trimbolicelia Nutty, ridiculous late 60's sci-fi / horror film. Any film with credits that have toy robots, toy tanks, and the sound effect of heavy artillery you can't expect much from. John Carradine plays a mad scientist for the umpteenth time. He's creating zombiefied human robots from criminals with ultra creepy mask faces. The mad doctor's assistant is a leering sub-mental that Carradine treats to long-winded monologues of the science behind what he's doing. Meanwhile a sinister foreign government has sent their crack agent to steal Carradine's work. Said agent is a modern-day Asian dragon lady type with a somewhat sleazy co-hort. An American agency is out to stop the enemy government and the mad doc. The best part of this whole mish-mash is when one of the zombs, in the middle of an attack on a scantily clad girl, loses his energy oomph and has to hold a flashlight to a hole in his head until he gets back to the lab and gets re-energized. Wacky fun. The RiffTrax version could have been improved. The Rifftrax soundtrack can be heard, but you can barely hear the film's dialogue, which takes away from the RiffTrax humor. As for the film only version itself the sound is just fine, the picture and color quality is sharp and clear. I have to add though that as far as I could make out the Kino Lorber DVD quality is equal to the Image Entertainment DVD. The Kino version has some extras though. Recommended for fans of bad movies.

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.

Michael_Elliott Astro-Zombies, The (1968) 1/2 (out of 4) When people discuss some of the worst movies ever made, this one here usually gets a vote or two. While this film is certainly bad it at least has a few decent things going for it. The movie tells the story of a scientist (John Carradine) who wants to create some "astro-zombies" so that he can control their mind and have them doing all of his dirty work. Of course, along the way several people are killed so that this experiment can move forward but a CIA man (Wendell Corey) is on the case. There was a time when this here was one of my most sought after film simply because I had read so much about it but as a kid every Mom and Pop store either didn't have a copy or if they did someone had rented it and their VCR ate the tape. When I finally got around to seeing it on DVD the thing certainly lived up to its bad reputation but I would stop short of calling it one of the worst films ever made. I think the film has a couple things going for it and one is of course Carradine. It's amazing to think that at one time he was one of the most respected character actors around and yet he ended his career appearing in one bad movie after another. The movies themselves might be bad but it's always fun seeing Carradine do his thing and I must admit that I found most of his scenes here to be mildly entertaining. The stuff with his hunchback assistant runs on way too long but there's some sort of weird atmosphere going on. Corey, who died shortly after this film, appears drunk in most of his scenes and doesn't have too much to do. Another plus are the Halloween masks that our astro-zombies use. Yes, they look fake but they at least are fun. The biggest problem with this turkey is that it's deadly boring. There's not an ounce of energy, life or even a light pulse to be found. The pacing is just deadly because it takes way too long for this so-called "story" to actually be told. This problem is made worst by the fact that a little editing probably would help things. The majority of the scenes run on and on for no apparent reason other than to push up the running time so if they would have cut some of this added time we'd probably be talking about this thing as something "so bad it's good." I can't help but imagine a drive-in back in 1968 where a guy took his virgin date to see this thing knowing he wasn't getting any but by the thirty-minute mark the woman had decided to give herself up just so she could take her eyes away from this thing. The badness is all over this movie and there's no question this thing is a disaster but at the same time there's just a weird vibe going on that makes this thing worth viewing if you enjoy bad "Z" movies.

rddube So making up my collection of really cheesy, sleazy and bad movies of the seventies I stumbled over this great movie. Astro Zombies is very recommendable for having some great fun time. Especially the technical advices used by John Carradine are just hilarious and his Quasimodo like mute assistant adds to this. There are so many just senseless or stretched scenes and but the powerful soundtrack (hahahaha) keeps you awake. The outer appearance of the Astro Zombies is also remarkable since I nearly never was so frightened to die from a laughing riot. Definitely Astro Zombies belongs in the category sooo bad that it is a great fun to watch. Even I would consider Astro Zombies for one of my worst movies favorites. So now I really cannot await to get the sequel and dig deeper into the realm of trash. Thanx Mr. Mikels for such a great laughing moment. So if you like trash - GO FOR THIS ONE!!!