Semiquincentennial Movie Project #39: America 3000

 

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

 

Week #39: Colorado -

 

 

The state of Colorado was established on August 1, 1876 

Details about Colorado:

State bird: lark bunting

State flower: Rocky Mountain columbine

State tree: Colorado blue spruce

Additional historical trivia: 

It's one of four states that intersect with each other. The other three are Utah, New Mexico and Arizona (which this same trivia piece will appear...)

 

Combining acrophobia, claustrophobia and gephyrophobia... the Royal Gorge Bridge is one of the highest suspension bridges in the world.

The Stanley Hotel, the inspiration for Stephen King's The Shining is in Estes Park.

Colorado is the only state to actually say "No" to an offer to host an Olympics.

In 1904 Colorado had 3 governors on one day. Alva Adams, a Democrat, won the election, but it transpired that he had cheated. His opponent James Peabody was installed as governor, on the condition that he immediately resign and give the office to his lieutenant governor, Jesse McDonald. 

Famous people born in Colorado: Lon Chaney, Ken Curtis (Chester on Gunsmoke), Tim Allen, Ken Kesey (wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), Jack Dempsey, Jello Biafra and U.S. Presidential candidate John Kerry. 

 

 

America 3000 (1986): 

It's the year 3000. (duhh).

 "Nine hundred years after the Great Nuke. 

The world man created he destroyed.

Out of the darkness and ignorance of the

radioactive rubble emerged a new order...

 

and the world was woggos!" 

 

(In old world speak that means _Crazy!)

 

The world has indeed gone "woggos." It is basically run by Fraus (women). The Fraus live in "Coms" which I think is a slang for "communities". (By the way, this film is replete with futuristic slang, and it may take some doing to figure out what the hell the narrator is saying... much like Alex in A Clockwork Orange...) The Fraus in question here live in the "Com of Frisco", which, despite the name, is located somewhere near Denver.

The Fraus occasionally go out into the wilderness to capture Plugots (men). They don't need men to establish their society, what they need them for is to perform manual labor, such as doing the heavy lifting. Of course, they also need them to help carry on the population, which is why the men they capture are classed as "Machos" (laborers) and "Seeders" (and if I need to tell you what that means they are for, you are reading the wrong blog...)

 

Our main hero/narrator is a Plugot named Gruss (William Wallace), who acts as the narrator of the story. Gruss doesn't particularly care for his options of being either a Macho OR a Seeder (although from looking at the Fraus, I'd be OK with being a Seeder, I think...)  

A companion of Gruss, Korvis (Chuck Wagner), hijacks a horse and makes a getaway and Gruss jumps on the horse with him to take advantage of the situation. The two boys manage to escape the Fraus because they head into an area called "the contams", which I gather is an area that is still (900 years later, note!) a danger zone from the radiation from that ancient nuclear war noted at the beginning, and the Fraus have a law that says they can't go into the contaminated areas.  A sign they pass indicates that this area was once a part of Denver.

 

Once they get to a point of safety, they start scrounging to survive. Of course, among the things they take that they "need to survive" are a top hat (really) and a children's ABC book (really! really!). And also, later it is revealed, a pristine copy of a vintage Playboy... (Hey, I know which I'd snag first...) They also hook up with a tribe of neanderthals who aren't much smarter than their neolithic ancestors. They only grunt and hoot, and have no real coherence of cooperation. Witness when they try to ambush a Frau food train. They would be lucky if they came away with a Snickers bar, the way they attack. But they do manage to seriously wound the leader of the Fraus, basically a "queen" called for purposes here, a "Tiara" (I'm not making this up!)

The Tiara, Reya (Camilla Sparv), makes it back to camp, but being mortally wounded she passes on the Tiara crown (no pun intended) to her daughter, Vena (Laurene Landon), which doesn't exactly sit well with her other daughter, Lakella (Victoria Barrett). But Lakella, at least as a front, accepts her mother's decision and vows to follow the new Tiara. 

By the way don't miss out on the significance of the attempt to heal Reya just before she passes into the great beyond. One woman, labelled a healer, brings out an old fashioned first aid kit (you can tell by the red cross emblazoned on it... and this thing is not even slightly rusty, considering it's probably a leftover from the days before the nuclear war... remember, 900 years ago...) The Fraus chant "red cross... red cross... red cross..." like its some kind of mantra.

 

Meanwhile back in the contaminated remains of Denver, Gruss and Korvis get together and organize a raid on the com of the Fraus. Mostly to get the Machos and the Seeders free, but also to gather up some of the stockpiles of food.   They make their escape chased by Fraus.

 

At this point the movie starts to get whacked out (it wasn't already?) Korvis is hit by Vena with her primitive but effective crossbow gun and falls into a cavern. 

