"The Astro-Zombies"

[Fearless Freep]

A few nights ago I watched two bad movies, the first was The Astro-Zombies, a confused and silly B movie from 1969 starring John Carradine and a few other people.  I'm not sure if this one ever got the MST3K treatment, but it could've.

The general plot is that Dr.DeMarco (Carradine) was working on expirments to reanimate dead tissue but when his ethics went over the line in his expiriments, he continued his work from his basement.  One of his test subjects has been running loose in town killing pretty women.  The FBI, aided by his old lab partners, and some foreign spies are trying to track him down to a) stop the killing and b) steal the technology.  A few notes on the Astro-Zombies he is creating .  One, the first he created had the brain of a criminal, hence the killing spree.  Two, they are radio remote controlled (and the "Astro" part of the name alludes to him wanting to use them as the perfect remote-contolled astronauts).  They are solar powered (leading to a hilarious scene where one of them loses his power supply and goes running back to the lab, holding a flashlight to the solar-cells on it's forehead.

There seem to be three main story arcs that don't really intersect until the very end. 1) The foreign spies that seems to be mostly padding; they occupy time but don't really do much except act vaguely evil 2) The FBI agents that are trying to hunt down the killer, and then hunt down DeMarco.  3) DeMarco in his lab with his Astro-Zombie and his assistant, Franchot, a hunchback stereotypical lab assistant.  Nothing much really happens with DeMarco and Franchot so all of their screen time seems to be filled out with DeMarco explaining to Franchot, in pain-staking detail, everything he is doing in creating the A-Zombies.  It's like the movie-makers realize "We gotta have Carradine on the screen for big chunks of time but the script gives us nothing for him to do but ptter around the lab doing 'sciency' things so we need him to say *something*"

This, in the end, is classic 60s B-Movie monsterness.  Not good by any stretch of the imagination but still fun to watch for the campines.

[Adrenochrome]

I really love this flick....mainly for the HUGE ammounts of cheese.
The first night I watched it, I was a little stoned (weed) and tipsy (tequila). I was ok for the first half of this gem; I love really bad cheese! and this movie was providing me with large quantities of the stuff.
Then.....Da Da Daaaaaa!.....the inevitable happened......the "astro zombie" lost his/it's solar power supply from the forehead of  it's/his "zip-in-the-back" rubber mask (zipper clearly not zipped), and had to escape "our hero" by holding a flashlight to it's/his forehead to power himself/itself enough to make it back to the lab, where Master Carradine and his Torgo look-alike sidekick are transforming hot babes into sleeping hot babes by dialing switches and looking at pretty lights.



Post Edited (09-05-05 16:24)

[Mr. Lobo]

I'm co-presenting Astro Zombies at Thrillville's Horror host Palooza 2005 in October with Son of Ghoul, John Stanley, Doktor Ghoulfinger, Ms. Monster and a host of other hosts for a live paying audience. Pray for me.

Your Horror host,
Mr. Lobo

[Shadow]

Where is that being held, Mr. Lobo?