Bill Courtney

Trailer and Images for Ted V. Mikel's Astro-Zombies

Tuesday, 27. March 2007, 12:48:45

Trailers and Clips, Movie Recommendation

UNBEARABLE SUSPENSE AND SADISTIC TERROR

The Z-movie classic Astro-Zombies comes from exploitation “genius” Ted V. Mikels, who also brought us such timeless family classics as The Doll Squad with Tura Satana and his undisputed magnum opus The Corpse Grinders. Astro-Zombies was co-written by M*A*S*H’s Wayne Rogers and it also stars as a mad scientist John Carradine who is accompanied by a classic hunch back assistant who resents his private experiments on girls strapped to tables in bikinis being interrupted by the mad doctor all of the time. The dialog (as this trailer attests to) is timeless and Tura Satana is devilishly naughty and murderous, just the way we like her.

Some people really diss this gem on the net as if it is supposed to be something other than it is: a cheap, low budjet drive-in movie shclock-fest. One cruel critic complains that he cannot keep his eyes open during viewings of it. So what! I have the same problem with The Titanic and Dances with Wolves usually and those movies won Oscars. And to be clear I love great and genuinely good movies. Those two movies are not bad movies of course in any way, they are in fact excellent movies. Perfect movies, okay. But that does not mean I prefer them over trash like Astro Zombies all of the time. Sometimes I am in the mood for a true camp classic.

I am perplexed by commentors who take what is universally accpeted as a bad movie (albeit a GOOD bad movie in most people's view) then write a review about how bad a movie they think it is. Yes... it is a bad movie! And I think I have seen Astro Zombies about a dozen times and if I had a copy here in China now I would pop it in the DVD player and have a great time with it. They just do not make bad movies like this anymore. Nowadays bad movies are just plain bad and will never, ever in a million years hold a revered position in cult film history the way Astro Zombies, The Corpse Grinders and The Doll Squad do. In a couple posts check out the trailer for Corpse Grinders I am preparing. By the way, if you research "Corpse Grinder" in some variation on the net (of course, why would anybody be seacrching the word corpse grinder in any variation on the net) you will find that that is also the name of the singer of the Grindcore Death Metal band Cannibal Corpse. Maybe I will do a post on them soon. If you are curious a little about Ted V. Mikels and Astro Zombies I refer you to an interview with Mikels about the making of the film: