In Mars Needs Women, Yvonne Craig plays a human being. In a late Sixties Star Trek episode (“Whom Gods Destroy”), she plays a space alien. There, the mentally sick, who can be instantly cured, have seized the lockdown spacecraft they are on. Marta (Craig) is one of them, and for her alien state Yvonne’s body was painted light green, though fortunately her always lovable brown hair was left alone.

Craig’s acting is agreeable. She tries hard to create a naive and fearful character—-a flatly sexy one too. (Those poses!) Her bare legs are dancer’s legs, muscular. Setting out to be a professional dancer not an actress, Miss Craig is allowed to dance—and does so adeptly—in this episode! It is the highlight of a decently written production. It’s just too bad that the villain of the piece finally snuffs Marta out. He is sick.

I don’t care for most of the metaphysics, such as they are, in George Roy Hill’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), based on the unread-by-me Kurt Vonnegut novel.  Surprisingly, though, some of them I do like.  (Are human beings right to believe they possess genuinely FREE will?)

Be that as it may, the virtues in this outre movie are multiple.  Hill has his heart in it; his brain too.  I don’t know just how versatile an actor Michael Sacks is, but he enacts a maturing innocent, Billy Pilgrim, at various stages of his life knowingly and winningly.  Ron Liebman is deep and true as a troubled creep, while Sharon Gans is a passionate non-caricature as the silly Valencia Pilgrim.  Also first-rate are the touching Eugene Roche as a decent conservative man and soldier and the enchanting Valerie Perrine as a movie starlet.

It’s difficult to know what the film is ultimately about, particularly since it seems to regard World War II as being without a purpose (Alfred Kazin’s complaint about the novel).  But it’s otherwise impressively honest and occasionally darkly funny.

Slaughterhouse-Five (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The 1967 Mars Needs Women is a low-budget, visually crude and, up to a point, silly sci fi TV movie (was it ever broadcast?). But at least it co-stars Yvonne Craig. Most of the other actors in the flick make Miss Craig look (histrionically) like Jane Fonda. As for appearance, to me Craig looks just as good as the young Fonda. A sleek brunette, she plays Dr. Marjorie Bolen, an expert in something called space genetics. She’s smart but also, well, ready for romance, unaware that handsome Dop (Tommy Kirk) is a humanoid Martian.

Miss Craig is the only really appealing element in this movie, another one I saw on Amazon Prime—for free, of course.

The 1967 Mars Needs Women is a low-budget, visually crude and, up to a point, silly sci fi TV movie (was it ever broadcast?). But at least it co-stars Yvonne Craig. Most of the other actors in the flick make Miss Craig look (histrionically) like Jane Fonda. As for appearance, to me Craig looks just as good as the young Fonda. A sleek brunette, she plays Dr. Marjorie Bolen, an expert in something called space genetics. She’s smart but also, well, ready for romance, unaware that handsome Dop (Tommy Kirk) is a humanoid Martian.

Miss Craig is the only really appealing element in this movie, another one I saw on Amazon Prime—for free, of course.

Matthew Weiner‘s television series Mad Men deserves to be a classic achievement. His 2014 movie Are You Here, however, has some charm and cleverness, but is disappointingly insufficient.

It asks how viable it is to be a social dropout idealist, which is fine, but then expects us to suspend disbelief time and again. (The dropout’s father, after dying, leaves his entire estate to his radical and feckless son?) Technically sapid (kudos to cinematographer Chris Manley), the film nevertheless becomes sentimental through Owen Wilson‘s hokey tears, and we don’t even care about his character.

Are You Here has been castigated for featuring too much naked flesh, albeit it contains no more of it than, say, Pialat’s Loulou. But Loulou is a much better film.