One of my all time favorites.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Nutty, ridiculous late 60's sci-fi / horror film. Any film with credits that have toy robots, toy tanks, and the sound effect of heavy artillery you can't expect much from. John Carradine plays a mad scientist for the umpteenth time. He's creating zombiefied human robots from criminals with ultra creepy mask faces. The mad doctor's assistant is a leering sub-mental that Carradine treats to long-winded monologues of the science behind what he's doing. Meanwhile a sinister foreign government has sent their crack agent to steal Carradine's work. Said agent is a modern-day Asian dragon lady type with a somewhat sleazy co-hort. An American agency is out to stop the enemy government and the mad doc. The best part of this whole mish-mash is when one of the zombs, in the middle of an attack on a scantily clad girl, loses his energy oomph and has to hold a flashlight to a hole in his head until he gets back to the lab and gets re-energized. Wacky fun. The RiffTrax version could have been improved. The Rifftrax soundtrack can be heard, but you can barely hear the film's dialogue, which takes away from the RiffTrax humor. As for the film only version itself the sound is just fine, the picture and color quality is sharp and clear. I have to add though that as far as I could make out the Kino Lorber DVD quality is equal to the Image Entertainment DVD. The Kino version has some extras though. Recommended for fans of bad movies.

Am writing this review many years after seeing this film. I'm a pretty avid film-goer, and I've only wanted to walk out of a movie two or three times over many, many years, but I absolutely could not sit through this and left maybe halfway through.The acting was bad, the plot, what there was of it, was bad, the editing was bad, the pacing was terrible... I don't remember all the details, but I remember the increasing pressure in my brain telling me to get out before I exploded.This is not in the same class as Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, which was a deliberately done bad movie which means that there was a lot of good stuff to laugh at, and not even in the same class as Plan 9 From Outer Space, whose badness at least made me laugh.

As I watched this film, I couldn't help but think that leading man Wendell Corey looked intoxicated throughout the movie--acting listless and somewhat slurred in speech. So, I did a search on the net and read up on Corey's life--discovering that the same year he made this film he also died from cirrhosis of the liver as a result of alcoholism. What a sad end to what had been a good career. Corey had been mostly a supporting actor in the late 40s and into the 50s--steady and effective in his films. Here, though, he was blundering through his lines in a grade-z sci-fi yarn. Oddly, despite getting top billing, he's not in the film that much--perhaps he died before it was completed.John Carradine is also in the film, but that isn't nearly as sad as Corey, as Carradine made a career out of appearing in bad films, so this seems to be right up his alley! It is truly an awful film--with practically no budget, ketchup for blood and acting that seems amateur at best. You know it's a bad film when Carradine is probably the BEST actor among them.Here is the plot: American scientists have been working on creating "astro-zombies". In essence, robots that follow mental commands over great distances--so that humans on Earth can control these droids in space. The problem is, a mad scientist (Carradine) has gone missing and many mutilated bodies begin appearing. Could it be Carradine or the Commies or both?! One of the few strengths about the film is the head "baddie". This woman should probably have gotten a fashion makeover, but I still loved her style--no debating--just shooting people. And, when she shoots them, she shoots them again and again--pumping bullets into the lifeless bodies just to be 100% sure they are dead. For once, we seem to have an intelligent villain--too bad she's starring in such an unintelligent film!! And, too bad that she conveniently forgets to do this at the very end--when she SHOULD have unloaded a full clip into her victim! The biggest deficit (and there are many) is that the film is so dull. Cheap does not mean that it must be dull. Even bad films such as PLAN 9 or TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE are fun to watch because of their ineptness and because they try so hard to be entertaining. This one, sadly, isn't bad enough to be good for a laugh. Not surprisingly, the film is from Ted Mikels--one of the best bad film makers that ever lived. Clearly, he was the rival of the likes of Larry Buchanan, Ed Wood and Al Adamson. If you don't believe me, understand that "The Astro-Zombies" is among his BEST films!!

The problem with this film is two-fold.First, Mickels revealed, in his first film ("Strike me Deadly") that he really wanted to make real films. "Strike" is not a great film, but given the low budget, it actually keeps its integrity pretty much in tact.Unfortunately, not enough so to persuade film financiers to support Mickels into a career in mainstream Hollywood. Consequently (as Mickels reveals in his interviews) he abandoned himself to making low-rent drive-in trash, which at least made money.Consquently, there's an awful lingering sense throughout this film that Mickels, having determined to make a bad film, is actually laughing at his audience. WE think this is 'so bad it's funny'; Mickels seems to be saying 'You're so dumb you think this is so bad it's funny (when it's only just bad)'.Secondly, since someone intentionally making bad films for suckers doesn't really care, the pacing here is really awful. There are indeed some really funny scenes here, but you better have some patience waiting for them.An unsettling performance for lovers of bad films - and not good enough to recommend otherwise.