Note from Uranium Willy:

QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE

1958/Director: Edward Bernds/Writers: Charles Beaumont, Ben Hecht

Cast: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Eric Fleming, Dave Willock, Laurie Mitchell, Lisa Davis, Paul Birch, Patrick Waltz

Producer of many cheesy sci-fi yarns Walter Wanger had just finished serving a four month prison sentence for shooting his wife’s (Joan Bennet) suspected lover in the leg and crotch – only four months since he successfully pleaded temporary insanity -when he began to put together this project based on a story by Ben Hecht. Hecht’s original story was more of a farce but Wanger wanted it the story to be more serious and turned the production over to Ben Schwalb. Schwalb had worked for Sam Katzman on some Bowry Boy episodes and director Edward Bernds  had done some of those Bowry Boy films and some Three Stooges as well. I guess that is way Queen of Outer Space is sort of an odd little story at best. Many of the props and costumes seem to be left-overs from other sci-fi films – Forbidden Planet, World Without End, Flight to Mars – and the actors are playing it pretty straight but it is a cheese fest from the get go.

The film follows a story line that had already become familiar in previous sci-fi films of  the early 50′s – Cat Women of the Moon, Missile to the Moon (see my reviews at the link), Abbot and Costello Go to Mars, Fire Maidens from Outer Spce and others I will get around to here one day – and that is an adventure built around a group of male astronauts stranded on a planet of beautiful Amazon type women. The women are usually sexually frustrated and really seem to like Earthmen from the USA the best. Crew includes Eric Fleming and Paul Birch and the queen is Laurie Mitchell and her rival is prima donna Zsa Zsa Gabor. Story has it that Gabor was so difficult to work with that Ben Schwalb wound up in the hospital from stress and ulcers. The story’s action takes place on Venus -often the number choice for space amazon adventures – and there is a great spider in the cave sequence that usually accompanies these space maiden films. The color is nice and while the story drags for the most part it is worth the moments when the dialog gets really strange and to see the maidens drooling over the earth guys. The scene at the end where a flock of vivacious and nubile Venusian girls are pawing all over an ecstatic Paul Birch – as egg-head Professor Konrad – sums it all up. Fans of cheesy sci-fi, like myself, will love it. Others may be a bit confused by it all.

All Necrofile selections are candidates for a more thorough article

at a later point in time. Click on banner for more Necrofiles.

INVISIBLE INVADERS

1959/Director: Edward L. Cahn/Writer: Samuel Newman

Cast: John Agar, Jean Byron, Philip Tonge, Robert Hutton, John Carradine, Hal Torey

I just am not really into blogging much lately for whatever reason. Not the end of the world if I blog regularly or not I suppose. But since I brought up the subject of the end of the world I can think of no better segue into this post’s film, Invisible Invaders. This is a film I think I saw when I was ten years old or so and have not seen it again until only recently. But it is film that has stuck in my mind all this time for it images of reanimated corpses that have many people have come to feel must have been some influence on later films like The Last Man on Earth and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. I would not go so far as to say Invisible Invaders is a zombie film in the sense that we today are familiar with zombie films but I would say it serves as a sort of bridge between old time zombie films more modern living dead features. The film resembles more in its concept of alien beings using re-animated corpses to attack and defeat the Earth from to none other than Ed Wood’s Plan Nine from Outer Space which came out later in the same year of 1959. The really early zombie films had zombies that were typically under some sort of ‘voodoo’ type spell and were controlled by some witch doctor or white man who has been in the jungle long enough to learn the rituals necessary to bring a dead man back to life and have said dead man do his bidding. Modern zombies, since Romero and his Italian imitators, are either the flesh eating living dead or humans infected with some virus that drives them into a homicidal frenzy. Invisible Invaders rests somewhere in the middle of these great epochs of the shuffling dead.

While the dead are not ravenous flesh eaters they are still driven to kill living human beings (though not only with their bare hands as we shall see). They are not controlled by a witch doctor but they are manipulated nonetheless by some type of intelligence outside their own instincts. And unlike the army of living dead in Ed Wood’s entertaining Plan 9 (an army of basically Vampira and Tor Johnson) Invisible Invaders features hordes of chalk faced corpses lumbering over hillsides (most of them wearing Wall Street suits) that created the images that haunted me as a little lad. Of course now I am much older and I watch a film like Invisible Invaders not to terrified but to be entertained with outrageously bad acting and dialog as well as gigantic plot holes, confusing stock footage and pretentious, unnecessary narration. Invisible Invaders is indeed a cheese classic by director Edward L. Cahn (It! The Terror from Beyond Space, The She Creature and another living dead classic Zombies of Mora Tau) but it is also a fairly well made low budget sc-fi film with great b/w photography by Maury Gertsman and for the most part a thoroughly enjoyable little sci-fi flick.

The story, like many of the period, centers around the evils of atomic power and research. Almost anything evil found in the films of this period could find their origins in atomic research gone awry. And how much awry can an experiment go than to have a hand held test tube suddenly erupt into an atomic explosion. Such is the case for the driven atomic scientist Dr. Karol Noymann (played by the king of all driven and mad scientists John Carradine). The poor guy is simply holding a test tube and it ‘goes off’ and luckily only kills him. It was a very small atomic disaster I guess. Like an M-80 sized nuclear explosion. The ‘disastrous’ explosion and death of his old friend and colleague pushed another driven scientist, Dr. Adam Penner (Philip Tonge) to give up his career of atomic research and retire back to the quaint little mansion his previous years of devious research have blessed him with to kick back in and mull over his new found pacifistic position in life. He had spent the earlier part of the day with his daughter Phyllis (Jean Byron) and her wimpy boyfriend Dr. John Lamont (Robert Hutton of The Slime People) and they did not hear hedges being moved by some invisible entity or see paths being made in the dirt by the same entity that cannot lift it feet up when it walks. Later while Dr. Penner is home alone pondering the fate of the world he receives a late night visit from none other than his old pal Karol Noymann (a name so riveting that writer Samuel Newman recyceld it from another classic he helped pen, The Giant Claw). Karol is looking pretty fair for a guy who just got blown to shreds in an atomic mishap. Not only that but he has grave news for Dr. Penner and all of mankind; he and they have 24 hours to surrender the Earth to his race of superior being who now live in invisible colonies on the moon (that is why we have never seen them with our big telescopes). His race have been living on the moon for 20,000 years and they have decided it time they invade and conquer the earth. They could have done this during the stone age or bronze age but they figured they would wait until we had developed atomic bombs, jet fighters and machine guns to make it more interesting.

The means by which the aliens will conquer and subdue mankind consists of them basically entering the bodies of dead people and using their lifeless husks as a means to move around cause damage. There are loads of problems with this scenario and I will explore some of them before the post concludes. The aliens are reasonable creatures and offer the humans the 24 hour grace period to submit to their demands. Dr. Penner pleads with Dr. Lamont to go to Washington to convince the politicians and military of the seriousness of the threat. Lamont is concerned with what effect something like this may have on his future career but Penner insists and John figures it is worth a try and soon is off to convince the leaders in the capital that invisible creatures from the moon are on the earth now in invisible space ships and will soon begin inhabiting corpses and will soon conquer all the planet. Surprising as it sounds no one in Washington believes him. Not only do they not believe him but for some reason Lamont’s visit becomes world wide news. Lamont heads back to Phyllis and Dr. Penner with tail between his legs and egg in his face and Penner pleads with the aliens for a little more time. This they grant him and they also offer a couple demonstrations of their awesome powers. First they bring back a military pilot who dies by flying his plane into a huge white X painted on the side of mountain. We do not even need to see this happen since the ongoing narrations tells us almost everything that is happening on the screen. The pilot does not really look too bad for having just been in a fiery plane crash and he lumbers slowly off to a hockey game and not only gets in without a ticket but gets to walk in secure areas and enter the announcer’s box and chocks the announcers to death and gives the Earth fair warning. But another demonstration is needed. So a corpse from an auto accident is re-animated and it shuffles of to yet another sports event and gets in with no ticket and gets into the sports announcer’s box, strangles the announcers and gives the earth some more fair warning.

After two major sporting events have been interrupted the citizens of earth begin to take the alien invasion seriously but it is a little too late. The invasion has began in full force. And if we have any doubts those are belayed by always present the narrator telling us it has began. And if there is still any lingering doubt there is all that convincing stock footage of various disasters like hurricanes and trucks driving off dams. It is well beyond time to get deadly serious about the situation and so the government gets John Agar involved. Mr. Ex-Shirley Temple plays pilot Major Jay. His mission is to get our three protagonists to a secret cave where they will figure out a way to stop the invaders. Along the way the Major shoots a panicked farmer (with a big shot gun pointed at them all) in the forehead with his .45 and it really freaks the others out. Especially poor Phyllis. But after Major Jay explains he was a little freaked by it too. After all the people he firebombed in Korea during the war was different he explains, he never saw their faces. Phyllis must understand because she offers him a cup of coffee and soon she is forgetting all about her wussy scientist boyfriend Dr. Lamont. When it comes down to it most women really want a guy who can plug a farmer in the forehead with a .45 at point blank range so long as he can discuss it with sensitivity over coffee later.

Of course I am not really sure why the team has to hide out in a bunker hidden away in a cave in the side of a mountain in the middle of no where to carry on their experiments but that is what they have to do. Many old sci-fi/horror films of this nature take place inside caves. Robot Monster, The Brain from Planet Arous, It Conquered the World, to name just a few. The cave in Invisible Invaders is a bit different in that the government insures that the cave is packed with everything they will ever need. It it is not in the cave it has not been invented!  The gang set about trying to come up with a solution to how to destroy the slow moving corpses inhabited by the aliens whose weapons, for some reason, will not work in the Earth’s atmosphere. In fact you have to wonder why the combined militaries of the world are having a hard time with these aliens. They cannot sue their high tech weapons on us in our atmosphere. That is not doubt a lucky break for mankind. Plus they cannot remain invisible and must occupy the bodies of dead people. Another lucky break since fighting an invisible entity could be troublesome as hell. The aliens must basically shuffle around and use either their bare hands or man made weapons like handguns. I do not see why flamethrowers and napalm could not kill these guys off (and it does seem the aliens prefer the carcasses of men to women). But the creatures, of course, must be killed off by some esoteric method. But can the small group of researchers find a solution before they kill each other off? The tension is high and Phyllis getting all hot and bothered over flyboy right in front of Lamont does not help. In fact it leads to some old school fisticuffs. And guess what? Whimpy Lamont basically kicks Major Jay’s butt! Well while all this is going on the crew fionally conclude the only method by which to kill the aliens is to spray them with acrylic paint! Yes. This closes the skin pores of the corpse and basically suffocates the alien inside. I still thing napalm and flamethrowers would have worked but acrylic paint it is. This will involve acquiring a test subject of course. How to capture a superior being with the ability to travel through space and conquer worlds? Why not dig a hole in the ground and cover with branches and trick the thing into walking into it? By golly, it works too. The film concludes with some decent walking dead scenes and Earth being saved and Phyllis giving all her attention to a wounded Major Jay (wounded by a pistol packing corpse).

I may poke some fun at the film but it has some moments that make it exceptional cheese fare. The walking dead look genuinely creepy for the time and had the film had a little more of a budget it may have turned out to be one of the great horror classics of all time. There are the obvious problems stemming from the low budget and rushed production, most notable being the unnecessary narration. In most of this sci-fi/horror films the narration adds very little to what is already happening on the screen. You may have scenes with a character opening a door and then have the narrator explain “Jack opens the door”. It certainly made Ed Wood Jr. films fun but in many cases it leaves one feeling stupefied. Another problem with these types of films is the abuse of stock footage. When the plane in Invisible Invaders crashes to the ground it smacks right into a giant X painted on the side of mountain and it is obviously some sort of military training film. And yet it is also these odd little quirks that actually make the film even more enjoyable. If you cheesy old John Agar and John Carradine sci-fi films and have not seen this one yet I suggest you pick it up soon and give a late night viewing. You will not be disappointed.

Not a lot of decent images from this classic to found on the net so

thought I would whip up a few new ones.

]]> http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2010/05/17/the-re-animated-dead-walk-the-earth-in-1959s-invisible-invaders-2/feed/ 3 http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2010/04/22/ray-millands-1962-doomsday-film-panic-in-year-zero/ http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2010/04/22/ray-millands-1962-doomsday-film-panic-in-year-zero/#comments Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:56:19 +0000 Uranium Willy http://uraniumcafe-the.com/?p=9604

PANIC IN YEAR ZERO!

1962/Director: Ray Milland/Writers: John Morton, Jay Simms

Cast: Ray Milland, Jean Hagen, Frankie Avalon, Mary Mitchel, Joan Freeman, Richard Bakalyan, Rex Holman

I know I’ve really liked a movie when later I am replaying the film in my head. Sometimes I imagine myself in the film and what I would have done in certain situations. Usually I handle these situations much better than the film’s original characters did of course. Or I may imagine myself overseeing a remake of the film that, while employing modern technologies, remains true to the original concept. Such is the case with the Ray Milland well directed low-budget doomsday film Panic in Year Zero! Certainly there are flaws to the film if you want to sit back and pick it apart but over all the film works well as a cold war period vision of how an everyday suburban family out for a weekend of tranquil fishing and camping has to deal with the sudden reality of a nuclear war in their backyard.