 

He is saved from death from the arrow because it (conveniently) gets lodge into the children's book he was still carrying... In the cavern, lo and behold, he stumbles upon an ancient bomb shelter left over from pre-nuclear war. He finds the bunker stocked with 80's standards of a pinball game and a stand up version of the classic Centipede game (typical 1980's entertainment still being used ind 2100?). He also finds a cache of, (thankfully), laser rifles that would seem to be more fitting for 2100. 

 

This primitive man (by comparison to a modern 21st century man) almost ridiculously figures out how all this advanced technology works in a matter of minutes, reading the instructions for operating them and making the things work well. (Remember, earlier in the film he struggled with comprehending a child's ABCs book... I guess one of the side effects of nuclear fallout included making comprehension increase exponentially...)

Outside the bunker, now dressed in the gold radiation suit he found in the bunker, Korvis meets up with one of the slave men, who mistakes him for the legendary messiah the people have been waiting for; "the Prezee-dent" (Don't ask!) But it gives Korvis an idea. 

More ridiculous stuff happens, including a scene where Korvis informs Vena that he wants to meet her one on one in the contaminated zone. This involves him first convincing her that he is the coming of the Prezee-dent. To get her to do this he rigs up a fireworks display, accompanied by a recording played on a genuine 80's boom box. And, the funniest scene occurs when the music he plays is a recording of Tschiakovsky's 1812 Overture! This is humorous in more ways than one. the obvious being the standard 4th of July theatrics associated with Tschiakovsky's piece (and if you are not American you may be unfamiliar with this tradition), but also the fact that the Cold War enemy that the Americans fought during that nuclear war were Russians... I point out that this movie did come out in 1986, prior to the end of the Cold War in the 90's, but it's still funny.

 

 

Much of the movie doesn't make much sense if you really think about it from a logical standpoint. For one thing, supposedly if a woman gives birth to a male child, they throw it away. So how do we get men in the first place, then? After 900 years, if there are no women giving birth to boys that are left alive, where do those Plugots come from? For that matter, where are the women the Plugots are repopulating with in their own encampment?  Also, the fact that these women are looking for the coming of that messianic Prezee-dent, whom they are constantly referring to as a "he". If these women are so all-fired down on males, why is their potential "god' a male? And the biggest one is how do any of them have any idea how to perform in bed (so to speak) if there is a separating line between the male and the female societies and neither have contact except when Fraus capture Plugots? 

Note:I'm willing to overlook the fact that, as some reviewers I read pointed out, the women of CE 3000 somehow have a way to keep their hair in perfectly coiffed 80's hairstyles, even though it doesn't seem like the have beauty shops in their camp. 

This is the problem with quite a number of the kinds of films that I watch simply because they are done by whack jobs who are just cranking out films to crank out films. Sure, they're entertaining on one level, but many of them require you to leave your brain at the box office counter before going in to watch them. 

Cannon Films, the producers of this film and numerous others, had a reputation creating movies that were just based on a single concept with no real idea of logic or transparency. There is a great documentary, made in 2014, that delves in the Cannon mythos: Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, that gives a lot of insight into the kind of stuff that the duo of Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan, the two behind the film company, put out.

America 3000 had a budget of $2 million and, let's be honest, about half that probably was spent making all those Fraus look like they just came from the hairdressers. The special effects budget had to be pretty minimal, except for the Tschiakovsky fireworks scene. I can't find any details on how much money it made on ticket sales. It couldn't have been a major blockbuster, since I only found it by snagging a four movie set which included as it's other titles Arena, Eliminators and The Time Guardian, none of which I had ever even heard of. (The second half of the 1980's all, and I would bet all of them were lucky to have even one week at drive-in theaters, and probably no major theater venues...)

With the exception of Chuck Wagner, who had a recurring role on General Hospital in the early 80's, and Laurene Landon, who shows up in a lot of the same kind of schlock movies like this, it's probably a good bet you've never seen any of the cast in anything else.  (Yes, Camilla Sparv won a Golden Globes as Best New Actress in 1967 for her role in Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round, but I've never met anyone else who has seen it...) 

But, be that as it may, if you like low-budget schlock as much as I do, this one could be a hoot. It's worth a look just for the scenes that feature "Aargh the Awful" (a prehistoric neanderthal the Fraus keep in a cage for entertainment and training purposes). 

 

Until next time, drive safely, folks,

Quiggy

 

 

Semiquincentennial Movie Project #38: Children of the Corn

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

 

Week #38: Nebraska -

 

 

 

The state of Nebraska was established on March 1, 1867 

Details about Nebraska:

State bird: Western meadowlark

State flower: goldenrod

State tree: cottonwood

Additional historical trivia:

Locking pliers, also known as "Vice-Grips", were invented in Nebraska.

March 14 is celebrated as Reuben Sandwich Day because one legend has it that the sandwich was invented in Omaha. (It's my favorite sandwich, even over a good hamburger).

Nebraska is also the home of the inventors of ranch dressing, Swanson dinners and Kool-Aid.

