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Astro Zombies
[Image Entertainment]
1969; color
Directed by Ted V. Mikels
Starring: Wendell Corey, John Carradine, Tom Pace, Joan Patrick, Rafael Campos, Tura Satana, William Bagdad, Joseph Hoover, Vincent Barbi & Victor Izay
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No b-movie website would be complete without mention of Astro Zombies because, truly, no b-movie education is complete without at least one screening of Ted V. Mikels' infamous 1969 tale of government, greed, and gratuitous violence doled out by crazed, machete wielding, skull headed zombies clad in jeans and cheesy leisure suit jackets. Of course, it all starts out innocently enough. First we see a comely young lass driving merrily along on a bright sunny day in her convertible. Things take a turn for the worse once she turns into her driveway & pulls into her quite dark, and apparently cricket infested, garage however. Before you can say "ooga booga" some dude with a large, bulbous Dia De La Muerte type head springs from corner and attacks, splattering her blood all over her somewhat recently washed white car; giving way to nonsensical scenes of toy robot warfare and the credit roll. The next fella we meet also isn't having a great day, as is evidenced by his limp, bloody body hanging out of his smashed car's smashed car door. Fortunately there's a man on the horizon, literally, to come to the dying man's rescue. Except he doesn't so much rescue him as much as he does drag his now even more lifeless body off into the distance. We're then quickly introduced to a chauffeur driven man messing around with a reel to reel but before learning who he is, the viewer's whisked away to some governmental office where a bunch of suits and uniforms talk a bunch of nonsense. Meanwhile, reel to reel guy shows up at an appropriately seedy meeting place for a little tape-for-cash exchange with super foxy super vixen Tura Satana and one of her greasy thugs. No need to learn his name or anything; after he makes an unexpected renegotiation of the deal at the last minute, Satana has another one of her less greasy thugs knock out his driver and run him over with his own car within a minute of leaving the restaurant. It is then that we get our first shots of the mysterious lair of the mysterious Dr. DeMarco (played by one of the Kommandant's most favorite actors, John Carradine) where, aided by his corpse dragger/assistant, he's attempting to erase the brain of car accident victim. Not completely, mind you, just enough to leave the motor skills completely intact while shutting down all vestiges of free will and emotion. (Leaving the victim mentally similar to some men I dated in college.) Elsewhere, Satana reclines on her couch, looking fabulous in a mint green satin gown slit all the way to the hip, while listening to her ill gotten tapes of DeMarco's scientific mumbo jumbo. Two undercover agents attempt to stake out her pad to see what they can see but wind up getting nothing but the taste of hot lead from Tura and her goons. While all this is going on, another comely lass falls victim to a stabbing at the hands of a polyester sportcoated zombie while her co-workers idly sit at a nearby bar, taking in some freaky beatnik music and topless dancing. With the body count ever rising, the remaining living feds realize they very well may have a zombie killer—or possibly zombie killers—on the loose and that DeMarco needs to be found, stat. At the same time Satana, suddenly clad in an even more fabulous peach cutaway number, and her gang decide they need to locate the good bad doctor as well, eventually putting the bad guys (Satana & crew) and the good guys (the g-men) on a crash collision course with the other bad guys (Dr. DeMarco & assistant) that can only lead to an unabashedly crazy and violent climax. And it does, but not before more killing, astro zombies running around holding flashlights to their heads, killing, scenes of Tura looking hot as hell and killing. Generally speaking, splashy box cover boasts such as "Almost too much for one movie… Must be seen to be believed!" are not to be believed. But in the case of Astro Zombies, those statements are only too accurate.
—Bunny
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