THE ASTRO-ZOMBIES (1968)

We see a woman driving home, parking in her garage, and getting out of her car only to be attacked by a person in what looked to me like an elaborate Mexican wrestler mask. He stabs her repeatedly off-camera, though in a nice touch, we see her blood spatter the side of her white Mustang. We have just witnessed one in a series of "mutilation murders," as the newspapers call them, and they are the handiwork of disgraced space scientist Dr. DeMarco (John Carradine) and his squint-eyed, mute, hunchback assistant Franchot. Sort of. Much in this movie is unclear. DeMarco has been creating artificial "Astromen" who, I think, can have thoughts and communications from others implanted in their heads through a small computer chip, or something, and sent off on outer space missions. The murders seem to be the work of DeMarco's first Astroman who unfortunately has a defective brain—though why he can't be controlled from afar is never made clear. DeMarco's former associate, Dr. Petrovich, is assisting CIA agent Holman (Wendell Corey) in figuring out what's going on, as are the strangely accented Eric (Tom Pace) and the handsome blond Chuck (Joseph Hoover). But exotic female spy Satana (Tura Satana, pictured at right) and her henchman Juan are also looking for DeMarco for the nefarious purposes of a foreign power, and they won't hesitate to kill anyone in their way.

That summary makes this movie sound almost coherent, but it's not. In my movie-watching notes, I wrote, "About an hour in, the narrative falls apart and you just quit caring." But you don't stop watching, because this train-wreck of a movie has an Ed Wood/bad movie appeal. It's directed by the notorious Ted V. Mikels who, if nothing else, had a knack for titles; other films of his include Blood Orgy of the She-Devils, The Corpse Grinders, Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, and The Worm Eaters. Production and acting levels are perhaps a notch above Ed Wood's, though not by much. The sets look like they were put together in a couple of hours and the Astro-Zombies (never actually called that in the movie) are clearly just wearing masks, though they are sort of scary looking. Chuck and Eric's idea of treating a female scientist to a nice time is to take her to a tiny strip club, lit only in red, while a topless dancer done up in body paint writhes monotonously for minutes on end. There's also a long tedious sequence showing poor Franchot draining blood out of a body. These are the highlights of the film.

John Carradine took a lot of low-rent parts later in his career, and usually, like Vincent Price, threw himself into the role with as much gusto as his aged self could muster, but here he's stuck mostly rattling off a lot of scientific mumbo-jumbo to his assistant and doesn't get the opportunity to chew any scenery. Wendell Corey, at the end of a respectable career in supporting roles (the cop in Rear Window, the jilted boyfriend in Holiday Affair), can barely articulate his lines, whether because he was drinking or because he was just embarrassed, I don't know. William Bagdad as Franchot gets lots of close-ups as he listens to Carradine drone on but isn't given much to do except to drool menacingly over a skimpily-clad young woman strapped to a lab table—for what reason I was never sure. Tom Pace (Eric) has an odd accent, like he was Hispanic brought up in Brooklyn, but the actor is from Yugoslavia. Joseph Hoover (Chuck, pictured above) is good-looking—if you like blond, square-jawed guys—and knows it, and he gives one of the more normal performances here. Then there’s Tura Satana whom cult movie fans will know as the scary dominatrix from FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! She's not much of an actress, but she's a hell of a presence, even when she's just sitting in a room in a tight dress smoking a cigarette while she waits for her puny underlings to carry out her chores. This is definitely fun for a MST3K-style viewing, but you'll feel badly the next day. [IndieFlix]