The capable actor Milland, even in schlocky fare like Frogs or The Thing with Two Heads, handles the directing chores well here. The film is a 1962 AIP low budget feature and it could have fared worse. But Milland’s pacing moves the story along with out it ever getting too bogged down. It does get bogged down of course here and there but I feel that is more an issue with the film’s budget than with its direction or acting. All of the devastation is alluded to and we never see any of the brutal horrors of the devastation an atomic bomb being dropped on LA would cause. Milland plays honest, hardworking everyday citizen Harry Baldwin who is heading out for some fishing in the Sierras with his family. His wife Ann (Jean Hagen) rouses their two grumpy teenagers, Karen and Rick (played by a pre-beach party Frankie Avalon) up at the crack of dawn to get the trip under way. In no time the action begins as LA lights up behind them and they stand in disbelief as the hugest mushroom cloud ever forms over what was once Los Angeles.

Baldwin soon finds himself forced to disregard his lofty moral principles to ensure his families survival against not only the effects of the atomic blasts themselves but against the panic stricken motorist on the mountain roads, opportunist merchants and the worst threat of that that mankind faces in any apocalyptic nightmare: teenage boys. You know these guys are up too good since when they appear they are accompanied by hip strains of Les Baxter’s hip film score. Harry takes control of the situation like any good all American dad would. He soon has his not too rebellious son Rick covering his back as he robs hardware stores and deals with the young hoods who seem to waste little time in exploiting the situation. In fact you could argue that a couple hours right after a nuclear blast might still be a little too soon for teenage boys to start hot-rodding up and down the highways bullying families. Of course in this case it is the Harry Baldwin family and Harry makes it clear that his family is going to survive anything. Atom bombs and teenagers included.

The film follows the family up into the remote wilderness of Shibes Meadows where they hope to hide out and live off the supplies they have hoarded up on until things clear up. Of course the little snotty nosed hoods, who have probably never been out of the city before, are headed to same secluded spot and a confrontation is imminent. The focus of the film most of the time is on how a normal person or family might react to an extreme situation like the confusion and anarchy following Armageddon. Harry becomes a man hardly any better than the panicked people he walls himself and his family away from in a tiny cave. He realizes a simple truth: in the face of utter destruction do what you have to do to survive and deal with the ethical issues later. Like I said at the beginning this is the sort of film where I am placing myself into the story at times and trying to figure out what I would do. Would I choose to hang onto my ‘civilized’ nature no matter what or would I be pulling guns on people for gas and food. One thing I noticed about the film was that the credits did not appear until the end of the film. The title of the movie flashes at the beginning but the all the cast and crew credits scroll at the film’s end. That was not too common a film practice in 1962 though it is these days. I thought it was a touch that was a little ahead of its time.

TODAY’S ELECTRIFYING DOUBLE FEATURE:

THE HIDEOUS SUN DEMON w/

CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN

THE HIDEOUS SUN DEMON

CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN

CAT-WOMEN OF THE MOON

1953/ Director: Arthur Hilton/ Writers: Al Zimbalist, Jack Rabin

Cast: Sonny Tufts, Victor Jory, Marie Windsor, William Phipps, Douglas Fowley, Carol Brewster, Susan Morrow, Suzanne Alexander

For this double feature I decided to write about two pretty good old time sci-fi flicks that are almost identical in their storylines. I even fear I am going to accidentally muddle the two together if I am not careful and wonder now if just one review for both films would suffice. But there are a couple differences that make these two moon mission films unique from one another. The theme is a familiar one for the 50’s and 60’s. A group of men, with maybe one female in the gang, are stranded somewhere, an island, lost civilization on the far side of a secret mountain or a planet like Venus or even the earth’s moon, and there they encounter an all female race of something similar to Amazons. The race may or may not be dying off and what men there are, if any, are kept as slaves and the occasional stud service. Some similar films would be Abbot and Costello Go To Mars (they actually went to Venus in the film) Invasion of the Star Creatures, The wild Women of Wongo, Mesa of Lost Women and quite a few others. The plots are usually the same and some recurring themes would be a young and cocky guy who is fast with the wisecracks who feels he has died and gone to heaven and hits on anything that breathes, a greedy opportunist who wants to pilfer the wealth the Amazon type women horde and a romance between the queen and the group leader. The virility of the male leader awakens feelings in the queen she has not felt in a long time and clouds her better judgment which usually dictates she execute all the outsiders. There is usually a power struggle as well within the female society between the old school led by the queen and a group of usurpers who are simply wanting for the right moment to strike, such as when the queen is weakened by her feelings of love for a big hunk of man. Both Cat-Women of the Moon and Missile to the Moon contains almost all of these essential ingredients and despite being cheese fare they are actually well made and enjoyable movies.

Cat-Women of the Moon is the story of the first manned mission to the moon and among the crew of five is one woman Helen (Marie Windsor) who seems to the object of romantic interest of the by-the-book mission commander Laird (Sunny Tufts)and the number two man the hot headed and chauvinistic Kip (Victor Jory). Kip wastes little time in putting the moves on Helen as she is nursing him after an accident on the ship caused by a rouge meteor. The behavior of Kip is so callus and unprofessional that it could only happen in an old film like this. And obviously while Helen affirms she is Laird’s gal she likes the little cat and mouse game with manly Kip as well. Women in films from the 50’s and 60’s always liked overt sexual harassment as a form of prolonged foreplay and even a prerequisite to marriage. If the guy does not stalk her and harass her then he must not love her. Also on board is the young buck Doug and the shifty Walt. This crew was a result of the space program’s earlier selection processes and it would improve greatly by the time of the Gemini and Apollo missions. For an as yet to be explained reason Helen, the navigator, decides to land the ship n the moon’s uncharted dark side. There is little conflict with the crew over this and soon the ship is settled on the moon’s surface and the crew are out in their space suits exploring the Lunar terrain. Along with all the other normal gear necessary to explore the moon Kip takes along a loaded pistol. You never know right?

