It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Here's a question for you - JUST WHAT IN THE HELL ARE THEY THINKING WHEN THEY MAKE MOVIES THIS BORING!!!!!!Let me briefly try to recreate my experience with "The Astro Zombies". Have you ever had an otherwise great day and found yourself in a good mood early in the evening AND THEN you see a movie that is so painfully boring and loathsomely miserable that it literally, completely and utterly destroys your mood? Well, that's exactly what The Astro Zombies did to me not long ago.The perpetrator of this crime, that being The Astro Zombies of course, is Ted V. Mikles. And speaking on the matter of untalented movie director's of past or present, I thought only -Jerry Warren- could put together a movie this boring, but now the lame and lifeless movies of Ted V. Mikels has come to light. Mikles is yet another name whose been added to the ever growing list of woeful director's (that have no business being behind a camera), who are guilty of polluting the world with "their brand" of insufferably lame, boring and pointless so-called entertainment. Pure dreck Ted, pure dreck.1967's The Astro Zombies is the subject of review here and as I delicately mentioned, it's an astonishingly boring movie - which drains it's viewers energy with each passing minute. The plot (too deep a word), the "jist" of this film is a mash-up of ideas, that clumsily revolves around some pseudo-science about bringing human corpses back to life, with a certain radio frequency and creating thus "zombies". Mutiple parties are interested in capitalizing on: The Idea of the Century and for the next 90 minutes you're treated to a horrendously lame and vapidly paced movie, comprised primarily of a mishmash of scenes involving: people casually driving around in cars (always a show-stopper!), turgid disinteresting discussions inside police stations (though Wendel Correy's boozey voice is mildly amusing), pointless laboratory scenes that are absolutely and completely static (see the most boring of the movie about an hour in), a bar scene with some colorful nude dancing (this provides the movies ONLY real sign of life) a couple of stock shoot em' up scenes between cops and crooks and if you haven't yet reached your quota for pointless and underwhelming scenes of pure drudgery on cheap and dated-looking laboratory sets JUST WAIT - because this movie really packs them in, each more tedious then the last. Astro Zombies provides yet another truly embarrassing role for an aging John Carradine (the movies only big name), he plays something of a mad-scientist character and he's joined by an diminutive actor (who sports an epically greasy head of black hair) who plays the role of "lab-assistant", essentially just another stock-Igor character who adds little to the proceedings - pure formula, you could say. I mentioned Carradine being a mad scientist, however, he's not very mad, in fact he's not mad in the slightest, here, sadly and all to obviously, John's just an old man who's totally bored and indifferent with his role, in a yet another crappy and entirely forgettable B-movie. "Entirely forgettable" that phrase handily sums up this movie as a whole. Udderly amateurish would also be accurate.Another angle of The Astro Zombies, is this movies attempts to show off the "current hi-tech" which was, not surprisingly, abysmally lame; my favorite example of this, was the zombie detecting radio receiver, that was rigged together from old radio parts. LAME! Though, sadly, I've seen lamer yet (see my review for "The Dead Talk Back"). Though that is to be expected, as low-budget movies (especially in the days of yore) never have good-looking or expensive high-tech sets - never.On the positive side, I can say that the formally lovely Tura Satana (busty Sexploitation queen of the 60's and 70's) is quite an eyeful and looks striking in the assortment of dresses she goes through throughout the movie (you can tell that was one of the main draws in the directors mind, dressing up his leading lady in as many sexy dresses as possible) but that's hardly reason enough to sit and suffer through this woeful bore of a movie."One of the most boring movies ever" - that only begins to sum it up. It should literally be illegal and considered a crime to produce and release movies that are as boring as The Astro Zombies and in a decent world, such films would result in permanent Hollywood blacklisting, in conjunction with a series of steep fines piled on top for good measure.Judging from what I've seen, I'd say Astro Zombies indeed "out-bores" these other notoriously boring flicks (The List, is as follows): The Wild, Wild World of Bat-Woman - The Curse of Bigfoot - The Incerdible Petrified World - Night Fright - Frankenstein Island - The Beast of the Yucca Flats and Manos: The Hands of Fate. And to out-bore THOSE titles is a very tall order indeed. (Note* Jerry Warren was the director responsible for three of the titles on that list).To put it another way, someone who's in a terminal-coma would probably find this movie SO BORING, that it would drain them of life even further.... so that not a single spark of life remains. Good job, Ted you were the master.

Back in the late Seventies, all-night TV programming was just beginning in my home (Cleveland)market, and it was a boon to pub crawlin' rock music / potheads like me; coming in at two or three in the morning, generally higher than Japanese beef prices, we'd turn to "8 All Nite" or "Movie 5" for stimulation, aka trip. "The Astro-Zombies" was an "8 All-Nite" staple, showing a half-dozen times between 1977 and 1980. And why not? This movie was made for late night consumption, particularly when garnished with cold pizza, warm Colt 45, and some funny cigarettes.John Carradine is at it again, bellowing like an elephant seal whilst doing mad scientist stuff in a Kiwanis haunted house-type laboratory.His assistant, Fanchot, has a thing for girl's feet, and possibly grew up to be Quentin Tarantino.Da Good Docta is trying to produce the perfect astronaut, using the tried and NASA-approved method of stitching dead body parts together; this never goes well, but you can't tell this guy anything. The fruits of his labor look like day players in cheap suits, with skull masks over their faces-they are Astro-Men, or (hence the title)Astro-Zombies.Unbeknownst to this dime-store Einstein, one of his creatures has been sneaking out at night, and (gasp!)killing beautiful young women. (You'd think....every once in a while....that a rampaging monster could bump off a couple of those mummified aunts, you know the ones with the mink stoles with the heads still on them, and the lipstick? The kissy ones?)But I digress.... Wendell Corey, as an FBI man, prints his performance in fat pencil on grade-school lined paper, and mails it in-he almost puts himself to sleep. This is counterbalanced by the man- eating zeal of Tura Satana, as the head bad person, blood-stopping in tight Chinese dresses, stiletto pumps, and an entire can of Clabber Girl Baking Powder on her face. (Query....why would a Red Chinese agent have Raphael Campos as a lieutenant?)Never mind.... Ms. Satana is nearly orgasmic in her performance, clearly enjoying herself as she dumps an entire clip into one of her victims, as he floats in a swimming pool, and torturing another with a lit cigarette.This film is replete with cheap chills, unintentional laughs, and enough cheese to top Northern Italy. Buy it, rent it, stay up and watch it; you'll thank me.

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.

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!