Astro Zombies [DVD] [1969] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

Carradine and his conveniently mute French Igor character, 'Franchot", work in a lab in a huge mansion bringing back people from the dead. This is not a good situation. While Tura is pretty (as are the good lab assistant women we meet later), and the spies vs. the CIA subplot is kind of interesting, as soon as they show the lab I cringe because only one thing happens there: Carradine explains every painful little bit of his procedures to Franchot is pseudo-science technobabble like "We must feed this memory circuit through the emotional quotient rectifier!" This just never ends. Apparently Wayne Rogers picked up a physics textbook, flipped to the glossary and started writing. Man, the Carradine stuff is just painful. The only thing that is good about John's lab is his equipment. He has all the bubbling test tubes, of course, but when he is doing his dirty work he straps what looks for all the world like a colander to his victims head; no doubt it has something to do with the dekrelnification redundancy circuiting of the gauss plasma ion generator of the prefrontal cortex of the brain stem. (But I digress. Of course John will tell you what it's for; I must have dozed for a second during that monologue.)

Eventually, the cops get involved and start looking for the Astro Zombies, who are, of course, on a killing spree. There are many plot cul-de-sacs to be negotiated, including my favorite which involves the absolute lamest 'exotic' dance that I have ever seen in a movie; yes, even worse than in Mikels' much better "Girl In The Gold Boots", from 1969 (and notably starring the same male lead.) The three spies lug around a radio detector thing that makes the exact same sounds as Spock's panel on Star Trek, and locate Carradine's lab. The spies try to hijack the Astro Zombies, but Carradine sees the error of his ways, and the good guys show up. For some reason the head lawman (we aren't sure what agency they are from, but are led to infer the CIA) brings his girlfriend to the bust. It is a wild melee and justice is served. I particularly like the John Carradine/Tura Satana joint death scene and the zombie with a machete.

This movie has some fun spots for bad movie fans like me. It has some hilarious scenes, like when the zombie holds a flashlight to the photocells in his forehead to get recharged. It also has some classic day/night confusion a la Ed Wood, and this is compounded by the fact that some of the film is way too dark, especially when the spies and CIA guys are having a shootout in the apartment complex (I may be wrong, but that apartment complex looks to me to be the exact same one from Mikels' later film "The Corpse Grinders". Did Ted live there?) The wacky plot and all it's needless but fun twists are big pluses, but I just couldn't give it more than three stars for the huge chunk of John Carradine rambling on about infusing the memory proteins in the hydrogen recombiners, or something like that. Good luck!