Mars Needs Women

Plot synopsis:
A U. S. military station in Houston, TX, the United States Decoding Service (U.S.D.S.), NASA Wing, has intercepted a message from outer space. After decoding, the message contains only the cryptic statement:
"Mars ... Needs ... Women"
Martians have developed a genetic deficiency that now produces only male children. A mission to Earth is launched, consisting of five Martian males, led by Dop (Tommy Kirk). Once here their team intends to recruit Earth women to come to Mars in order to mate and produce female offspring, saving their civilization from extinction. Using their sophisticated transponder, Dop attempts to make contact with the U. S. military, who have now tracked the aliens' arrival on Earth.
The military eventually views the Martians as invaders, so the team takes on the guise of Earth men, acquiring human clothes, money, maps, and transportation. They finally select their prospective candidates, setting their sights on four American women: a homecoming queen, a stewardess, a stripper, and, most especially, a Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist, Dr. Bolen (Yvonne Craig), an expert in "space genetics". Resorting to hypnosis, the women are captured, but Dop quickly becomes enamored with Dr. Bolen; soon he is ready to sabotage their mission for her. After the military discover their hideout, the Martians are forced to return home without their female captives.
Mars still needs women.

Tags: cult

Review:
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 ...
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
This wants to be a good movie, an intelligent piece of science fiction, and yet, it is called Mars Needs Women.
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?
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.
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..
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.
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".
Watchable Fun. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't understand the reviewers here who say that they deeply enjoyed Mars Needs Women yet give it two stars.
None rise to the heights of Mars Needs Women (and Zontar is more an example of a film that taxes endurance enough to have a certain sublimity of it own).
****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.
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.
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.
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.
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!.
Unfortunately, despite a GREAT title an idea for a plot, this movie is just terrible and not worth your time.
Tommy Kirk and the future Batgirl Yvonne Craig starred in this epic film that is still quite the hoot.
Mars Needs Women, bad as it is, has the good fortune in having a cast that knows how bad it is and plays it for all its worth for some unexpected laughs.The situation is bad on Mars, some genetic experiments have caused an imbalance in the Y chromosomes and boy Martians are being birthed at a rate of 100 to 1 now.
If all goes well, these five will mother a new an improved race of Martians.Just the title alone should tell you Mars needs women is a hoot from the start.
We're talking grade Z actors, script, production values, and direction--and the sell-by date on the package expired a couple of decades ago.The story, such as it: the Martians (who look suspiciously like men with a Spandex fetish) have run out of women, so they nip next door in a spaceship that looks like an over-decorated pie pan to borrow a few.
Whoop-De-Doo.Now, there are bad movies that are fun to watch.
Mars Needs Women is aggressively unwatchable.
Filled with non-acting, bad costumes, and awful writing courtesy of auteur Larry Buchanan, the film also utilises tremendous amounts of (dull) stock footage.
No wonder Mars needs women....
I guess it would be a good movie to watch if you needed something to help you sleep though....
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?
Silly 60's Mars Flic Needs Story, Script, Action, Direction, and Acting!!.
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.
5 martians follow around and kidnap several "superior" human female specimens because, as the title suggests, Mars Needs Women.
Mr. Kirk spends most of the film in a very conservative blue suit playing a very serious Martian.
He gives a lecture to children at a planetarium about what what was believed about Mars at the time, and he falls in love with Yvonne Craig proving Martians, (who spout no antennas) are in fact humans.
Tommy Kirk plays an martian (you know he's a martian because he's wearing a wetsuit with a duct tape V on the chest, along with antennae taped to the sides of his head) who is seeking earth women to take back to his home planet for breeding.
One of those women happen to be Yvonne "Bat Girl" Craig, which is kind of fun, but overall this is a terrible movie that is only worth watching for so-bad-it's-good camp value, which did entertain me a fair amount..
I picked up "Mars Needs Women" recently but wish I would have checked the negative Amazon reviews before doing so, because this is a REALLY bad movie, and not in the good way.Some movies are technically bad but fun nevertheless and highly entertaining.
"Village of the Giants" possesses a wealth of great scenes highlighted by quite a few cute girls; it is therefore very worthwhile."Mars Needs Women" would seem to be a movie of the same caliber for a few reasons: 1.) The name itself, 2.) the backcover description: "WARNING: Sex-Starved Spacemen on the Prowl for Bodacious Babes!" (which, of course, gives the impression that the flick will be full of bodacious babes), 3.) the casting of Tommy Kirk, who also stars in "Village of the Giants," and particularly 4.) the casting of Yvonne Craig.The fact that Yvonne stars in "Mars" was the clincher for me to pick it up.
A few scenes depict a Martian ogling a cute stripper, but these scenes are certainly not worth buying the movie for (or investing your time).As for the production, sets and directing, you'd see better filmmaking by simply watching an episode of "I Dream of Jeanie." Not to mention that the dialogue is atrocious and the storytelling dreadfully boring -- filled with numerous scenes of stock footage.
Hell no!Therefore the Martians are left with no alternative than to abduct some women, though I daresay a couple of them are charming enough to have a shot at convincing them to volunteer even without the blessings of the patriarchy.Hidden amidst the scenes of wall-mounted speakers, stock footage, college football games, and strip shows, we get a genuinely effective scene wherein Tommy Kirk rescues a planetarium show by musing aloud about Mars and its civilization.
To its credit, his speech accurately reflects what little was known (or believed) about Mars at that time.Finally, this movie features Yvonne Craig, whose appearance makes up for any weaknesses in the special effects..
A scene shot at a service station recalls "Les parapluies de Cherbourg" Apparently, director Larry Buchanan enjoyed making bad movies.
Yvonne Craig almost makes seeing this awful movie worthwhile.
Nerdy looking aliens in bad department store "Star Trek" costumes begin abducting women who simply disappear from where they are (playing tennis, taking a shower), then have the gall to appear in person and demand more.
Really bad acting by top billed Tommy Kirk and Yvonne Craig (plus a ton if unknown non-actors) , photography and sound recording join in with the absurd script that tries hard to be finny but just isn't.
The message coming from space is clear  Mars Needs Women!
It was a time when a movie about the abduction and rape of a group of women could be considered "family" entertainment.
It certainly was a very different age.For a movie that stars Tommy Kirk and Yvonne Craig, I was expecting something along the lines of an intergalactic beach movie.
Mars Needs Women couldn't be much further from fun if it tried.
Had they done so, Mars Needs Women might not have been so terribly dull  and bad..
The women population is getting low and several martians are sent on a mission to Earth to capture human females to be returned to Mars.
Once on earth, they disguised themselves as humans and began selecting perfect human specimens to be taken back to Mars including a nightclub stripper, an air stewardess, etc.When the martian, Dop, met and develops feelings for Dr. Bolen, he began to change his views about the whole mission.