THE ASTRO-ZOMBIES (1968)

Director: Ted V. Mikels

Writers: Ted V. Mikels, Wayne M. Rogers

Producer: Ted V. Mikels

Cast: Wendell Corey, John Carradine, Tura Satana, Tom Pace, Rafael Campos, Joan Patrick, Vincent Barbi, Joseph Hoover, Victor Izay, William Bagdad, Egon Sirany, Jean Pirie, John Hopkins, Janis Saul, Wally K. Berns, Vic Lance, Lynette Lantz, Rod Wilmouth, Barbara Richards, Ted V. Mikels, Wally Moon

The CIA is investigating a series of mutilation murders that are being committed by an astro-zombie (Rod Wilmouth). It is a creation of Dr. DeMarco (John Carradine) that has run amok. DeMarco was fired from the U.S. Space Agency because of his unorthodox experiments with humans. He continues to work in private as foreign powers are competing to acquire the secrets to his experiments.

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

It just occurred to me that this schlock classic from director Ted V. Mikels has a very similar central idea to that of my all-time favorite sci-fi horror brain bender, Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965). A partly synthetic being can perform dangerous missions, such as space exploration, and have data transmitted to and from its electronic sensor-filled brain. Not such a crazy idea. In our society of can’t-have-enough-techno-conveniences zombies, it’s just a matter of a few years before most people proudly line up to get computer chips stuck in their heads. Half of them are already choosing their own reality on social media anyway, so why not let someone’s version of reality be fed directly into their empty noggins? I will tell you why this is a bad idea: Because those idiots would run amok to kill sexy women, and I just won’t stand for it!

Now that I have justified my retro pop culture obsessions by pointing out that they hold the key to saving the world, let’s deal with the artistic merits of The Astro-Zombies; it shouldn’t take long.

The Astro-Zombies director, Ted V. Mikels, pours as much as he could into the plot to try to make a low-budget cocktail of exploitation lively and seemingly complex. So we are served a mix of James Bond-inspired cold war enemies, space race concerns, CIA operatives, a sexy night club dancer’s routine, and a mad scientist right out of a '40s Monogram Pictures movie making murdering astro-zombies for the space age. It’s a wild concoction that will buzz the brain, even if it tastes like it has a little too much vermouth.

The things that I am most amused and perplexed by with each viewing of this flick are the time wasting bits of business that contribute no plot, character development, thrills, or interest of any kind. Why does this film open with a very sexy woman (Jean Pirie), in one of those fantabulous late '60s outfits that flaunt what she’s got, driving her Ford Mustang around for at least a minute before she pulls into her garage? I could watch her for the movie’s entire 94 minutes, but I don’t need to look at her car radio, suburban streets, more car radio, more streets… Why do we have to watch an unsavory character (Egon Sirany) with a reel-to-reel tape recorder rewinding a spool of tape wasting another minute while he is being driven to a meeting? Why are conversations among our CIA agents brought to a crashing halt to devote the camera’s full attention to each new person attending as they open the door to enter the room, close the door, and then walk into the scene? Worst of all, why do we have to watch John Carradine, as Dr. DeMarco, fiddling endlessly with his lab equipment and blather on eternally about his procedures to his mute assistant (William Bagdad) who probably doesn’t understand a word of it? In the case of the Dr. DeMarco lab antics, the writers are valiantly trying to convince us that there is something scientifically ingenious going on. However, having to watch Carradine use a screwdriver to loosen three screws that lets him open a small drawer in a boxlike gizmo, then drop a loose piece of a circuit board into the drawer, close the drawer, and then use his screwdriver to turn the three screws back into place, wait for blinking lights and sound effects to perform some unfathomable analysis of the loose piece of circuitry, and then have to unscrew all three screws again with his screwdriver to retrieve the circuit is both maddeningly tedious and hilarious. 

The nightclub dancer scene, apparently at the only nightclub in town as both the good guys and the bad guys always hang out there, is a time waster of some interest as there is a sexy dancer, wearing little more than her head-to-toe body paint, twirling around to a congas drum beat. There is no point to it in the movie but to waste more time, yet I suppose it comes close to giving us some production value. That’s good enough for a lecher like me.

The most uncalled for bits in the movie are those ongoing shots of a Visible Man model that was all the rage in the '60s. We not only see a series of close ups of this toy in this important government lab, but we see an important government scientist putting it together; our tax dollars at work?

Another time-wasting bit is CIA agent hero Eric Porter (Tom Pace) using his lab worker girlfriend, Janine Norwalk (Joan Patrick), as bait to lure the murdering astro-zombie to the government lab to trap it. We watch for at least a minute as we see Janine look tense and pretend to be working as the camera shows various corners of the empty lab late at night (LOTS of Visible Man footage, folks!). The plan doesn’t work and our hero provides a false scare opening up the lab door to take his girlfriend home. I rather like this failed attempt to catch the monster. It wastes more time, which was probably the whole point, but it is also refreshing to see heroes in a movie run into a dead end once in a while. But then the astro-zombie somehow manages to get after Janine in her home when it only knows where she worked, not where she lived. Huh? 

Why do I still like this flick? I need only say two words: Tura Satana! Yes, THE Tura Satana, star of the 1965 Russ Meyer classic Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! In The Astro-Zombies she is the dragon lady type, also named Satana, that flaunts her fine form in a crazy dress that has many slits and openings while smoking her cigs in a long holder and pumping plenty of bullets into government agents.

Satana bosses around a couple of bickering and murderous henchmen. One of them is Juan (Rafael Campos). He has the most obnoxious fashion sense of any enemy agent in movie history. Check out his fake fur cap and polka dot shirt. Is this guy a spy or a carnival ground pimp? Best of all, he has an orgasm when he knifes somebody. He gives the best performance in this thing, except for Tura’s legs. The other thug, Tyros (Vincent Barbi), cold-bloodedly wastes a couple guys early in the movie, but later inexplicably questions Satana’s order to kill a captured CIA agent (Wally Moon). Oh well, it gives Satana a chance to be badass and blast away at her captive.

The only one that shows a lick of sense in this film is Dr. DeMarco’s mute and greasy assistant, Franchot. If you’re going to be a mad scientist’s lackey, take advantage of the situation and use the good doctor’s facilities to experiment on a bikinied beauty (Barbara Richards) strapped down good and tight. I think Franchot wants to create his own curvaceous astro-zombie that will perform acts a lot more fun than random slaughter. Maybe he really does understand Dr. DeMarco’s scientific gibberish, after all.