40 Films in Robotech: Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars (1981)

  

They’re not all going to be award winners in this series. Some films are just plain bad…and entertaining.

 ROBOTECH MENTION:  

In Robotech TV episode 51 entitled Clone Chamber, Dana Sterling gets her hands on some hard-to-come-by expensive movie tickets for The Revenge of the Martian Mystery Women. While hoping to take Zor to the movies, she winds up bringing Sgt. Angelo Dante.

Dana flashes her prize: 2 tickets to a well-reviewed movie.
Stills from Robotech episode 51: Clone Chamber.

The outside marquee points to The Revenge of the Martian Mystery Women being a kaiju flick.

Inside the theater, we get a glimpse of the film involving a bikini-clad creature kicking another creature.

Dante thinks it’s the most ridiculous thing he has ever seen. Despite Dana’s urging for him to stop laughing, he can’t. The rest of the audience joins in the laughter, as well. 

Our Robotech film, Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars, is the closest title match to The Revenge of the Martian Mystery Women.

 SYNOPSIS:  

What looks like a repackaging of a 1960s television show into a straight-to-video feature, Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars involves two attacks from the Mysterons on Earth. A synopsis of the series from The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1996), edited by David Pringle, goes like this:

“Captain Scarlet…[is] an almost-indestructible, colour-coded agent of Spectrum, dedicated to saving Earth from the body-snatching Martian Mysterons and the machinations of the traitorous Captain Black. An oddly ambiguous puppet character, continually dicing with death.” (p. 280)

 AWARDS & KUDOS:  

Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars was the second movie featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It first aired as episode two of season one on local Minneapolis-St. Paul area TV channel KTMA-23 on  November 24, 1988. The skits were Thanksgiving-themed.

 OTHER COOL FACTS:  

The novelization of Robotech episode Clone Chamber also refers to Dana’s movie tickets as tickets for The Revenge of the Martian Mystery Women. The Comico comic of the same episode, however, has Dana exclaiming she got tickets for Revenge of the Martian Spider Women. The "martian spider" angle was explored earlier this year in the 40 Films in Robotech in our entry on Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1979).

 ROBOTECH REASON:  

If you need a silly movie title, start with the word “Revenge,” I guess. Add “Mars” in some capacity and you are guaranteed a B-Movie. Clearly, the Robotech writers wanted to make the movie Dana had high hopes for ultimately turn out to be utterly ridiculous. Because of this scene (pictured above) and the scene that follows it when Dana confronts Nova and Zor post-movie, Clone Chamber is in my Top 10 Favorite Robotech episodes.

To read my ⭐⭐ (out of a possible 5 star) rating for Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars on Letterboxd, click here.