Vaginas on Mars

Don’t pop yourself a bowl of popcorn and crack open a soda as you settle in to watch “Christmas on Mars”: Some scenes might have you seeing your snack for a second time.

The movie opens on a dreary human colony on Mars. The male colonists, including protagonist Major Syrtis (Steven Drozd), mope around on Christmas Eve as they wait for the last female colonist to give birth to the first human baby born on Mars.

In the meantime, the oxygen generator and gravity machine are on the fritz, leaving the colonists in fear for their lives until a magical Martian (Wayne Coyne) shows up and starts playing Santa.  

Here’s something I’ve never written before: This movie featured too many vaginas. Literally, there were disembodied vaginas throughout the movie. I mean, I’m pretty comfortable with them because I have to live with one, but seeing them used as props was gross.

Also freaky are all the dead babies that Major Syrtis hallucinates during his anxiety over the future of the colony.

The movie also features original music from the Flaming Lips. Electronic beeps, buzzing static and high-pitched, synthesized hums wax and wane, sometimes fading into eerie silence as the colonists spiral deeper into their space-induced insanity.

 The instrumental soundtrack continues the pudenda fixation with titles like “The Gleaming Armament of Marching Genitalia,” and “In Excelsior Vaginalistic” (both describe scenes from the film).

“Christmas on Mars” has the rest of the band in secondary roles as colonists. Bassist Michael Ivins wears his trademark sunglasses and tour-drummer Kliph Scurlock’s character is in catatonic shock. Other cameos include Fred Armisen as a philosophy-minded colonist and Adam Goldberg as the colony’s overworked psychiatrist.

I can’t recommend this movie for general viewing, but if you like the Flaming Lips, psychedelic science fiction or seeing a lot of vaginas, you’ll like “Christmas on Mars.”