Mars Needs Women |
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USA • 1967 • 83m •
   • Directed by: Larry Buchanan. • Starring: Tommy Kirk, Yvonne Craig, Warren Hammack, Tony Huston, Larry Tanner, Cal Duggan, Pat Delaney, Sherry Roberts, Donna Lindberg, Bubbles Cash, Byron Lord, Roger Ready, Barnett Shaw. • Music by: Ronald Stein.      After receiving a series of messages from outer space all decoded to be ''Mars Needs Women'', the United States Decoding Center in Houston receives a visit from Dop, the leader of a group of five Martians on an experimental voyage to Earth. Because of a genetic problem, Martians are producing virtually only male offspring and thus need to import women for the survival of the species. The Martians' non-hostile mission is to bring back to Mars five fertile and single human women. Those at the Center see the mission as a hostile one and as such the Martians decide to carry out their mission as inconspicuously as possible without the cooperation of the authorities by posing as Earthlings. Of the potential women they spy which includes strippers, co-eds and flight attendants, the one they believe is the most conducive to success of the project is the beautiful Dr. Marjorie Bolen, an expert in space genetics. In pursuing her, Dop falls in love with Dr. Bolen. But the Martians have to complete the mission before the authorities, which includes Dr. Bolen, find their secret hiding location.
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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.
Review by Brandt Sponseller from the Internet Movie Database.
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