Film / Mars Needs Women

Colonel Page: Well? When did you decipher?
Technician: At exactly 0400.
Colonel Page: Let's have it!
Technician: It's...just three words.
Colonel Page: I didn't ask for a word count. Give me the message.
Technician: You won't believe it. We've checked and double-checked. It keeps coming up the same thing. Colonel, the message is: Mars. Needs. Women.

The notorious 1967 sci-fi B-Movie, written and directed by self-proclaimed schlockmeister Larry Buchanan, that became the Trope Namer for what those alien invaders really want from Earth!

Across the airwaves comes a message that startles the world: Mars Needs Women! When the human authorities refuse to cooperate with this evil plan of interspecies miscegenation, a five-man Flying Saucer lands covertly on Earth to select five women, by fair means or foul (mostly foul) to take back to Mars to repopulate their Dying Race. Will the beautiful women of Texas be at the mercy of these intersolar abductors? Will Martian Fellow #1 Dop be swayed from his mission by hot Earth scientist Dr. Marjorie Bolen? Will this rank with Plan 9 from Outer Space as one of the worst sci-fi movies ever made?

Not to be confused with Mars Needs Moms, though the title of that movie (and the storybook it's based on) pays homage to this one.

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This movie has the following tropes:

• Abandoned Warehouse: The aliens land their spacecraft in a disused ice factory because they need the chemicals that are (still?) stored there for their Human Popsicles.
• Aliens in Cardiff: Or in this case: Houston, Texas (well, actually Dallas). Presumably the Martians think that Texan women are particularly hot.
• All Men Are Perverts:
  • The Martians deride the humans for not making decisions on a scientific basis, but they still choose their victims based first of all on their "superficial physical specs"—stalking strippers, stewardesses, college co-eds and beauty queens. And they repeatedly insist the women be single, even though selecting women who already had a family would be an assurance that they were fertile. Maybe it's because they don't want to break up an established family but this is never mentioned, making it far more like they're going for the youngest, hottest, possibly-still-a-virgin babe like any Earthman of the time would.
  • The newsreader introducing Dr. Marjorie Bolen (played by Yvonne Craig) waffles on about how attractive she is despite hiding her charm behind horn-rimmed spectacles.
• Anguished Declaration of Love:
  Dop: What I have to say is for your ears only. The world 'love' went out of our vocabulary a hundred years ago, but whatever love is, I know it must be what I feel for you.
• The Big Board: Plotting the Martian crimes on a map of the city gives Dr. Bolen the "Eureka!" Moment on where they're hiding, when the derelict ice factory is mentioned.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Martians are prevented from kidnapping the five women, but Dop returns to Mars presumably to be put to death for failing his mission, and the Martian civilization will likely die out for lack of women.
• Brainy Brunette: Dr. Marjorie Bolen, an authority on space genetics and space medicine, has been called to Monitor One as a consultant on the Martians. Given that she's also young and hot, Dop realises this makes her an ideal subject for Alien Abduction.
• Changed My Jumper: Dop is more organized than many alien invaders, prioritizing the acquisition of Earth clothing and currency, an automobile, and a map of the city. He's smart enough to advise stealing a car from the airport so its owner won't notice and report it to the police, and makes sure the Fellow sent to steal clothing is aware of the size differences between human and Martian measurements. Though one of them gripes that the tie serves no purpose.
  "The Red Planet abandoned the use of ties fifty years ago as useless male vanity."
• Comm Links: The Martians maintain Radio Silence, but have a transmitter in a suitcase that can send a signal to the radio watches worn by each Fellow.
• Dull Surprise
  • When the US army starts firing into the ice factory, instead of ducking for cover or racing to grab weapons the Martians just leisurely walk over to their spacecraft and go inside. On the other hand, they're likely exhausted after 24 hours in the higher Earth gravity.
  • The actor playing Colonel Page's aide is a noticeable contrast to Byron Lord's hammy overacting.
• Economy Cast:
  • Lampshaded when only Simmons turns up for Colonel Page's briefing, causing the colonel to retort: "You're it?" Apparently as the Pentagon decided to release limited information, the news agencies only bothered sending a single pool reporter. Ironically the Martians have difficulty getting a room at a hotel because of all the off-screen journalists who have turned up in Houston to cover the story.
  • The reason only five women are being abducted is because the Martians only have room for five passengers on their small experimental spacecraft, and even then they have to be put in suspended animation for the trip.
• Fanservice: Dallas stripper Bubbles Cash shows off her routine, stripping down from a tight black dress. There are several women in the audience.
• Gas Leak Cover-Up: The Secretary wants the word put out that the transmission was a "freakish malfunction of a highly sophisticated global communication system". Why he didn't just go with his first reaction—that it's a practical joke—is a mystery, as it would have sounded a lot more plausible. It's what everyone else believes anyway.
