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Mars Needs Women (1967) (TV) More at IMDbPro »

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21 reviews in total

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7 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Starring...the Air Raid Speaker!!!, 12 May 2000

Author: jimtinder from US

I'm not kidding. Don't believe for one second that Tommy Kirk and Yvonne Craig star in this waste of celluloid. The actual star (at least for the first 15 minutes) is a white air raid speaker broadcasting a blow-by-blow account of the incredible stock footage scenes!

The cameraman does his best to capture the emotions of the speaker, zooming in and out of the speaker during moments of high drama, captured for all time in glorious stock footage.

By the time Kirk and Craig show up, you'll miss the speaker and the stock footage. At least they were a more interesting couple. And remember..."don't eat the Earth food."

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9 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
Watchable Fun, 3 June 2004
Author: GlennBeckFan from United States

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.

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11 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
Really Lame, 17 February 2002
Author: LouBlake (LouBlake@mail.com) from New Jersey

Sometimes bad movies are just bad. Not campy. Not funny bad. Just awful. This is #1 with a bullet.

This is what I call a "Fast Forward Film", meaning you can put your VCR on fast forward for extended periods, and not miss anything important. Actually there isn't anything important or interesting in this entire flick. There's about five minutes of story, so to pad things out, someone will walk into a room, and then walk around the room, then pour themselves a drink, then walk around the room again, just to kill time.

If I can convince even one of you not to waste your time with this film, I can die a happy man.

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5 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Gotham City, 24 October 2004

Author: RetroRoger from United States

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.

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7 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Larry Buchanan needs a budget, an editor and some scriptwriters, 16 January 2005

Author: Brandt Sponseller from New York City

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.

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4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
One of the great awful movies, 9 September 2004

Author: Charles Herold (cherold) from United States

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.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Tommy Kirk, you devil you..., 31 December 2000

Author: Mr. Pulse from Syracuse, NY

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.

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4 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Terrible...but not the worst movie ever made, 17 January 2004

Author: Wayne Malin (wwaayynnee51@hotmail.com) from United States

That still belongs to "Salo".

A bunch of Martians (led by Tommy Kirk) land on Earth. Their plan is to abduct women, bring them to Mars, and use them to keep their population growing. They each hunt down women successfully but Kirk falls in love with his prey Dr. Bolen (Yvonne Craig). Can he bring her with him or stay on Earth with her?

With a title like that you would expect this movie to be pure camp. Surprisingly, it isn't! Everything is played straight-faced with absolutely no joking or winking at the audience. Now this movie is terrible--there's tons of stock footage (which easily take up most of the running time); a LOONGGGG strip sequence; dreadful acting (although Kirk and Craig do try); inept direction; bad sound (I couldn't hear some of the dialogue--no loss); hilariously inappropriate music and horrendous "special" effects (wait till you see the Martian spaceship!). The script is actually OK--it's not stupid just dull.

There are plenty of dull spots in this movie but still, there are some moments to treasure--the introduction of Dr. Bolen on TV is hysterical and I got a laugh out of the title of a lecture she was giving--"Sex and Outer Space". And it was kind of fun to see how badly Larry Buchanan directed this. And I saw a new print and the colors were bright and strong.

So, this is a bad movie, but I've seen worse. From what I've heard even Kirk and Craig to this day admit liking it! I'm giving it a 2.

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
must watch with popcorn, 5 April 2005

Author: AskewNerd (AskewNerd37@yahoo.com) from Middle of nowhere, South Dakota

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).

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Yvonne Still Tightens My Manly Hydraulics, 30 October 2007

Author: ferbs54 from United States

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 stripper (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!

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