Bad. Very bad. But about what I expected.
I just loaded all of ERB’s Martian series to my Sony Reader so I can re-read and wash this piece of trash out of my brain.
One thing I noticed is that early on they used Barzoom (sp?) at least once, but then all I heard was “Mars”. Bad writing/editing?
Barsoom was what Burroughs named the planet. Barzoom was their advice to viewers, to help eradicate having watched their movie from their minds.
It’s difficult to make that not look cheesy in live action when you’ve got an actual budget. Don’t ask SyFy to try.
Probably not fair comparing the book to the movie in that it doesn’t cost extra to describe armadas of blimps shooting death rays and four-armed Martians and so forth. Plus of course, the Martians’ clothing typically consisted only of a leather harness … they ran around nude, basically. Could have been problematical in Traci Lords’ case. It was really typical Burroughs … a ripping adventure yarn with a Victorian romance plot involving nude characters.
I had a funny thought: Making this movie with wooden actors and bad special effects like the old serials is the perfect way to do this 1920’s style pulp…not that I’d ever watch it. 
I saw a reference to this movie here a while ago, and from the IMDb listing, just assumed that it was a porno (Traci Lords as the title character? Half the cast credited as “Harem guard”? Nobody else I’d ever heard of in it?). But apparently it’s not? Well, there goes the only redeeming virtue it even might have had.
I got through maybe 45 minutes or so of this awhile back on Netflix. It ranged from almost-good to so-bad-it’s-almost-good. It never actually hit “good.” And I can’t believe I was ever turned on by that thing on the screen attempting to portray Dejah Thoris.
Well, she couldn’t be 15 forever, y’know… 
(But, really… Traci as Dejah Thoris? Say wha…? Sounds like a case of Casting Under the Influence.)
The only porn I ever saw of hers was “Traci, I Love You” - her only legal one if I know my smut history correctly-- and she’s older than me, so it wasn’t some creepy youth attraction.