Mark of the Astro-Zombies
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anton Funtek, Brinke Stevens, Liz Renay, Sean Morelli, Tura SatanaBrand: Bayside ENT Dist
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 90 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-04-29
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Alpha Home Entertainment
Movie Reviews of Mark of the Astro-Zombies
Movie Review: Ted Makes His Mark
Summary: 3 Stars
30+ years after Ted Mikels unleashed Astro Zombies upon us, he unleashes the machete wielding robots on us once more......and little has changed. The film is extraordinarily cheap looking, as to be expected. But you'd think that after 30 years of advances in film making technology, that even a very low budget film could look better than a low budget film from the late 60s. Wrong!! I honestly though the first Astro Zombies looked like it had a higher budget! Mark of the Astro Zombies has that home video look to it that I simply cannot tolerate. I remember back in elementary school when our class would make "movies" as class projects, they looked kinda like this.
But regardless of the picture, I actually stuck it out, and though I had no logical reason to, I actually enjoyed the movie. A very guilty pleasure.
In this film, it's not a mad scientist tinkering around with Astro Zombies, but now an alien invasion. Aliens that look like Power Rangers villains have come to Earth(in a bad CGI ship that looks like that thing the Teletubbies cruise around in) to decimate the population with the Astro Zombies(how space aliens got a hold of these things is a mystery). The world domination plan consists of unleashing a pack of about seven or eight Astro Zombies armed with machetes to simply run around in a pack and hack away at whoever they come across. At this rate, wiping out humanity is gonna take a long time.
While all this is going on, government officials are talking...and talking...and talking...about what should be done about the invasion. Scientists are being called in, a nosy journalist and her government agent boyfriend are snooping about, Tura Satana(who the years have not been terribly kind to) and the goofiest henchman in history are up to their old tricks of exploiting the situation, and a mold of John Carradine's head is still spouting scientific babble.
In the end, the Earth people are just as clueless as they were at the beginning of the crisis, and Earth's salvation comes not from the government, but a new pack of Power Ranger-like aliens. These are friendly aliens because they are accompanied by the kind of soft new age music you'd hear at a massage clinic(the Astro Zombies' rampages are accompanied by a kind of techno, making them evil).
As you can imagine, this film is bad, really bad. I mean, it is Ted Mikels, so we would expect it to be bad, but this surprised even me.
It tries to up the gore a bit, but most of these gore effects are pretty laughable. You'd think that 30+ years later, the look of the Astro Zombies themselves would be improved, if only a bit, but it's the same ol' rubber masks from before, only there is a bad computer generated red glow in their eyes when they are first reanimated. For many of the deaths, the same scream is used, and damn it, I know I've heard that scream before! I think it might be from a video game. If anyone knows, please let me know. And speaking of sound, it's rather lousy. It sounds as though the only microphone used to record the actors was the one attached to the camera, so everyone sounds echo-y and far away. The actors wearing masks(the alien characters) are completely unintelligible.
There's a "Making of" segment on the disc, but it's murky looking and boring to boot, so don't bother.
I can't really suggest this film to most people in fear that they would hold it against me forever. But I will say that on some odd level I did enjoy it. I simply cannot bring myself to give it any more than three stars, but I got quite a few chuckles out of it.
Caveat Emptor!!
Summary of Mark of the Astro-Zombies
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