WASHINGTON -- No planet has been so abused by the movies as Mars.

Judging from the plotlines of more than a dozen films made about Mars since the 1950s, its inhabitants are almost always angry, greedy creatures hot to invade Earth for -- take your pick -- its air, its water, its women.

And it's not always little green men stirring up the trouble.

Over the years, Martians have been depicted as everything from drooling rat-like bats with spider legs in The Angry Red Planet (1959) to big-headed bug-eyed slavers in Mars Attacks (1996).

Rare is the film that tries to put a human face on the Martians as in Flight to Mars (1951) when the people there look just like the people here.

Canal-girded planet of war

"It goes way back to ancient times when Mars was known as the god of war to the Greeks and the Romans," said Ray Arvidson, chairman of Earth and planetary sciences at Washington University at St. Louis. Arvidson was a team scientist on the 1970s-era Viking lander mission to Mars.

"They saw it as a red dot going across the sky that didn't have the same motion as the stars. And because of its color, it was considered warlike to them," Arvidson said. They probably thought something was going on. They didn't just didn't know what it was.

Fast forward to the late 19th century, when Mars entered the public consciousness in an entirely new way.

No one whipped up Mars fever more than Percival Lowell, a Massachusetts businessman turned astronomer, who in the 1890s thought he saw green lines on the planet. That must mean the Martians had agriculture -- nurtured, of course, by those canals.

But the planet was known to be a cold, dry dead place. And Earth was still warm, wet and alive.

Threaten the women, take the ticket money

It didn't take long for filmmakers to start spinning out "classics" with such dubious titles as Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953), Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) and Mars Needs Women (1966). The Mars depicted in those movies was more silly than sinister.

"Part of that was because the movies didn't take themselves seriously," said David Catling, a research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., who studies Mars in the popular culture. "I'm sure Santa Claus Conquers the Martians didn't consider itself a work of art."

And since sex sells, it makes sense for the Martians to covet Earth's women, he said. "They're after our planet, so why not after our women as well? I guess the films feel the women give it sex appeal and that helps to sell tickets."

Strangeness lends little charm

By itself, Mars is not a particularly alien place.

"The landscapes we see from orbit are familiar landscapes but they're strange enough that it's an easy jump for people to think that it's a scary place," Arvidson said.

Even Mars-minded scientists like Arvidson can sit back and enjoy the corny movie plots. He recalled a trip to Barstow, Calif., in 1997 when he and a handful of colleagues were testing a prototype of a future Mars rover called Rocky 7.

For fun, they decided to take in the movie Mars Attacks, about as fanciful as any picture ever made about the red planet.

"We all had a great time. Besides, there isn't that much to do in Barstow at night, anyway."