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.

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" is an excellent example of this (some would cite "Plan 9 from Outer Space" as another good example but I disagree; "Plan 9" is not so bad it's good, it's so bad it's BAD!). "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. Unfortunately Yvonne doesn't really appear until 45 minutes into the picture (!) and you don't ONCE see her dressed in those alluring, skimpy, tight costumes that she wears in "Batman" as Batgirl or in Star Trek's "Whom Gods Destroy." Is the film worth picking up to catch a few nice glimpses of some other notable 60's babes? Unfortunately no. 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. In fact, in the first half hour you would think that the paging speaker at the Airbase is a starring cast member.I admit that I laughed out loud a few times because of how godawful this stinker is, so it may be worthwhile for this alone; other than that AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!GRADE: F

****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. To bring back to Mars to help re-populate that dying planet due to the low birth-rate of females there. Called operation "Sleep Freeze" the Martians have just a few days to achieve their mission. 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. This in a movie released in 1967 when most people never even heard of DNA. 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. Where the Martians there are desperately waiting for and eagerly wanting to impregnate them in order to save their dying race. Yeah thats all the Martians want from the young and shapely earthling. Having a good time making out with the beautiful young ladies never crossed their minds for one second. 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. How it makes up what we all are at a time when the word DNA was just three letters in the English alphabet in the minds of those who heard it.

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.