Violence! Nudity! International Spy Syndicates! Mad Scientists! Creatures on a Rampage!

Ted V. Mikel's 1968 film The Astro-Zombies is an entertaining kitchen-sink of exploitation tropes that re-tells the Frankenstein story. Surprisingly, the feature's creatures don't appear to actually be from outer-space, but are constructed with the help of modern science and the body parts of innocent murder victims. After his dismissal from the Space Agency for creating an Astro-Man from the brain of a psychotic criminal, the deranged Dr. DeMarco decides to make another monster to hunt down the first one. In addition to getting some innocent people killed, his activity also attracts the attentions of the CIA and an international spy ring. After being treated to some scenes of lengthy expository dialog, pain-stakingly long experimental procedures (complete with lots of microscope peering, switch throwing and vial filling), this movie starts to get down to business. As the CIA and Commie-spies gun each other down in the race to find the rogue Doctor, DeMarco's former colleagues try to trap the Astro-Man by using Joan Patrick as live bait. Her boyfriend Eric Porter, is played by Tom Pace who also starred in another Mikel's exploitation film The Girl in Gold Boots (1968). They never do capture the creature, but nearly everyone ends up back in DeMarco's lab for the conclusion to this convoluted tale of super-science. In between the spy battle and zombie hunt viewers are treated to an array of horror, sci-fi and exploitation clichés not already covered including: a topless go-go dancer in full body paint, stabbings, a young women writhing away in her underwear while strapped to an operating table and hunch-backed lab assistant.



Unfortunately, all the copies I've seen feature the incredibly bad sound quality not uncommon to the period, and combined with the slow beginnings and convoluted plot viewers may find themselves having a hard time following the story, especially for the film's first third. Still, you don't need to be able to follow the events of The Astro-Zombies too closely to savor the delicious wickedness of Tura Satana's evil secret agent, Satana. It isn't incredibly easy to determine who the star of this picture actually is; Wendell Corey and John Carradine get top billing, Joan Patrick is the love interest that lives, but Tura Satana completely steals the show in every scene she enters. Whether she's throwing drinks in the faces of back-stabbing underlings, stubbing out cigarettes on her victims, or gunning down the cops with glee, Satana's sinister super-spy shines as the most memorable character in this late '60s riff on the archetypal mad science tale. As the fast-thinking and more than capable leader of an international spy ring, Satana barks orders, kicks ass, and kills without mercy, using both ruthlessness and cunning to find and enter DeMarco's lab in order to steal the knowledge of his technology and ship back the secrets to her presumably Soviet home-country. Given the absolute delight it is to watch Tura's villainous vixen tear around The Astro-Zombies, one wonders what havock she could have wrought if cast as the right villain in the right big-budget picture. Still, there's a good chance any big-budget part would have probably paled in comparison to her starring role in Russ Meyer's black and white masterpiece Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.