Helen leads them to a cave where they soon find there is enough oxygen to not  only allow them to remove their space helmets but all of their spacesuits as well. Of course I do not mean they are standing around in their underwear, they have their uniforms on but I am not so sure it is a good idea to remove your entire spacesuit in an unexplored cave on the moon. The cave has oxygen and that is good, but it also has huge black spiders and that is bad. The spider is a huge puppet that moves pretty darn slow luckily. Helen freaks out and runs and the runs decided to go and box with the damned thing. It never occurs to Kip to use the gun he brought along and after being hit the face a few times by the guys the spider disappears. Soon they realize their spacesuits have vanished (see, bad idea) and soon they meet some of the slinky Cat-Women who look pretty sexy in their black leotards. Kip bullies them with his gun of course but soon the crew are being led to the underground kingdom of the dying race of moon women led by Queen Alpha (Carol Brewster). As it turns out Helen’s mind has been controlled for sometime by the Cat-Women who need a spaceship to escape the moon’s decaying atmosphere, the remaining bit being contained in the cave. Young Doug falls in love in a matter of moments with good hearted Lambda (Susan Morrow) and Walt is soon on the trail of valuable minerals contained in the cave walls. Helen is not always under the spell of the Cat-Woman and Lambda has reciprocated Doug’s love in the same short span of time and warns the crew of their deadly fate if they do not escape soon.

Overall this is a pretty fun movie and one worth a couple watchings if you are a refined cheese lover. It is well made for the time and the lunar landscapes look pretty decent. The movie is also known as Rocket to the Moon but that can be easily confused with our second feature which is Missile to the Moon. If for nothing else this movie worth a watch for the sexy gals in it. I feel they are much sexier in their black cat suits than the bevy of beauties in our second feature are. But it is well known that I am a sucker for gals in cat suits. And with that we can now move on to our second feature Missile to the Moon byt the man who brought us She Demons and Frankenstein’s Daughter Richard E. Cunha.

MISSILE TO THE MOON

1958/Director: Richard E. Cunha/Writers: H.E. Barrie, Vincent Fotre

Cast: Richard Travis, Cathy Downs, K.T. Stevens, Tommy Cook, Nina Bara, Gary Clarke, Michael Whalen, Laurie Mitchell, Leslie Parrish

1958’s Missile to the Moon is usually considered to be a remake of Cat-Women of the Moon. I guess back in 1958 a remake was not as big a deal as it is now since there was only couple real decades of film making to swipe ideas from and in the sci-fi department the picking were no doubt thinner than lets say the western or crime categories. He title is a little strange really in that I suppose there is some difference between a rocket and a missile but, as stated above, Cat-Women of the Moon was also released under the title Rocket to the Moon and so maybe there was some copyright issues involved with the title. I cannot find anything online to verify that useless theory but maybe there is something out there if anyone wants to research this. In fact the very same puppet spider used in Cat-Women reappears here to menace the astronauts in perhaps the very same lunar cave. But there are a few differences in the storyline and way the film is made that makes Missile to the Moon a stand alone movie. Missile to the Moon tries to be slightly more serious in tone than Cat-Women and that only adds to the cheesy quality of the film. Both films have their charms and some people prefer one over the other. I am simply torn and recommend the films as a double feature one night and you must make up your own minds.

The crew is about the same as the first film but with some variations in the characters. We again have five people and one of them is a female. However in this case it is not a government backed mission but actually a private mission run by civilians Dirk Green (Michael Whalen) and Steve Dayton (Richard Travis) who are running out of time to prove that the big rocket he built in Dirk’s backyard can blast off and make it to the moon. One night while discussing the issue after a military officer has informed them that the government will be taking over their project (since NASA is less capable of building a spaceship than a couple hobbyists) a couple escaped juvenile delinquents make it across the barren, hostile desert to the launch pad of the rocket and decide it would be a good idea to climb aboard and hide in the spaceship until things settle down. One kid is Lon (Gary Clarke) who is the incorrigible punk and the other is the mixed up rebel without a cause but basically nice kid Gene (Tommy Cook from How to Make a Monster). To make a long story short the lot of them wind up blasting off to the moon. Seems Dirk is not happy with the government’s intervention in his project and he now has a qualified crew: Steve and his untrained girlfriend and two escaped convicts who never even graduated high school and whom he helped in the decision to become overnight astronauts by pointing a gun at them.

One twist in the plot is that old guy and leader Dirk is killed off on the trip to the moon by when a battery crushes his skull. This leaves only four people to explore the moon later and only one, Steve, who bows what the hell he is actually doing. After roaming around a not too bad looking lunar surface for a while the gang wind up I a valley inhabited not only by lumbering rock monsters but contains sage brush and desert plants, the type you find in back-lot studios around Los Angeles. They panic at the site of the slow moving rock people and wind up in a cave with puppet spiders and luscious moon girls. This time they are not dressed in black leotards but in swim suits and togas. The moon maidens are made up of various beauty pageant contestants in one sequence they march out before the camera as though they were walking out before a panel of judges. Over all the film at this point really becomes indistinguishable from Cat-Women (if it has not already). Gene falls in love with a moon girl but the romance is doomed. Lon wants all the diamonds he can carry back to earth and his greed costs him his life by slow moving rock monsters that an old lady in a wheelchair could escape from. The moon women are a dying civilization and Queen Ledo wants Steven to become her King but everyone escapes at the last minute and make it back to Earth safely.

Both movies are full of goofs about the moon and space travel that we in our enlightened age know all about. But that is real fun of a film like this in the first place. Who knew back then, for certain, that throwing a book of matches from the dark side of the moon to the light side (as in Cat-Women) that it would not burst into flames. Well, probably anybody that went to two years of college at least but the films are lots of fun and not bad looking. They epitomize the white guy in the lost civilization of hot babes sub-genre more than most any other film did hat I can think of off the top of my head. As stated the films influenced many other movies that followed in the 60′s and still to this day what red blooded male would not like to be the sole source of DNA for a lost race of sexy gals in black leotards?

]]> http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2009/11/20/the-uranium-cafe-double-feature-cat-women-of-the-moon-w-missile-to-the-moon/feed/ 2 http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2009/10/07/bai-ling-assassinates-gene-hackers-in-the-gene-generation/ http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2009/10/07/bai-ling-assassinates-gene-hackers-in-the-gene-generation/#comments Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:34:43 +0000 Uranium Willy http://uraniumcafe-the.com/?p=6918

THE GENE GENERATION

2007/Director: Pearry Reginald Teo/Writers: Keith Collea, Pearry Reginald Teo

Cast: Ling Bai, Alec Newman, Parry Shen, Faye Dunaway, Ethan Cohn

The Gene Generation with Chinese actress Bai Ling (or Ling Bai as it sometimes appears if you put the family name first) is one of those films that definitely falls into the category of it ‘could have been better’. The movie is not a waste of time and as the Café has evolved from its early posts I have taken a rather neutral position on most of the films I write about and I do not feel I actually recommend or pan films. I will leave that up to the reader to decide. While I cannot say I liked The Gene Generation all that much it seems to earn a post here not so much for the erratic storyline and touch and go production quality of the film itself but for the presence of lanky and luscious Bai Ling. Before talking about, and hopefully defending, the sometimes (actually usually) maligned Bai Ling I think I will say a word about my blogging process and why sometimes it is a drawback for me.

