Originally posted on 7/10/21
Currently watching: MARS NEEDS WOMEN (1967) starring Tommy Kirk and Yvonne Craig. As the sensationalistic title suggests, the plot hinges upon a group of five Martians on a mission to Earth, where they must choose prime female specimens to take back to their home planet in order to help replenish their dying race.
Tommy Kirk, who had played another Martian named Go-Go a few years earlier in the American-International teen comedy PAJAMA PARTY, stars as Dop, leader of the mission, who jeopardizes the whole thing by falling in love with his target, the lovely Dr. Marjorie Bolen, played by the lovely Yvonne Craig (TV's "Batgirl").
The film is produced, written, and directed by Texas-based filmmaker and former 20th-Century Fox bit player Larry Buchanan, who specialized in bringing in profitable made-for-TV movies on very low budgets via his production company Azalea Pictures.
Some of his other films include such classic bad-movie fare as ZONTAR: THE THING FROM VENUS, CURSE OF THE SWAMP CREATURE, and IN THE YEAR 2889.
It was these films that first made me aware of the wonders of bad filmmaking as a kid, when even at a young age I recognized the cheapness and ineptitude of these films yet felt a strangely inexplicable fondness for them.
MARS NEEDS WOMEN continues the Azalea Pictures tradition of less is less, with extremely limited spaceship effects and alien costumes that consist of rubber scuba suits with little radios with antennae glued over the ears. The Martians land (off-camera) in an abandoned refrigeration factory where their human female captives can be deep-frozen for the trip back to the red planet.
The rest of the film takes place in various locations in Houston and Dallas, including the Cotton Bowl (where one Martian chooses a beaming Homecoming queen as his kidnap victim), Love Field (where another Martian unceremoniously steals a car), and the Collins Radio Antenna Building which serves as a NASA decoding center where cryptic messages from Mars are translated into English.
The most interesting abduction, from my point of view anyway, is the one which takes place in a sleazy strip club where a performer billed in the credits as "Bubbles" Cash dances at length under the intense scrutiny of a lucky Martian.
Despite this, much of the film consists of boring characters having dull conversations in rooms, along with reams of military stock footage. Things do pick up now and then, such as when one Martian obtains needed currency by robbing a filling station and another breaks into a men's apparel store to steal business suits in order to help the mission team blend in.
The scenes with Tommy Kirk and Yvonne Craig give the film its closest semblance to something worth watching, since both are professional enough to carry off their dialogue with some conviction as their characters gradually become infatuated with each other.
I like the scene where they visit a planetarium and, when the taped monologue about Mars malfunctions, Tommy amazes both Yvonne and a group of visiting school children with his impassioned soliloquy about his beloved home planet.
Technically, MARS NEEDS WOMEN fluctuates between bottom-rung TV episode production values and what could only be described as home-movie-level filming, with inferior dubbing and editing as well.
Still, one must remember that Buchanan was bringing this movie in on a rock-bottom budget and, thus, succeeded in creating something both mildly watchable and ultimately profitable.
Despite a rather solemn air and not a trace of self-aware mockery, MARS NEEDS WOMEN is of interest solely for its amusing "so bad it's good" appeal to those who can actually find such a thing appealing. Others will be baffled as to why anyone would stick around for more than a minute of it.
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