The Astro-Zombies is a 1968 B-Movie Sci-Fi Horror film directed by Ted V. Mikels, starring John Carradine and Wendell Corey in the latter's final film role.
After being fired from a space agency, Mad Scientist DeMarco (Carradine) decides to unleash a race of atomic zombies upon humanity. After unleashing the fiends, they start massacring everybody they see. Soon, the CIA sends an agent named Holman (Corey) to investigate, and a struggle for the fate of humanity begins...
Wayne Rogers (yes, the guy who later played Trapper John on M*A*S*H) co-wrote the screenplay with Mikels. The film received three sequels, 2004's Mark of the Astro-Zombies, 2010's Astro-Zombies M3: Cloned and 2012's Astro-Zombies M4: Invaders from Cyberspace.
This film contains examples of:
- Antagonist Title: Named after the Mooks of the piece.
- Big Bad: Dr. DeMarco, creator of the Astro Zombies.
- Darkness Equals Death: The Astro Zombies shut down when it's dark, due to a lack of solar energy.
- Fanservice: A random stripper sequence a half hour in.
- High-Voltage Death: Satana and the secondary Astro Zombie are electrocuted together when the latter pushes Satana into a fuse box while attempting to strangle her.
- The Igor: Franchot, Dr. DeMarco's hunchbacked lab assistant.
- Machete Mayhem: The main Astro Zombie grabs a machete to hack people with for the finale as the law and the army converge on Dr. DeMarco's estate.
- Off with His Head!: A cop gets his head chopped off by the main Astro Zombie during the climax.
- Our Zombies Are Different: These are solar-powered cyborgs that can have knowledge directly beamed into their brains by computers.
- Strapped to an Operating Table: There's a scantily clad lady in Dr. DeMarco's basement lab who is tied to an operating table for an experiment or two.
- Villain Opening Scene: An Astro Zombie killing a woman in her garage.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: DeMarco leads an operation of mutilation, murder, and human experimentation so that humanity can have a single storehouse for all its knowledge to be used to improve the world.