One problem I have is that I watch simply more movies than I can do decent posts on. I am not the type of person who wants to review every movie  right after I watch it, like better reviewers do I suppose. I started the Necrofiles category which is a way to skim over four or so movies at a time with comments of a brief paragraph or two at most. I work as an ESL teacher in China and the job, as well as life here at times, is draining. I may have the time to write but not the mental energy. I think over the last year I have begun to develop a writing style I like a little. I like to create a post that draws information from different sources on the net, as well as my own personal opinion, and brings them together in one place with images I either find online or make myself in the form of vidcaps, some that are pretty decent. The first thing I do when I decide to write about a film is find articles I like and make them into PDFs for future reference, get cast and crew info from IMDB or a similar site and then start collecting images and then they are all brought together in a rough form and stored as a nearly complete draft that I may save for months sometimes before I get around to writing the article. I must have over a dozen drafts now that have are laid out with images and cast/crew info but no written article. During that time of course I am watching more movies of a Uranium nature as well as mainstream films and sometimes doing posts as well on something I just watched.

Now what is the point of all this. Well, I checked the draft date on The Gene Generation and the draft goes back to the middle of August. It’s been close to two months since I saw the film and to be honest I can’t really remember that much about it but I do know I have no desire to watch the film again to refresh my memory on the minutiae. One thing I remember distinctly is that I had a hard time following the film while I was watching it so I do not think it will help me much to skim back over the movie just to churn out a review. So as can often happen in a situation like this I must rely on my over all impressions of the films and information from the PDFs I made to give the reader some idea of what the movie may be about and they can decide whether or not to see the movie. My feelings about most all movies here at the Café is that they should be seen. I know my taste can be questionable at best but I am trying to promote or bring to public awareness films that are overlooked, forgotten or not well known for a variety of reasons, not the least being that they are simply bad movies. But does bad equate to unenjoyable? That is a question of a deep philosophical nature I may take up another day.

But one thing I remember is enjoying Bai Ling in the role of Michelle the assassin. She had the look the part needed and she did well with the action sequences. She conveyed all the necessary elements needed in a brooding, lethal femme fatale and at this point I will diverge once again to say I am a fan of Bai Ling as a personality while not a huge fan of her films roles in general. I liked her as the dirty talking peep show girl who helped to push William H. Macy further over the edge in Edmond and I have a copy of Shanghai Baby here somewhere but have yet to pop it in the player and watch it.  She seems to be most known for showing up at swanky parties and movie premiers with her humongous nipples hanging out of some selection from her gaudy wardrobe. She has dated or spent quality time with a mixed selection of Hollywood guys like Mickey Rourke, Ralph Fiennes and Lionel Ritchie. She draws scorn and ridicule from every direction but like the proverbial duck lets it all run off of her. She receives the most viscous vitriol from sores of nationalistic Chinese who see her has a near traitor for becoming an American citizen and living such an open hedonistic lifestyle in the west with no repercussions. The same scorn lately has been directed at Gong Li and Jet Li for becoming citizens of Singapore.

She is from Si Chuan province and lived in the fairly well developed city of Chengdu, which has a reputation for simply gorgeous and open women. I have been to Chengdu and did not notice any of the legendary women because I was dying from the area’s equally notorious heat. Chengdu is called, rightfully, one of the Four Furnaces of China. She is no doubt a wild party animal but if you peruse her blog, with the misleading title of Naked Seduction, she conveys a type of human insight, sensitivity and kindness you tend to find in many Chinese people and that is sorely lacking in many Western people these days. But that is way off topic. I do suggest you check out her blog which she writes herself and so there are certain grammar mistakes related to articles and prepositions common to people who think in Mandarin and then write in grammar rule laden English but I would give her an A+ in my class. She has led an exciting and sometimes tragic life (she was committed to a mental institution in China, which usually reeks of political dissent more than actual mental disorders here where psychology and psychiatry as a practices really do not exist) that makes her the type of person that gets promoted here at the Café.

The film is about what are known as gene hackers. In the post apocalyptic civilization we see in the film people with a certain type of DNA are allowed to live outside what are essentially ghettoes and the gene hackers steal the proper DNA sequence and sell it to people who want to escape the horror and drudgery of life in the dark and violent world they are trapped in. The film here resembles, in look and concept, some other films like Blade Runner, Gattaca and The Matrix. But of course those were all great movies and when you rip-off ideas and visual appearances from great movies you had better do a good job of your movie will simply look like a rip-off. I am not saying that The Gene Generation is a horrible rip-off but it suffers from trying too hard to look like something else than it is. One good example is the use of the hovering crafts over the city the way they hovered over future LA in Blade Runner, with the huge faces of Japanese women promoting products or services while Vangelis’s haunting soundtrack played in the background. In The Gene Generation we have basically the same thing. Huge dirigibles that resemble Chinese junks hover over the ghetto advertising some things or promoting propaganda. It looks sort of cool even given the low budget but it is too obvious that the idea came from Blade Runner and that is not really a bad thing.

There is a group of evil scientists who want to take a DNA device that can be used as a medical wonder tool and turn it into a weapon of some sort. The team is, or was led, by Dr. Hayden, who has had her DNA all scrambled up by the device is now hangs from the wall in a mass of slithering tentacles in a state of constant pain. Hayden is played by Faye Dunaway who appears as herself on screen for all of about five minutes. The one remaining by one of it inventors Christian (Alec Newman) who does not want the device used for evil ends. Of course Hayden and her equally evil associates want the device back and will stop at nothing to get it. Now as it so happens Christian’s next door neighbor happens to be Michelle (Bai Ling) who is a paid assassin who kills gene hackers. Little does she know that down the chain her employer actually happens to be one of the evil scientists looking for Christian and the DNA contraption.

Their paths cross when her sniveling weasel of a brother Jackie (Perry Shen) breaks into Christian’s apartment to steal things to pay off gambling debts to a loan shark who seems to have a perverse attraction to Jackie as well as an urge to kill him. The story really gets too convoluted here and that is where most of the problems arise. Too much time is spent on trying to get under the surface of the sibling discord and they both ask each the other ‘would mom and dad be proud of what you do’? Michelle is always bailing out Jackie but this time he has gone too far and the gangsters accept her paying off the debts but they have decided to do in the little smart ass anyway. Michelle gets all tangled up with Christian in more ways than one. And if I have to spell it out for you Bai Ling gets naked with him.

