GazerRise Fantastic!

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

a_chinn 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.

Rodin79 Forget about the lurid title, it's really something of a documentary on mid-20th century American culture in the manner of a Frederick Wiseman docu. Mr. Kirk spends most of the film in a very conservative blue suit playing a very serious Martian. Mr. Kirk has nothing to be ashamed of. 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. There is an extended scene at a strip club and and even longer scene at a Baylor football game. And the Martians break into a men's clothing store and select a very conservative look that fits right in with the code of how mid century American men should look. There are a couple of inadvertently funny lines delivered with deadpan earnestness but otherwise this is not like the "The Attack of The Crab Monsters" which Tommy Kirk takes Deborah Walley to see in the film " It's a Bikini World." Mr, Kirk looked great in this film like Shia LaBoeuf before his breakdown and David Gordon Levitt. He is a very talented man (his face is always expressive) who did as much with even this as he could, whose personal identity cost him his career before it was cool to have an afternoon TV show or get married. And Mr. Kirk is very much alive and I trust happy and really Mr. Kirk this innocuous movie is nothing to be ashamed of . You're the best. TCM should be honoring you for your body of work as child actor, adolescent and young man.

gftbiloxi It stinks, and there isn't much more that you can say about this film, which reminds me of a badly filmed skin-flick with all the sex scenes deleted. 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. Now, it happens that the ones they want lack brains, beauty, and God knows they lack acting talent, so you'd think Earth would be glad to see them go. But no, Earth gets offended; the Martians decide to take 'em anyway; hostilities ensue. Whoop-De-Doo.Now, there are bad movies that are fun to watch. But MARS WANTS WOMEN is not one of them: it won't take you ten minutes to realize that you would have been better off using your dollar bills for toilet paper than spending them on this flick. If you don't believe me, then at least rent the darn thing before you buy it--but either way, don't say you weren't warned.Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

RetroRoger 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.