THE ASTRO-ZOMBIES-1968-In a pre-credits scene a woman is bludgeoned to death by a skull mask wearing killer in a garage getting blood on her classy white Mustang convertible. Toy robots are shown during the credits. Then an auto accident victim is removed from some wreckage by a weird looking guy. Dr. Petrovich (Victor Izay), FBI director type Holman (Wendell Corey in his last role) and agent Chuck Edwards (Joseph Hoover) discuss the experiments of disbarred scientist Dr. DeMarco. Another agent Eric Porter (Tom Pace) hangs around. Meanwhile spies Satana (Tura Santana) and Juan (Rafael Campos) buy an audio tape from a guy with a German accent. Then they have him rundown.
After this we meet DeMarco (John Carradine) who's doing experiments on a dead body with the help of his assistant Franchot (William Bagdad), the weird guy who removed the body from the car wreck. This scene goes on forever and is only made watchable by the presence of Carradine who makes his talk about preserving great minds sound plausible. Meanwhile Satana lounges and smokes while listening to a tape of DeMarco expounding. Then one of Dr. Petrovich's nurses is stabbed to death by someone wearing a skull mask. It/he stabs her multiple times even when it's obvious she's dead.
So it seems DeMarco is creating "astro-zombies", reanimated dead with special electrodes in their brains. Tura wants the secret for her government. Our government wants to stop him. When one Astro's power pack is destroyed he puts a flashlight to his head for power.
There's a little gore and a severed head during the climax which is about the best part of the whole movie. It was directed and co-written by Ted V. Mikels who would make a sequel almost 35 years later that featured Santana and Carradine (well, not really..you'll see!). Future member of the MASH TV show Wayne Rogers was co-writer and co-producer.
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