Some people criticize the action sequences but I thought they were pretty good. I may have some reservations about the over use of CGI blood spatter rather than good old fashioned real fake blood but that is where a lot of new films seem to be headed and in particular here in Asia. The film is working on a low budget and spotty script but young Asian director Pearry Reginald Teo handles things admirably and with a bigger budget and tighter script I think will turn out some good, gritty films in the future. The story is based on a comic book but I did not check into that too much. I just wish there had more action in this one and less brother/sister/family emotional struggle. Now living in Asia I know that that theme can be more important in films than in the West and we are even treated to a protracted and excruciating death scene that is really becoming cliché in Japanese, Korean and Hong Kong films. Probably in mainland Chinese films as well but I end to avoid movies made on the mainland because they are not watchable anymore to me. If Bai Ling had killed more bad guys and been naked more this would have been a pretty good movie. Sadly her skills wasted by trying to emote too much with her loser brother who we never come to like anyway. There are certainly moments in this film and I would not be adverse to a better budgeted sequel. The film has a following so who knows. I would only watch it however  if sultry and sassy Bai Ling returned as Michelle.

TRAILER FOR THE GENE GENERATION

]]> http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2009/10/07/bai-ling-assassinates-gene-hackers-in-the-gene-generation/feed/ 2 http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2009/08/30/the-uranium-cafe-matineee-the-green-slime/ http://uraniumcafe-the.com/2009/08/30/the-uranium-cafe-matineee-the-green-slime/#comments Sun, 30 Aug 2009 07:03:15 +0000 Uranium Willy http://uraniumcafe-the.com/?p=6701

TODAY’S AMAZING FEATURE:

THE GREEN SLIME

THE SORCERERS

1967/Director: Michael Reeves/ Writers: Michael Reeves, Tom Baker

Cast: Boris Karloff, Cahterine Lacey, Elizabeth Ercy, Ian Ogilvy, Victor Henry, Sally Sheridan, Susan George

Michael Reeves was an aspiring and ambitious young British director who only directed three films before his untimely death at the age of twenty-five by barbiturate overdose. It has never been assumed his death was a suicide and that he simply took a little too much of the strong medications (often over prescribed in the 60’s) to alleviate his depression and anxiety. His first film is nothing too fancy and often people assume that The Sorcerers was his first project. He actually filmed the low budget Italian horror film Revenge of the Blood Beast (La Sorella di Satana) in 1965 which featured the British actress Barbara Steele who was working in Italy at the time. His last film is considered not only his best but one of the best British horror films of the period, The Witchfinder General. AIP insisted that the film feature Vincent Price and legend has it that Reeves was none too impressed with Price’s trademark overacting and the two were often in heated debate as to the proper interpretation of Price’s Matthew Hopkins character. At one point Price became so infuriated with Reeves’ criticisms that he pronounced “Young man I have made 84 films. What have you done?” to which Reeves replied “I have made two good ones”. In the end Price was to come around to Reeves’ point of view and was more than pleased with the finished product and the two became and the two would work together on The Oblong Box though Reeves’ directorial involvement was cut short due to his premature death.

The 1967 film The Sorcerers, featuring Boris Karloff, Catherine Lacey, Elizabeth Ercy, and Reeves’ dangerously handsome good friend, who starred in most of his work, Ian Ogilvy, is a low budget film with a whacky concept that actually works very well. This is in no small part due to Reeves’ direction and the spirited performances of the entire cast. Horror icon Karloff looks weak and tired and yet turns in a fine performance as the aging and slightly embittered hypnotist Prof. Marcus Monserrat. Ogilvy is perfectly cast as the jaded London teenager Mike Roscoe who is bored and burned out and is looking for something to jolt him out of his doldrums. But really excellent and disturbing is the once stunning Catherine Lacey as Karloff’s wife Estelle, an old and weary woman who has never had the chance to experience the life the way she always wanted. Monserrat’s hypnotist career has severely suffered after a journalist attempted to expose him as fraud some years earlier. The experience has left him disillusioned and me can only maintain his practice by posting little index card type ads on the front of local markets. Marcus and Nicole live a mundane and near squalid existence and seem to have nothing better to do than wait for the Reaper to pay them a visit. But Marcus has not been sitting by idly in his waning years. He has been developing a sort of mind/thought transfer machine in the spare room. He feels the machine, which he wants to use to assist people with depression and anxiety, is ready to test but they need a suitable subject. Who could be suitable than the bored and apathetic Michael who spends his time at a local club with his girlfriend Nicole (the lovely Elizabeth Ercy) and his pal Alan (Victor Henry) watching people dance and listening to bands play hip, psychedelic rock music with horrible 60’s style guitar solos. Michael leaves the clubs in a state of utter boredom and this suits Alan just fine as he can now dance with Nicole who he obviously fancies.

Marcus zeroes in on Michael at a local restaurant and offers him a chance to have a fantastic experience, one that will basically blow his mind. Michael is suspicious but how dangerous can this old guy be and he follows him back to his musky old flat. He meets Nicole and soon is ready to get on with it and he is ushered into the “secret” room where he sees the mind control contraption. The device is pretty low budget, sci-fi laboratory material but we must remember that Prof. Monserrat lives on pretty modest means he has put this together piecemeal over a period of many years. But to be fair, the machine and peripheral devices-reel to reel recorders, slide projector and gogo bar lights does not look too bad. Michael is treated to a weird light show and dissonant sound effects and when the machine is turned off his mind, unbeknownst to him, is now controlled by Marcus and Estelle. They have him do some small tasks, like selecting a particular egg in the frig and then breaking it, by remote suggestion as he waits in the living room. He is told he can go and that he will remember nothing of what happened. But the truth is Marcus wants to test Michael from a distance, to see if he and Estelle can still control his mind. They are soon experiencing the sensations of the night club that Michael returns to. Still later they experience Michael taking a dip with Nicole in a swimming pool.

It is all simply thrilling and wonderful for the old couple who have grown too old to have such wild and exuberant sensations. In particular Estelle seems captivated by the vicarious adventure she is having through Michael. She sees this as a chance to catch up the life they have been deprived of because of Marcus’ ruined career and their subsequent poverty. Marcus is not too thrilled with the idea but gives and next he and Estelle are living out the experience of Michael breaking into a clothing store to steal a fur coat Estelle has long coveted. He barely manages to escape from the police and cuts his hand in the process. Both Marcus and Estelle look and see they have received cuts on their hands as well. This creates personal issues for Michael as he stood up Nicole on a date by leaving with no explanation. Later she calls Alan who is beaming with joy at the prospect of going dancing at the club with Nicole alone. He does not think Michael treats her the way she should be treated. He is right of course but guess whose bed she is always warming?

Soon Estelle is pushing the limits of the experiences against Marcus’ protests. Her powers of mind control are stronger than his and he is soon exhausted and too weak to fight back. Soon Michael swipes Alan’s motorbike and takes Nicole on a high speed joy ride that terrifies her. Later when Alan confronts him Estelle has Michael get into a fight and brutally beats Alan and his boss senseless. Michael runs off confused as Nicole stares in terror. Marcus has had enough but Estelle has gone over the deep end now. Not only is her will stronger but she has no qualms about kicking Marcus’ walking stick out form under him sending him crashing to the floor, where he spends the rest of the film. Things are spinning out of control for Michael and he seeks the company of an old lover named Audrey (played by a waifish but still naughty looking Susan George). Estelle raises the stakes as far as they will go and she has Michael murder Audrey with a pair of scissors. This makes Estellle nearly drunk with glee. I make something clear here that I was never so relieved that Estelle did not want to experience Michael having sex with Audrey. I just think that would have been too freaky. Later she has Michael strangle a singer at the club he frequents. A patched up Alan and Nicole see him leave with the girl and the next day confront him at the antique store he works at after they read the headlines. The cops get into the matter and after Michael whoops Alan’s ass again he is off in a car followed by the cops,  in a pretty good car cahse sequence for the time, and Nicole and Alan. The film concludes with Marcus gaining enough will power to intervene and soon Alan loses control of the car and burns to death, which results in Marcus and Nicole having the same grisly experience.

The film works well considering the low budget it was given. Ogilvy plays the typical angry British teenager lad of the time. Suspicious of authority, bored with life and tradition though stuck in the middle of it (as with his prosaic job as a sales clerk in a hoity-toity antique store). His acting style is lose and more of the method acting style that was developing in the States at the time. Karloff and Lacey’s acting style is old school and it all meshes together fine. Karloff could have done a simple mad scientist role but he chose to make his Prof. Monserrat a man stricken with age and despair but not one stricken with grandiose dreams of ruling the world with his invention. What was surprising for me was the transformation Estelle went through as she changes from a docile housewife to a psychotic maniac. Karloff liked the role very much and offered many rewrite suggestions related to his character. It is a film that could have become just campy and corny in lesser collective hands. One cannot help but wonder what Reeves may have went on to do had he not died so early.

TRAILER FOR THE SORCERERS

THE ASTRO-ZOMBIES

1968/Director: Ted V. Mikels/Writers: Ted V. Mikels, Wayne Rogers

Cast: Wendell Corey, John Carradine, Tom Pace, Joan Patrick, Tura Satana, Rafael Campos, Joe Hoover

I have to admit that I have been on a real super B-movie or Z-grade film roll for a long while. God knows I watch more of this stuff lately than I can keep up with as far as posting goes. I may soon be shifting gears for a couple posts and do some posts on some other films I have seen lately, like Mr. Majestyk with Charles Bronson, or the Getaway with Steve McQueen or a Japanese film like Woman of the Dunes or Onibaba.  For a while comic book and music posts are on the back burner simply because they take a lot of work and I am not sure that that is what people come here for. It is also easy for me to do b-movie posts because  I simply love these old B-movies and love writing about them and promoting them. And few Z-grade films have a more special place for me than Ted V. Mikels’ bewildering The Astro-Zombies (sometimes listed as simply Astro Zombies. The poster art says Astro Zombies or Astro-Zombies-with hyphen- while the opening credits say The Astro-Zombies). I picked this up long ago on VHS and saw it a couple times and really knew little about it other than who John Carradine and Tura Satana were. I will have to admit that this film is not fort everyone, but I love it. Yes, there is tons of padding and wasted opportunities. I feel Tura Satana is not used on screen enough and John Carradine is fun as yet another mad scientist but spends too much time tweaking equipment and babbling pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo to his mute and imbecilic henchman and not enough time really being insane and misguided.

But the film is ultimately good and unintentionally campy fun for the super cheese cognoscenti and the dialog is priceless. Whether or not the film was actually intended to be campy or not is a topic for debate I suppose. The dialog is all the more an oddity because the script was co-written by Wayne Rogers, Trapper John from TV’s M*A*S*H. Roger’s was also co-producer and a lot of the property used in the film belonged to him. The film is torn to shreds usually in sites online that I always thought were supposed to pander this stuff. It is a bad film and going into the movie with that knowledge will not make it any better. If you are not a fan of really bad cinema then steer clear. But if you are the type who love seeing greasy haired, stooped over henchmen torment tied up girls in bikinis for no explainable reason, or monsters that consist of phony looking rubber masks with no expression and all of it topped off with the zaniest dialog ever then you will enjoy the time wasted with this grimy jewel. Ted V. Mikels is still alive and working and  I read on his website that is actually planning an Astro-Zombies “part III”, to follow the 2002 straight to DVD release Mark of the Astro-Zombies, which starred Tura Satana. This will not be the only film Mikels film to be featured here at the Café. Coming eventually: The Doll Squad (again with Tura Satana), Blood Orgy of the She Devils, and The Corpse Grinders. You have been informed, or warned depending on your personal tastes.

The film starts off with a day for night scene of a woman driving a sweet looking white Ford Mustang convertible with historically relevant shots of the dashboard. She parks her car in a suburban house and soon is attacked and killed by an Astro-Zombie. There was some special reason she was singled out and murdered but I forget that reason right now. You always know an Astro-Zombie is about to attack because of the loud, strange music that announced his arrival. Now you may well be wondering what the hell an Astro-Zombie is exactly. Well simply because I have seen this film about six times does not mean I understand anything about it okay. One professor DeMarco (a mad scientist played by the king of mad scientists John Carradine) was recently dismissed from NASA because of his Astro-Zombie. Seems he could not discriminate between the body of an air force officer and a cadaver and was let go from the team. That will usually do it. The basic idea seems to be that the Astro-Zombie would actually someday be a type of cyborg astronaut that could be controlled by radio wave transmissions from the ground. Why this is necessary is never explained.

