By Robert Scucci
| Published
Every so often, which is about once a week for me, I watch something on Tubi that’s so absolutely insane that I need to tell you all about it. I just scroll past a title like 1989’s Over-Sexed Rugsuckers From Mars, notice that it clocks in at under 90 minutes, and decide to take one for the team. And why wouldn’t I? The entire film is about an alien race of vacuum cleaners trying to aggressively reproduce with their human counterparts in an effort to take over the planet. The aliens themselves, who barely get any screen time, are stop-motion puppets, and the vacuum cleaners they use as their instruments of mass destruction are the kind you could buy at any store.
There are no special effects in Over-Sexed Rugsuckers from Mars, and I think I prefer it that way. There’s no need to “not show the monster” because the monster is simply a Eureka ESP Bagged Upright. In this case, you don’t need to worry about the zipper on the back of the beast because that’s just how you change the bag.
Oh Boy, Where Do I Start?
Over-Sexed Rugsuckers from Mars barely has a coherent plot, but I’ll do my best to do it justice. Though it’s never explicitly stated, which required me to do some research just to get the cast names straight, here’s what I picked up on: an alien race implied to have created humanity millennia ago is disappointed with the progress of their project, so they decide to create a new hybrid race that’s half vacuum cleaner and half human.
They attempt this through a homeless man named Vernon (Richard Monda), who unknowingly drinks alien pee from his flask, which is some form of extraterrestrial aphrodisiac, or something. They do the deed, and Vernon names his new lover Dusty.
Once Dusty’s sexual appetite is primed, it goes on a rampage, trying to reproduce with as many human subjects as possible. Things completely go off the rails when Tom (Billybob Rhoads) spots Dusty in a storefront and buys the device for his wife, who is then murdered, among other things, by the vacuum, implicating Tom in the crime.
This prompts Lt. Kane (Ralston Young), Detective Madder (Ken Sweet), and a SWAT officer to follow every lead they can in order to uncover the identity of the real killer. While all of this is happening, Dusty claims another victim, Rena (Jean Stewart), who survives the attack but becomes impregnated by the appliance and, understandably, traumatized by the entire experience.
From this point forward, in this movie about a rogue vacuum cleaner that sexes people to death, it’s nothing but gag after gag. If you’re the kind of person who’s built specifically to enjoy this sort of thing, Over-Sexed Rugsuckers from Mars spends most of its time following noir beats in which detectives show up at vacuum cleaner stores and even have witnesses identify different makes and models through a one-way mirror in a police-lineup-style setup.
Meanwhile, Dusty is still on the loose, and Vernon spends much of the movie running through town looking for his beloved rugsucker like it was the Craigslist missed connection of a lifetime.
Has No Right Being This Funny
If you’re looking for a sci-fi schlockfest that’s not afraid to fully explore the limites of its $4,000 budget, Over-Sexed Rugsuckers from Mars should be your next Tubi watch. The only reason I clicked on the title is because it’s so ridiculous, and I’ll always admire the audacity of filmmakers who seemingly don’t care about their reputations at all.
It’s a freakin’ vacuum cleaner on strings trying to thrust its victims into submission, and for the most part, it succeeds. It’s rude, crude, grainy, and technically a sci-fi flick, but it leans hard into its neo-noir, bumbling-detective vibe, making the whole thing feel like a rejected I Think You Should Leave sketch that was somehow adapted into a feature-length film.
OVER-SEXED RUGSUCKERS FROM MARS SCORE
You’re either going to love or hate this movie, but if you’re down for about 87 minutes of total insanity where nothing makes sense but everybody acts like it does, you can stream Over-Sexed Rugsuckers from Mars for free on Tubi, the only streamer brave enough to carry this kind of stuff, as of this writing
