October 17, 2003

I was a little stunned one night when I was channel surfing and saw this movie's title in the "Coming Up Tonight" commercial on American Movie Classics. Stunned because before that night I knew nothing about this film except it's title and assumed that it was one of those films that keep brown paper mills and trench coat factories in business.

No, it's not porn but it's no less absurd. Mars Needs Women is no better or worse than any other sci-fi crappola to come out of the 1960s. The difference is that MNW has a very promising title and the presence of Disney pin-up boy Tommy Kirk in the role of a martian. Not a spindly martian but just your joe-average alien wearing diver's skins and a pair of headphones. Kirk might have been an effective teen star of the 50s but trying to play dead-pan serious in this movie makes you feel sorry for him, especially when his voice cracks during the narration.

Kirk plays Dop, the leader of a martian science mission who has come to earth to claim beautiful women to take back to Mars for fertilization. His planet's population is dwindling due to a genetic flaw that is killing off all the women.

Our illustrious military (whose entire arsenal consists of stock footage) intercepts the message that MARS NEEDS WOMEN. Now that message sounds pretty clear to me but what I can't figure out is why the President has to have a staff meeting to discuss what it might possibly mean and what the intentions might be. GUYS!! They don't have any women left and they came to steal some of ours!! There I just saved millions on goverment spending. You're welcome.

Here is the other head scratcher: Mars has thousands of men but Dop's orders are to retrieve only 5 earth females. Only 5? If I were an earth woman I wouldn't go without packing a LOT of sedatives.

The military won't give up 5 earth women and Dop informs them that he will be forced to use . . . well, force. The military goes about it's business of running tests on stock footage and Dop makes good on his word. The five women chosen (and remember these were chosen by MALE martians) are: A stripper, an airline stewardess, a homecoming queen, an artist and Batgirl.

That being Yvonne Craig playing Dr. Bolen a scientist who is only indentified as such by thick glasses and a clipboard. Since Ms. Craig is given second billing and it would be detremental to Kirk's career to have him play a villian (as if just being in this movie weren't already a career killer) there has to be an oddly hammered-together love story. Will Dop defy his orders and stay with the woman he loves? Love unfortunatly has gone out of style on Mars for the past century but our hero says can't resist the lure a amore.

She may be a scientist but she's not exactly the sharpest pin the cushion. She doesn't catch on to the fact that he is a martian despite the outfit and the spaceship (I'd love to know what the stripper would have thought) but nevermind she loves him anyway. Why? Because they have first and second billing and that is the natural order of things.

So what is the end result? It's a bad movie, one of the worst. No, it's worse than that. How bad? Well, let me just say that it's really bad when a movie uses up screentime informing us why men on Mars have outlawed neckties.