DeMarco of course now works in secret with his mute, imbecilic and hunched over associate Franchot (William Bagdad who played in a couple other Mikels’ features) and his visions of what the Astro-Zombie can ultimately accomplish has increased in grandeur since he got canned from his cushy job. He now imagines that all the knowledge of the worlds great minds can be assembled into some sort of computer chip type device and implanted onto the Astro-Zombie and this will be of great assistance to the astronaut while in orbit. Franchot has the miserable task of harvesting body parts for DeMarco’s experiments and at the beginning of the film he seen gathering parts following a car accident. Luckily he must have standing by the shoulder of the isolated stretch of road just as the car plunged over into the ravine below. When Franchot is not busy with this grisly task he is either listening to DeMarco’s convoluted scientific ramblings, watching DeMarco tweak circuit boards for minutes at a time or pursuing his own private experiments on bound up bikini girls.

A group of men associated with DeMarco and his former experiments at NASA have began to worry that the recent wave of mutilation murders around LA may be connected to DeMarco. The team is headed by Dr. Holman (played by character actor Wendell Corey who was now ill and battling the late state alcoholism and cirrhosis of the liver from which he would soon die). Brought to assist in the undercover type operation is Eric Porter (Tom Pace from the Girl in the Golden Boots) is one of those sort of handsome guys of the time who can’t really act even when given a good script and believable lines and overacts at being either charming or tough. The office room dialog between Holman, Porter and the other guys is simply great. I am going to try and rip some dialog samples and post those at the bottom if they are successful. Well things are even more complex than they seem already because DeMarco and his secrets are being sought by dragon lady Satana (played by Tura Satana, the tough talkin’ gal who immortalized the Russ Meyer character Varla in Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!) who is a spy from an unnamed country. Her switchblade welding heavy is Juan (Rafael Campos) who also happens to be an electronics genius.

There are some dealings with a underworld people with Russian accents that go askew and a couple guys get stabbed and ran over in a parking lot. Later lascivious Satana is lying on the sofa, smoking from a cigarette holder in her slit gown that all oriental spies wear around the house, listening to the tapes made by DeMarco about his Astro-Zombie experiments. For some reason I cannot fully recall some CIA guys had a hunch that earlier some shady dealing were going to go down at a shady nightclub. They manage to let the Russian spies get killed off without noticing but later wind up at Satana’s hideout in the suburbs and wind up getting caught, tortured and killed off themselves. In one great scene Satana puts out a cigarette on the CIA guy’s face. Too bad there were not more scenes like this of Tura Satana acting evil and merciless. Later a cute lab assistant is killed by an Astro-Zombie back at the space center I guess. Security must be lax.  We know the girl is going to die because she is too sweet and volunteers to take the shift for her college Joan (Janine Norwalk) so she can out with lover boy Tom. We also know when she will die because the loud Astro-Zombie approached music begins seconds before the girl has her blouse ripped off and then repeatedly stabbed. The death scenes in Mikels’ films are not usually too brutal and the sex stuff is played down. He never made a nudie as far as I am aware of. The death scene here is a little more over the top than is typical but still not gory by any stretch. Probably not suitable for Mormons.

There is plenty of padding in the film that may be painful for some viewers. What does it say about me that I actually replay these types of scenes and watched them over? There are long stretches of “action” shot in the laboratory with nothing much happening other than noisy blood transfusions and Franchot conducting his experiments on some poor, struggling girl in a gold bikini. We never find out what these experiments are but in one scene Franchot is holding what looks like old radio transistors and smiles perversely as the camera cut back and forth between him looking at the transistor and the girl tied to the lab table. Sadly we never discover what he does with the transistor but I bet there were some discomfort involved. In a sequence that happens in low budget cop films more often than I can to recount undercover agent Tom Pace figures that the Astro-Zombie was actually trying to return to the lab to murder Joan and killed the other girl by mistake and will probably return and asks Joan to be a decoy. She is not a trained policewoman nor is she given a gun but she seems to agree that this is the best way to trap the beast and goes along with the plan. The Astro-Zombie is a tricky devil and never shows up but instead suddenly appears, with blaring music, in Joan’s bedroom while she is in her slip. Tom is outside monkeying with the circuit breaker but manages to chase off the Astro-Zombie. During the conflict the Astro-Zombie’s solar cell is knocked off and in desperate need of power grabs a flashlight and sticks it in the little hole on his forehead.

Juan has figured out where DeMarco’s hideout in the suburbs is by analyzing transmissions to and from the Astro-Zombie and the cops figure it out some other. Needless to say everyone winds up at Demarco’s place at the same time. I should make clear that there are two, yes two, Astro-Zombies. The one that is running around killing everyone is the one that received the brain of a deranged criminal so you have to expect that sort of thing. The other Astro-Zombie is still being put together but once he is completed he will be the physically, intellectually and morally superior human that all Frankenstein type mad scientist long to create. Of course they always screw up the first prototype by putting a blasted deranged criminal’s brain into the body!

Of course fast thinking Tom decides it would be a good idea to bring Joan to the place where the murderous monster is kept and then just leave her alone waiting in the back yard without even a gun, telling her to just wait and not move. Satana and her gang arrive first and in a pretty unequal knife fight Juan kills Franchot. He himself is later shot when he runs out into the open firing his pistol like James Cagney at the cops. DeMarco suddenly decides he must destroy the evil Astro-Zombie and Satana offs him with her silencered pistol. She winds up dying along the Astro-Zombie in some power box hanging on the wall. And that about wraps it up except for the heroes all standing together at the end and saying some lines about DeMarco not understanding human emotions. The closing sequence is made is the same as the opening and I think is pretty cool. Little toy robots walk around the haze made by one of those old smoke bombs you got at the 4th of July and the soundtrack is some interesting though dissonant noise. But why take my word for any of this when you can see the entire film here at the Uranium Café Matinee. Certainly one of my favorite Grade-Z films. I may poke some fun at it but I enjoy this film and appreciate Mikels’ energy and enthusiasm. Like Ed Wood Jr. he just wanted to make movies and often invested everything he had into getting the things made and distributed. He usually did the production, direction, editing and camera work. Okay, he may not be Orson Welles, but this is great stuff.

Conference Room Dialog

Download audio file (Conference_Room_Dialog.mp3)

Demarco 01

Download audio file (DeMarco01.mp3)

Demarco 02

Download audio file (DeMarco02.mp3)

Death by Astro Zombie

Download audio file (Death_By_Astro_Zombie.mp3)

Satana Takes Care of CIA Guy

Download audio file (Satana_Takes_Care_Of_CIA_Guy.mp3)

TODAY’S MIND NUMBING FEATURE:

THE ASTRO-ZOMBIES

TRAILER FOR ASTRO ZOMIES

Post coming shortly on this great American classic.

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