Cold Fusion Video Reviews

aka Space Zombies

• Produced and directed by Ted V. Mikels
• Written by Ted V. Mikels and Wayne Rogers
• Starring
  • Wendell Corey
  • John Carradine
  • Tom Pace
  • Joan Patrick
  • Tura Satana
• Executive produced by Kenneth Altrose and Wayne Rogers

I first learned of Ted Mikels long before I saw any of his movies, in a Re/Search volume called Incredibly Strange Films where he was one of many outsider directors interviewed and profiled. He seemed an imposing, charismatic sort, with his white Van Dyke and muttonchops, his athletic arms, his boar’s-tooth pendant hanging around his neck. He was a carefree but determined sort, a polyamorous alpha male who lived in a castle and made movies because he wanted to, dammit, and what he made was exactly what he wanted to make. I was, I think, justifiably hesitant about seeing any of his movies; they’re generally ill-reviewed, even in the genre fan community (perhaps especially there), and I didn’t want the ideal picture of the energetic, broad-living bon vivant marred by the reality of crummy movies.

This review will probably come as a shock to you, then; if you’re a long-time reader, you know that I have high standards for entertainment, and I’m more than willing to swing my critical cudgel at any half-assed movie that lands on my plate. (And if you’re a new reader, well, that’s what I do. Ask anyone.) So it might catch you off-guard to know that I enjoyed The Astro-Zombies far more than most people, or at least more than most are willing to admit. It’s a dumb movie, and a bad one, but I enjoyed it far more than I can justify. If I were running the universe, all bad movies would be like this: Still solidly enjoyable and sincere.

As this movie is billed as being full of Astro-Zombies attacking people, we start out with that: An Astro-Zombie, attacking a brunette! Okay, it takes us a minute to get there, mainly because we watch the brunette driving her convertible for a few minutes. All of the suspense this builds up — Where is she going? Why? Is she using her turn signals? — is cut down, pretty literally, when she turns into a suburban garage. As soon as the door drops and she gets out, she starts hearing a pervading heartbeat noise — and then an Astro-Zombie attacks and stabs her! An Astro-Zombie (in fact, THE Astro-Zombie for most of the film) is some guy in casual slacks and shoes, a tan jacket, and a huge paper mache mask. There’s something simply entrancing about having a monster menace that hokey, and THEN putting it up front in the first scene.

And if that hadn’t hooked me, the credits would have won my soul, rolled over footage of wind-up robots colliding with each other while a smoke bomb puffs just barely off-camera.

Anyway: Plot. (Get it while it’s being handed out, because there’s not a lot to go around.) There’s a scientist, Dr. DeMarco (John Carradine), who has of course been delving into Things Man Was Not Meant To Know — of course, because he’s played by John Carradine. Or at least into Things Man Was Not To Do On A Military Research Budget. His research involved all the particulars which would modify a man for sustained deep-space labor: artificial heart and other organs, toughened skin, skull-mounted solar cells — an almost entirely android body, really. And the crowning part: A radio receiver in the brain that would let such an “Astro Man” pick up transmissions from the brain of technological and scientific experts on Earth, giving him the expertise needed for any unforeseen task. All of which is very good, but when Dr. DeMarco moved beyond experimental cadavers to live subjects, he exceeded his mandate and got the boot.

But now, government agents Eric (Tom Pace) and Chuck (Joseph Hoover) have been assigned to investigate the possible connection between Dr. DeMarco’s research and the string of mutilation killings, based on no real clues at all. But at least while working on the case, Eric has a chance to get familiar with the laboratory of Dr. Petrovich (Victor Izay), Dr. Demarco’s erstwhile partner, and even more familiar with Dr. Petrovich’s red-headed nurse/assistant Janine (Joan Patrick).