• Geeky Turn-On: Dr. Bolen likes that Dop is the only 'reporter' who knows anything about DNA (it helps that, unlike all the other reporters, he doesn't act like a patronizing jerk) and asks him out. She takes him on a date to a planetarium and gives him his first kiss in a museum exhibition on the human anatomy.
• Girly Run: Bolen fleeing the ice factory as the spaceship takes off.
• Hollywood Science:
  • Dop states that: "We attempted to seize three women by transponder." Their failure probably has something to do with the fact that a transponder is an entirely different device from a "transporter".
  • Space medicine is talked about like it involves the treatment of extra-terrestrials, as opposed to the treatment of human astronauts.
  • Dr. Bolen is also an expert on "space genetics", whatever that is.
• Hotline: The Secretary says he's going to inform the President of events via the hotline. Perhaps he's visiting Moscow?
• Hypnotic Eyes: Used to abduct the Sexy Stewardess and homecoming queen. Dr. Haywood also mentions the Martian voice has a hypnotic cadence that makes it difficult to disobey. The journalist who's using a room the Martians need is encouraged to look into the sparkly reflection of the swimming pool outside, which puts him into a trance. Likewise the art student is encouraged to look at the sunlight shining through the tree she's painting.
• Love Redeems: Dop refuses to abduct Marjorie, even though it might placate his superiors' wrath if he at least brought one woman back to Mars.
• Mars Needs Women: The Trope Namer. Thanks to a recession in the Y chromosome, Martian men outnumber Martian women 100 to 1, hence the need for Breeding Slaves.
• Ms. Fanservice: The exacting requirements for the abductees boil down to "All lovely, built like goddesses, and unmarried."
• No Biochemical Barriers: Zigzagged; the Martian doctor warns the others to stick to their "encapsulated diet from the tubes" and not eat any local food. On the other hand, no one questions whether human women would be suitable breeding stock for Martians.
• Operation: [Blank]: Operation Sleep Freeze.
• Poor Communication Kills: Dop tells Colonel Page that they've come to ask for five fertile female volunteers to come back to Mars with them. If he'd just started with this pitch instead of trying to teleport women away without invitation, he might have gotten a more sympathetic reception. Given that the Martians are handsome Human Aliens, surely five women could be found matching the Martians' requirements who'd be willing to immigrate for money, adventure, charity, or For Science! Instead, Colonel Page declares their actions an act of abduction and war and tells them to get their asses back to Mars.
• Revealing Cover-Up: Dop is tipped off that something is going on because the military stopped the flow of press releases. Then Marjorie ends up Saying Too Much when she complains she won't see him after tomorrow, because the news story will be over by then.
• Sadistic Choice: After learning of the intended raid, Dop rushes to the ice factory to warn the others. They haven't finished preparing the women for suspended animation, so he tells them to abort the mission as he intends to stay on Earth with Marjorie. The others refuse to let him, as they'd all be executed if they returned with neither the women nor their leader. They suggest he either force Marjorie to come with him and she can be frozen on the way, or he return alone and take the blame for the failure of the mission. He chooses the latter.
• Screaming Woman: The stripper when a Martian enters her dressing room and stares menacingly at her. Why this doesn't immediately draw a bouncer to beat up the intruder and toss him off the premises is unknown.
• Space Clothes: When leaving their spacecraft, the Martians wear a black skin diver's wet suit with silver V-shape on the chest and a skullcap with antennae. The effect is somewhat ruined by the ordinary-looking flashlights and spear guns they're carrying.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: The movie opens with women mysteriously vanishing the moment their partner's back is turned.
• Stealthy Teleportation: The 'transponder' works via a Jump Cut.
• Stock Footage: Stock footage of X-15 spacecraft and F-111 fighters are shown launching to intercept the Martian invaders. After some unconvincing dialogue is used to show the pilots at the mercy of the superior alien technology, the footage then shows the aircraft lowering their wheels and landing unharmed.
• Sympathy for the Devil: When the audio on the Trip to Mars film breaks down, Dop delivers his own narration on the Red Planet for the listening children, finishing with a moving soliloquy on how, if there is life on Mars, it will have died out by the time the first human explorers reach it.
• Timed Mission: Dop assigns 24 hours to select and abduct the five women before they have to leave.
• Title Drop: Apart from the page quote, there's also a woman reading The Houston Post with the heading: MARS NEEDS WOMEN.
• We Come In Peace: The Martians come not as hostiles but as "medical missionaries", whatever that means. Dop sees no need for violence since they're merely here to abduct women as Breeding Slaves, but authorises the use of hypnosis if the humans resist.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to the three women the Martians tried to seize via transponder in the opening scene?
• Whip Pan: Used to transition between each Fellow or intended kidnap victim.

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