Todd’s Serial Blog

This week I’m going to high light a film that is probably more familiar to movie fans than the last two, or at least to fans of grade z bad movies, Ted V Mikels’ The Astro-Zombies.  Government agents are investigating a strange series of murders where specific organs are removed. It is suspected that a discredited Nasa scientist, played by John Carradine, may be behind them, as his work dealt with creating artificial astronauts to fly space missions.  Also interested in his work are enemy agents led by the luscious Tura Satana.

Turns out that Carradine has actually perfected his Astro-Zombie, unfortunately it escaped and is the one commiting the murders.  Carradine is quickly trying to make another one to capture the first one. After several more murders and some encounters between the agents, everyone converges on the mad scientists lair, where both zombies attack good guys and bad guys alike in a surprisingly gory battle that ends with Carradine and Satana getting killed along with the zombies.

Okay there really isn’t a lot to recommend this film, it has a few good boo moments in it but except for a chase scene a round a pool where Satana takes out a couple of agents and the bloody battle at the end, there is little action in this action extravaganza.  It is an odd mixture of slasher horror, sci-fi horror and espionage that doesn’t quite work.  So why am I recommending it.  Did I mention it stars Tura Satana?  And that she is dressed in a low cut, skin tight evening gown slit up to her upper thigh?

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For my next selection of feature films a serial fan might like for Halloween, I’m going to go with one I found on YouTube, 1968’s The Batwoman.  No this is not the Jerry Warren knock off The Wild Wild World of Batwoman staring Katherine Victor, this  is the Mexican action film staring popular Spanish actress Maura Monti as a rich socialite who fights crime (and does some wrestling on the side) as the masked, bikini wearing Batwoman.

She is called in by a Mexican state police agent she is friends with, who needs her help investigating a series of murdered wrestlers in Acapulco, her reputation as a wrestler will allow her to investigate without drawing too much attention (apparently her crime fighting reputation will be overlooked by the criminals).  It doesn’t take long before she discovers a mad scientist on a yacht is behind the murders, extracting pineal fluid from their brains to create a fish man.

After he has created the fish man, the scientist decids the perfect specimen to be his creation’s mate is Batwoman, and it will also be revenge for her throwing acid in his face during an encounter earlier in the film.  After several run ins with the scientist’s henchmen and a couple of encounters with the fish man, Batwoman and her two sidekicks are kidnapped by the scientist, but the plucky crimefighter manages to turn the tables and the scientist is killed by is own creation while the heroes escape before the now burning yacht explodes.

A fun and campy film that has everything, a sexy crimefighter in a skimpy outfit beating the crap out of henchmen, a rubber suited monster stomping around and killing people, and a mad scientist ranting and raving about his plans to take over the world bwa ha ha.

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As a change of pace this year instead of listing serials that would make good Halloween viewing, I decided to high light a monster movie each week that might appeal to the serial fan.  For my first selection I thought I would suggest the monster rally to end all monster rallies, Assignment Terror.  An early Paul Naschy vehicle that throws in everything but the kitchen sink, not even House of Dracula had this many monsters in one film.

The plot follows a group of aliens who want to take over the world, they could just blow it up with our own nuclear weapons, but they want to perserve the natural resources for their own uses.  Reanimating a couple of dead scientists to house their alien consciousness (one of whom is Michael Rennie in his last screen role), they decide to kidnap a bunch of attractive women and then bring our legendary monsters back to life and  see what it is about them that scares us, duplicate the effect and take over the world.  So in short order they locate and pull the stake out of Count Drac….er Count de Meirhoff, remove the silver bullets from Larry Tal…er Waldemar Danisky, dig up Im Ho T…..er Pha Ho Tep, and unearthed the Franken….er the Feranksollen Monster.

Things don’t work out for the aliens, none of the monsters seem too keen on the idea of being used for world conquest. Meirhoff converts  one of the captive women into a vampire and takes her back to his coffin to plan his own take over, Danisky and another captive fall in love. The plan to use Danisky’s werewolf alter ego to defeat the aliens, after which she will kill Danisky and free him from his curse as only true love can.  To make matters worse there is an international agent getting close as he investigates the strange string of murders that have accompanied every monster acquisition, and the reanimated bodies the aliens are using are starting to reassert their human emotions on the alien consciousness.

The whole thing ends with the slobber knocker to end all slobber knockers as Danisky’s werewolf takes on the other three monsters in a monster a monster showdown, the aliens get gunned down by the agent and his colleagues and then the whole place blows up.

A crazy movie that makes little sense, and top heavy with too many characters, with too low a budget for what they were attempting to do, but it is fun and the final twenty minutes is non stop action.

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