The Astro-Zombies.

Review #2314: The Astro-Zombies.

Cast: 
Wendell Corey (Holman), John Carradine (Dr. DeMarco), Tom Pace (Eric Porter), Joan Patrick (Janine Norwalk), Tura Satana (Satana), Rafael Campos (Juan), Joseph Hoover (Chuck Edwards), Victor Izay (Dr. Petrovich), and William Bagdad (Franchot) Produced and Directed by Ted V. Mikels.

Review: 

"Something that is hard to teach is creativity. You can teach people the technical things, how to cut, when to cut, why to cut, what to cut to and what to cut from. But if they don't have that creative touch, it may not work. They like to think that because they took a long time making a shot they ought to use it in the edit. It doesn't work that way."

When you cover watch over a thousand directors at least once in going through the road of movies, maybe eventually you will land on the road of Ted V. Mikels. He had been born in Minnesota but mostly raised in Oregon with Croatian & Romanian heritage that liked to do amateur photography as a youth before taking on the stage in the late 1940s. He started making his shorts and educational documentaries in the 1950s with his own film company while in Bend, Oregon before making his debut as a feature filmmaker with Strike Me Deadly (1963). He apparently decided after that to move to Glendale, California and move to a place decorated to look like a castle (for a few years, Mikels would have several women live in said castle, as they were aspiring filmmakers that I'm sure has no other implications). The development of what became his sixth film (after movies with such illustrious titles like Dr. Sex [1964] and The Black Klansman [1966]) apparently started around the time of his first movie, with Mikels writing this with Wayne Rogers (who he had worked with in the aforementioned Dr. film before becoming more known for his role in M*A*S*H). Mikels plugged away at directing/writing/producing movies (the next movie made after Zombies? The Corpse Grinders, which was about cats liking human flesh while one subsequent videotaped movie apparently featured Mikels casting himself as someone to get beaten up by women), which would include sequels to Astro-Zombies in 2004, 2010, and 2012. He was even the subject of a book (called "Film Alchemy") and a documentary in his lifetime prior to his death in 2016 at the age of 87.

It isn't easy to make an ugly puddle where barely anything of note happens with such "name" actors, but Mikels sure has accomplished it here. This is a movie that has a title sequence featuring toy robots and gunfire noises (the ending does just as much). The most interesting person to view is Satana, who you might recognize from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965). It is a divine experience in boredom, languishing with little for one to really focus on in coherence that basically makes one want to yell at the clouds for having tried to spend 94 minutes of life on this. You get shots of a lady in a bikini that is tied up on a table that somehow never gets out of the table to go along with the schlock you might see coming from an opening that gives you that first shot of what the title character looks like: a guy in a mask and weird sounds. The best thing about the movie might be the portrait of Lyndon B. Johnson you can see in the background (he was the best President of the 1960s, what's not to respect?). This actually was the last film for Corey (who died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1968), who had appeared in a handful of character roles such as The Search (1948) and Rear Window (1954). It's sad to see him go out like this with a film that basically lets him go by the wayside in such flattering detail in camerawork and words to say into the ether. Pace may be the "lead" presence, but you might as well just replace him with a broomstick. At one point, one of the creatures holds a flashlight to his head to charge his cells, because of the solar power and stuff. Things just happen in the film with little to really draw it together until it actually happens on screen in a manner that doesn't have coherence. The movie may call itself "Zombies" but it basically cribs from Frankenstein with the whole digging for body parts and demented brain stuff to go along with some sort of spy plot fiddles around with Satana commanding the screen more so for the costume stuff (one time you see her in pink) than the actual character stuff. Carradine is a pro at just being there to say lines for the paycheck at an age where if you're going to be the evil scientist, you can say anything and it'll sound spooky enough. As a whole, this is a magnificently terrible movie that serves as the equivalent of watching static, filled with little promise and little reward.

Overall, I give it 1 out of 10 stars.

Next up: another new name joins the club with a movie all about love and weirdness with name actors...

....mother of God, Bolero.