road Show" more than ten times. Otherwise, skip this one.

When I first heard that "Mars Needs Women," in the 1967 TV movie of the same name, I must confess that my initial reaction was "Big deal. Who doesn't? Get in line. The line starts here!" But after seeing how serious and high-minded the quintet of Martian abductors in this film was, how peaceful and desirous of screening their potential victims, how they use hypnosis rather than violence to achieve their ends and save their dying planet...well, I grew a bit more sympathetic. Rather than trying to pick up women for the fun of it, these Martian dudes (who look just like us, by the way, especially after they steal some suits and ties and remove their antennaed helmets) literally have a world at stake when they go out and try to get lucky. We watch the five as they each go after a stewardess, a homecoming queen, a painter, a * (played by the appropriately named "Bubbles" Cash), and a lady scientist who's an expert on space sex (!). (I suppose each of the gals is expected to get pregnant around 1 million times!) This last is played by Yvonne Craig, who, in the mid-'60s, was responsible for tightening the manly hydraulics of many baby boomer boys, in her role as TV's Batgirl. Anyway, this film tries to be serious, but the dialogue is so stilted, the editing so inept, the acting so wooden, the stock footage so excessive, the FX so lousy and the pacing so draggy that it can't be regarded as anything but camp, and something of a labor to sit through. Somehow, though, unsatisfactory as the whole thing is, part of me liked it and found it almost touching; probably the part of me that understands how difficult it can be to meet suitable women, and the part that remembers lusting over Yvonne way back when. One final thing: The sound on the DVD that I just watched is pretty bad; you may want to turn up the volume on your sound system ALL the way before going in. And having a few beers beforehand, too!