aka Treasure of the Sierra Martians.
aka The Martians are Due on Maple Street.
Bart and Jack come running into frame, climbing all over each other, horse-playing. Robbie sticks his head out of the tent and tells them to quiet down. Family vacation? Boy Scout Jamboree? Krazy days at camp? No, these are adult US Astronauts. In fact they are the first men to land on Mars. By the way, this is the Bradbury concept of Mars where it has Earth-like gravity, fresh air and a low budget.
Robbie brings a box out of the tent. He brags about bringing it 34 million miles from earth. That might not seem worth noting, but it could be the first time I’ve watched a show for this blog that actually got an astronomical distance correct. Bobbie unpacks illicit beers for the boys who whoop it up at the sight of the cans. Later there is talk of lighting each others farts [1] and swimming across the lake to the girl’s camp.
Turns out the men are astronauts, but not from NASA. Their trip was subsidized by Standard Motors (a division of Average Mechanical, a wholly owned subsidiary of Just OK, Inc). The evil corporation will get half of anything they find, and any wallets they make. Bart is disappointed that they did not find any people on Mars. He suggests that since there is plant life similar to earth’s, that there should be intelligent life.
Around this time, I noticed that Bart is wearing a holster and pistol. So he wanted to discover intelligent beings, but he wasn’t taking any chances. After their beer break, they decide to do a little prospecting. Bart grabs his rabbit’s foot and they take off.
They quickly discover a vein of uranium — why didn’t they set this on Uranus? — and stake out a claim — literally — by driving a stake into the ground. They’re millionaires! Maybe it’s affluenza, but they immediately have problems. Jack gets a bad headache. Bart feels that he’s being watched (the quick zoom in on his face as he says this is almost Mel Brooksian). Robbie plays camp counselor and keeps his irritable crew from killing each other.
After Robbie leaves, Bart realizes his rabbit’s foot is missing and accuses Jack. Bart says it “didn’t just walk away by itself” which is a pretty god gag that I don’t think they even realized. Bart goes after Jack with a hammer and they start wrestling as we go to commercial. Robbie breaks it up and demands that they hand over their guns.
Bart refuses to hand over his gun because he says something out there is watching them. Jack quite reasonably refuses to disarm while Bart has his.
When Bart wakes up the next morning, he claims to see a Martian and starts blasting away. Robbie jumps him to take the gun. Bart gets shot in the tussle; also in the stomach. Jack tells Robbie it was murder! He is paranoid that Robbie is going to take all the uranium for himself. They fight and Robbie and Jack kill each other.
After all three are dead, we hear two Martians speaking of how easy it was to manipulate the weak Earth-men. Then they decide to take a look at the earthmen’s ship which is more than the audience ever got. It should prove interesting,” one of them says.
Which is more than the audience ever got.
Post-Post:
- [1] I had always assumed this was an urban legend. For some reason, I find it hilarious that the result is known as a blue angel. Sadly, there is no such disambiguation at Wikipedia: Blue Angel (1930 Marlene Dietrich Film), Blue Angel (highly skilled Air Force Aerial Team), Blue Angel (lit fart).
- I think I’ll just wallow in my ignorance and continue to believe that Circle Jerks really are just an urban legend.
- A fairly, dare I say, stellar cast: Leslie Nielsen, Brian Keith and William Redfield.
Frenchies Edmond Valier and Marie are have a tête-à-tête, french for sucking face big time. Valier says, “What would I do without you?” and Marie tells him he’ll have to figure that out because she is getting married. If that isn’t bad enough, she is marring his publisher / employer Charles Montcour because he is rich. This couldn’t have come up a little earlier?
Andre comes again to visit Valier who is exhausted and unshaven. He has brought the crystal ball into the house. He is concerned that he is going insane because he can see Marie in the crystal ball. He is so busy that he never gets around to visiting Marie before Montcour returns to town.
That night, Valier smashes the crystal ball. The end.
Jan Manning has taken over her husband’s dress shop, but business is not going so well. If sales don’t improve, she might lose the shop the same way she lost her husband — to another man; in this case, a banker. OK, maybe her husband died; I was dozing off during part of this.
At the bank, the manager tells her she has too much money tied up in inventory. He advises her to advertise, “That’s the way to get people in and move your stock.” As she is already selling at 50% off, this does not seem like the solution or the problem. Mel is waiting in the lobby and takes Jan to lunch.
Mel advises her to have her accountant take the books home with him so her records are not destroyed if there happens to be a fire. If Hillary Clinton were this diligent about protecting her records, she wouldn’t be indicted. [1] Back at work after her ti martooni lunch, she tells her assistant to have the auditor take the books home, then leaves with her sister.
Or do we know what happened? Was the gadget the arsonist’s way of starting the fire? It fired up at 1 am instead of 1 pm, and Mel did have an opportunity the fiddle with the timer. Mel acts as if his plan was carried out, but the insurance man said the skylight was blown out by heat, not as a means of breaking in. I’m going with Mel in the back room with a tea maker.
I have nothing clever to say.
Carol’s first “serious” job for the international agency seems to be shooting a kid at the local zoo, although I guess she hasn’t started the new gig yet. She spots the kid — who, probably not coincidentally, looks a lot like Billy Mumy [3] — and correctly guesses his name is Kenny. They take pictures all over the zoo, and even get someone to take a picture of the the two of them. At the end of the day, Carol offers to send copies to Kenny if he will give her his address. He skateboards off into the 
She goes to Greg’s apartment and tells him that she has to take this job, but she is clearly remorseful. As they embrace, she sees Kenny down on the street looking up. When she goes home, he is in her apartment.
There is a final scene that is also a little muddled. Carol is on the phone. She promises to “get some great stuff, to tear their hearts out.” But she is wearing a snappy 80’s business suit which makes you wonder if she is going to continue working in the city. If she were going international, wouldn’t she be in jeans or camo or a beret? From her luggage and the closing narration, though, it is clear she has opted to be the jet-setting childless international photographer.
Janice Hammond rubs a magic lamp at a yard sale so gets three wishes. She wishes for $10 million, to look 10 years younger, and for her ex-husband to have erectile dysfunction . . . which I’m sure will be gratifying to enslaved people and starving kids all over the world.