SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Scott LeBrun Amid talk of transferring thoughts from one person to another, there are also attempts to create a superior "astro man" by mad scientist Dr. DeMarco (John Carradine), using body parts from victims innocent and not so innocent. Spies are determined to gain control of this secret, leading to the expected plans by counter-spies to locate Dr. DeMarco, stop the killing sprees, and foil the villains, including the likes of the legendary and oh so sexy Tura Satana (playing a villainess named Satana).Producer & director Ted V. Mikels wrote this with none other than actor Wayne Rogers, who also takes a co-executive producer credit. It's widely considered a contender for worst film of all time, and this viewer can see that it's not so much because it's so incompetent that it makes one laugh. It's more because it's flat out BORING, with Mikels just dragging this thing out like you wouldn't believe. (It would have been more tolerable had it been shorter and more to the point, but even at just over an hour and a half, it's fatally overlong.) Much of the plot consists of exposition - tons of it. Carradines' experiments seem to go on for days. You just want to yell at the screen for the characters to get on with it. It's the kind of thing where you end up checking your watch much too often.It's a pity, really. Yours truly is a big lover of schlock, but even he found this underwhelming. Its truly fun moments (at least the movie builds to a pretty entertaining finale) are far too infrequent.Satana is the main reason to watch this; co-star Joan Patrick (who plays Janine) is also tremendously appealing eye candy. The cast has a few familiar faces, who are basically marking time. Sad to say, this was one of the final film roles for character actor Wendell Corey, who's relegated to standing in an office and reeling off some of that exposition. Carradine is good, but some might wish that he'd gone for broke and been hammier. Tom Pace and Joseph Hoover are dull heroes, but Rafael Campos is a fun bad guy (as Satanas' psychotic associate), and William Bagdad makes a lot of hilarious faces as DeMarcos' mute assistant.Proceed at your own risk; there aren't really a lot of rewards to be reaped here.Four out of 10.

tomgillespie2002 The Astro-Zombies is one of those Z-grade efforts where you can tell the producers had a bunch of props and sets left over from previous productions and wrote a script based around them. Therefore, the film makes absolutely no sense, and ends up throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the audience. We are left with a story involving mad scientist Dr. DeMarco (John Carradine) and his hunchback lab assistant who are attempting to create an army of 'astro zombies', superhuman beings whose actual purpose is sketchy. After one is loosed and goes on a killing spree, the CIA (led by a clearly sozzled Wendell Corey, who died due to his alcoholism shortly after filming) and a spy ring led by the great Tura Satana become interested.It's easy to label a film 'the worst film ever!', but The Astro Zombies, directed by schlock favourite Ted V. Mikels, truly lives up to its reputation. Carradine, bless him, makes a valiant attempt to make some kind of sense of the plot with some muffled monologues, but I got completely lost in all the drivel. There is the odd moment of camp weirdness such as the wounded astro zombie fleeing with a torch pressed against his head to keep itself alive or a naked exotic dance that serves absolutely no purpose, but it constantly lingers on endless laboratory scenes where literally nothing happens. The zombies themselves are nothing more than a man in a kind of insect/skull/mutant mask, and there's only really one of them. It's a truly painful experience that lacks the amusing moments of Mikels' other 'works' such as The Corpse Grinders (1971) and The Doll Squad (1973), that at least made those films bearable. Truly painful stuff that could benefit from a good thirty minutes shaved off the running time.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

winner55 The problem with this film is two-fold.First, Mickels revealed, in his first film ("Strike me Deadly") that he really wanted to make real films. "Strike" is not a great film, but given the low budget, it actually keeps its integrity pretty much in tact.Unfortunately, not enough so to persuade film financiers to support Mickels into a career in mainstream Hollywood. Consequently (as Mickels reveals in his interviews) he abandoned himself to making low-rent drive-in trash, which at least made money.Consquently, there's an awful lingering sense throughout this film that Mickels, having determined to make a bad film, is actually laughing at his audience. WE think this is 'so bad it's funny'; Mickels seems to be saying 'You're so dumb you think this is so bad it's funny (when it's only just bad)'.Secondly, since someone intentionally making bad films for suckers doesn't really care, the pacing here is really awful. There are indeed some really funny scenes here, but you better have some patience waiting for them.An unsettling performance for lovers of bad films - and not good enough to recommend otherwise.

librachild Astro Zombies is one of the greatest movies of the 20th century! Ted V. Mikels is the godfather of schlock moviedom. Acting? Who needs it? Storyline? So what. Coherency? Nah! What we have in Astro Zombies is rogue scientist John Carradine as Dr. DeMarco, creating an army of astro men - half man half astro robot, tough, sexy spy Tura Santana (dig her cool wardrobe!) and her minions trying to shanghai the zombies for her evil country, and has been actor Wendell Corey and his FBI cronies trying to put a stop to it all. Why would they want to spoil all the fun? The astro zombie masks are really cool looking too. Fabulous nonsense from the man that brought us The Corpse Grinders, The Doll Squad, and the sequel Mark of the Astro Zombies. Hell, the Misfits even entitled a song after this flick and there is a European punk/metal? band of the same name. Tune in this film for fun and mayhem as the Astro Zombies rampage late 60's Los Angeles. Highly recommended!