Meanwhile, Dr. DeMarco has indeed been continuing his experiments. (I mean, come on; he’s John Carradine!) With his assistant Franchot (William Bagdad), who is mute and as hunchbacked as one can be without an actual hunch, Dr. DeMarco spouts technobabble and twists dials in his dungeon laboratory for all he’s worth. Thanks to the body of a recent car-crash victim that Franchot brings home, Dr. DeMarco goes through the process of making this body a suitable candidate for his Astro-Man project: Replacing his blood, priming the artificial heart in its tank, transferring his memories to a small circuit board, and finally, using a neural neutralizer suspiciously like the one in the Tantalus Colony on Star Trek to wipe out the man’s memories and emotions — a delicate process, because too much wiping and there won’t even be motor control left. All of this is explained in far too much detail as the doctor and his assistant go about the process, with Dr. DeMarco rehearsing the technical details for Franchot as the latter smiles and simpers. And it goes on even longer than you’re already thinking, because there are gizmos and panels that need to be unscrewed and rescrewed every time they’re used. This kind of thing would be almost unbearable if it weren’t John Carradine performing the mad science. I mean, if you ever wanted an actor to whom you could say, “Now, just futz around convincingly with the equipment in here,” Carradine’s the consummate professional.

Anyway, that’s most of what Dr. DeMarco does in this movie: Futz around with Astro-Man preparations. The only operating Astro-Man, the one he made right when he got booted from military sponsorship, was unfortunately constructed using the brain of a psychopathic killer, and is pretty much out of control; he just goes around killing people and stuff. At least (it’s implied) Dr. DeMarco makes use of those homicidal tendencies to collect spare organs that he needs, via his transmitter assembly. “As long as you’re going out killing, could you pick me up a kidney?” That kind of thing.

And here is the detail which determines whether you’ll love or hate this movie: Over in another corner of the lab, there’s a girl in a gold bikini struggling against the straps on an operating table FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. She is apparently Franchot’s private plaything, but we never do find out what exactly he plans to do with her; every time he approaches her with a bubbling beaker, Dr. DeMarco calls him back to help with the more important experiments. Really, the only reason she’s there is that, at some point, Ted Mikels said, “You know what this lab set needs? A strapped-down girl in a gold bikini, right over there.” Like I said, this is the point at which either you throw up your hands and find something more enlightened to entertain you, or you surrender to this move heart and soul.

Now. The most active plot thread — the one that most deserves the label “plot thread” — involves agents of a foreign government, who see the military potential of Dr. DeMarco’s inventions, especially the thought transmitter. The trio of enemy agents is led (”dominated over,” really) by Tura Satana, the top-heavy femme best known from Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), with the other two being Cuban stylemeister Juan (Rafael Campos) and solid Pyros (Vinvent Barbi), with the kind of face that would look naked without a cigar to chomp. Huge parts of the movie revolve around them covertly acquiring tapes of Dr. DeMarco’s classified lectures, cat-and-mousing with CIA agents (well out of their bailiwick), and trying to track a radio signal back to wherever Dr. DeMarco is operating these days.

Funny how the American boys never think of that; they simply try to set Janine up as bait after one of her fellow nurses was killed by the Astro-Zombie right in Dr. Petrovich’s lab, based on some tenuous theorizing that the psychotic man whose brain eventually became the Astro-Zombie’s is somehow fixated on Janine. Yeah, it’s lame — but it must be right, because the Astro-Zombie seeks her out!

Even attempting to summarize the plot for you brings home to me how little of it there really is. It wouldn’t take too much creative editing to take twenty or thirty minutes from the 90-minute running time; all one would have to do is snip footage of people driving, shuffling beakers, looking through binoculars, driving (some more), or staring at clocks. As long as we get the absolute best image in the movie: The Astro-Zombie at night, his battery pack having been knocked loose in a fight, stumbling down the street with a flashlight pressed to his solar-celled forehead. That’s the kind of thing that worms its way through my critical defenses and tickles the pleasure centers of my reptilian brain.

I know that I’ve probably surrendered any respect you might have had for me as a film reviewer and a voice of reason in the cinema wasteland. I don’t care. (Much.) I watched The Astro-Zombies, I enjoyed watching it, and I would watch it again. So there.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 14
• breasts: 2
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0