The Astro-Zombies (1968)

The movie is about scientists trying to use radiowaves to control a brain of some one located in space with some one else his brain located on earth. This to make possible long travels in space. Why not go for a robot? Well, because that would be the simple way of course! We follow 3 groups of people, 1. the scientists and FBI/CIA, 2. a mad scientist and his hunchback help, 3. a group of foreign spies.The mad scientist already has a working astro zombie and the zombie goes on a killing spree. This is because the donor is an evil killer who is hard to control. Not only he managed to get an astro zombie, but also created a liquid that makes the zombie invurnerable. The spies figure an army of them would make their country unbeatable so they set out to find the lab. The FBI/CIA in the meanwhile is trying to stop the spies and the killing astro zombie.Sounds fine for a B-movie does it, but this one just isn't. This movie is beyond boring and almost half of it is filler/padding to get the running time up to 91 minutes. In those days a movie has to be 91 minutes to get air time so what do you do when after 50 minutes you end up with ideas? You fill up the movie! The Feds go into a bar where an exotic dancer is dancing so we are treated with 5 minutes of her dancing. The spies driving thru the city to locate the lab: we are treated with side shots of the car and a shot of the car driving thru a pool of mud and the camera sticks with the mid for a while. The lab assistant of the mad scientist walks around the lab with a flask, puts it down, pics it up again. But the worst part is the mad scientist explaining and experimenting half this movie doing pointless, boring stuff we are forced to sit through. The police arrive and we are treated with minutes of them driving and parking, then after being parked driving and parking again.Some B-movie stuff is the girls in their underwear and the astro zombie sneaking up on people in the most stupid ways. The title is also misleading as there is only one zombie and only at the end there is another one who get 1 minute of screen time. Mrs. Satana is looking really attractive so I give her 2 stars, the exact number of her 2 redeeming qualities.

This is a terrible video that is not really watchable. It can't really be reviewed because it doesn't really exists for real film buffs. It is not 'empty calories', which implies some pleasure, but is simply empty and boring. It's a dramatic void where a story, plot, pacing, and performance ought to be. It's a collection of promotable empty elements strung together until it's time for the next film. The "Astro Zombies" is vapid even by the standards of other 'D' films/videos. Also this 'Zombies' is limp and is an insult to the venerable horror films and their exploits that it's based on. With no plot, characters or 'lines' worth experiencing, let alone remember, this video merely occupies space and hopes for the best.

The plot of The Astro-Zombies is so convoluted that I'm not sure I can sum it up in just a few short sentences - but I'll give it a try. It seems that a series of gristly murders is being blamed on a Dr. DeMarco (John Carradine). Until recently, Dr. DeMarco worked for the government on a top secret project where he was attempting to develop a synthetic man. The synthetic or astro-man was thought to be ideal for long range space flight. The CIA theorizes that Dr. DeMarco has succeeded in creating an astro-man and that it may be responsible for the murders. In addition, a group of spies, headed by a woman named Satana (Tura Satana), is also looking for Dr. DeMarco. They represent a foreign party interested in Dr. DeMarco's discoveries.You know, I could sit here and go through a litany of weaknesses found in The Astro-Zombies. But I'll be honest, that's too easy and, ultimately, too time consuming. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. So I'll stick to the biggest problem I had with The Astro-Zombies and that's how deadly dull much of the movie is. There are great big chunks of the movie where nothing happens. I don't mean it's just slow - I mean there's absolutely nothing going on. For example, there are a series of scenes with Dr. DeMarco preparing his lab for an experiment that seem to go on FOREVER! Vials are filled, switches are thrown, microscopes are peered through, and on and on it goes. No dialogue – just mundane, routine scenes of people trying to look busy. I swear that at one point it looked like Carradine was working on a thermostat. And who wouldn't want to see John Carradine do a little home repair project? But as bad as The Astro-Zombies is, the movie's not a total loss. There's enough bizarreness here that someone with a little talent might have gotten something interesting out of it. I'll go so far to argue that a good editor might be able to shave a half-hour off the thing and come up with an interesting, surreal movie. The ingredients are here – CIA operatives, John Carradine, mutant creatures, a secret lab, Tura Satana (who's pretty surreal in her own right), a hunchbacked lab assistant, violent attack scenes, an unknown woman in a bikini strapped to a table, and enough scientific hokum for two movies. But until someone takes the time to put this movie together, the best I can give The Astro-Zombies is a 3/10.

Despite the fact that he had the greatest voice (not to mention the best wild-eyed leer!) of all the 1930s/'40s-era horror actors, he was given very little to do in the low-budget films in which he so often starred during the latter part of his career. "The Astro-Zombies" is no exception. Dressed in a white lab coat that hangs loosely on his skeletal frame, Carradine performs all his scenes on a cheap-looking dungeon set. Most of his lines are gibberish: "Activate the sonic transmogriceptor!" and so forth. There is some fun to be found elsewhere in the film, as Carradine's berserk astro-zombies wreak havoc throughout the city; there's even some gore and partial nudity (the very comely blonde chick who does a topless dance routine covered in wacky, multicolored body paint). The subplot involving foreign spies is painfully dull, however, and poorly acted by Tura Satana and her cornball henchmen. Don't expect too much...just enjoy the film for the grade-Z nonsense it is.