It is the only "triply land-locked" state, meaning it's the only state that you have to travel through at least three other states to get to a bay, ocean or gulf.

The nation's smallest city hall (10' x 12') is in Maskell.

Famous people born in Nebraska: A huge number of famous actors, like Marlon Brando, Nick Nolte, Fred Astaire, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Montgomery Clift, Harold Lloyd and Ward Bond, as well as Malcolm X,  L. Ron Hubbard, Warren Buffett, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and U.S. President Gerald Ford.

 

 

 

Children of the Corn (1984):

Those evil kids in Nebraska! Children of the Corn, quite possibly, is in contention for having spawned the most sequels in movie history. Note: I don't include such icons as Dracula and Sherlock Holmes in that because, after all, the many films featuring those characters are not, per se, all sequels to prior movies. As of this writing there are 10 movies in the series, and probably no end in sight. But, to be honest, the sequels have different children in them, so maybe you would not agree with the term "sequel"...

In his phenomenally entertaining book Showgirls, Teen Wolves and Astro Zombies, Mark Adams devoted an entire chapter to the series. I personally have never delved into the many sequels, some of which I hear are just the kind of "bad movie" fare that I have covered over the years. 

But the original may possibly be a preview to the whole bad movie vibe. 

Question: What's worse than a bunch of kids, inspired by some demonic creature they THINK is living in the cornfields, killing off all the adults in town to appease said "He Who Walks Behind the Rows"? How about a movie that has a bunch of kids, inspired by some demonic creature that IS living in the cornfield, doing this nefarious killing for "He Who Walks Behind the Rows". Or, at least maybe it's "demonic"... For all I know, it could be an alien from the 8th dimension. (The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension hit theaters that same year...)

Stephen King movies are notoriously hit or miss. Especially when it comes to adaptations of his horror output. Assuming they even bother to stick closely to the source material, this can be problematic. Sometimes you get a genuine gem, such as The Shawshank Redemption or Stand by Me (neither of which are horror movies, per se). The 1976 version of Carrie and Misery both are genuinely good, and qualify as horror.

But on the other hand, sometimes you get such drivel as The Lawnmower Man which has virtually no connection to the original story. Neither do, (need I say it?), the many sequels to previously filmed stories that may or may not have been faithful themselves. In the middle of the pack are such films that somehow maintain a connection to the King original, although several of them had to be expanded from the story to make them work as a full-fledged movie. Children of the Corn is one of these.

In the original King short story our main characters are a married couple who, at the time of the setting, don't particularly like each other. That was changed for the movie into a couple who, though not yet married at the time, were hopelessly in love with each other. Whether that changed the dynamic of the story is probably up to the reader/viewer. 

The movie opens 3 years earlier when Isaac (John Franklin) and his acolytes/followers, all children ritually slaughter all the adults of the town of Gatlin, Nebraska.

 

Three years late (the present), a couple, Burt (Peter Horton ) and his girlfriend/future wife, Vicky (Linda Hamilton) are en route to Seattle where Burt is going to do his intern work as a doctor to be. Along the way they are traveling through a seemingly deserted section of Nebraska, where the only thing around seems to be the miles and miles of corn. (And if you like corn, you might not anymore after watching this movie. That corn is about as scary as a horde of rats descending upon you in a basement... At least it was to me.)

 

Into the road stumbles a boy. Burt and Vicky think they hit and killed him, but it turns out that his throat had been cut before he ever got into the road. So they pack him into the trunk of their car and head to the nearby town of Gatlin to report it. But upon arriving in Gatlin, they find the town deserted. They can find no one, not one single person. 

 

It takes about 45 minutes of this movie before our intrepid couple find anything resembling humanity. The kids, who obviously have it in their best interests, or at least in the best interests of the monster living in the cornfield, do anything. For the most part, they just argue amongst themselves. This may be due in part because their leader, Isaac, is obviously a nutjob Pat Robertson wannabe. Isaac spouts apocalyptic scriptures about the fact that he Who Walks Behind the Rows must be appeased. His second in command, Malachai (Courtney Gains), is much more vindictive, but not quite as evil as the street preacher Isaac.

 

Eventually Burt and Vicky find Sarah and Job, two kids who are not beholden to Isaac and his ilk. Sarah is, as often happens in a King story, a psychic with visions. And both of them are playing a game that could get them into serious trouble if Isaac found out; to wit, having independent thought.

 

The ultimate conflict ends up after Vicky is captured. There is a revolt, and it turns out that Malachai may be even more demented in his religious zealotry than Isaac. He thinks that Isaac has failed He Who Walks Behind the Rows, and takes over. 

 

And our intrepid duo of adults are the only ones that seem to be able to come up with a plan.

 

Children of the Corn was originally scripted by King himself, but the director chucked that script and had it re-written. The scriptwriter, George Goldsmith, came up with something that more or less appealed to the director, but it fails on several stages. For one, it adds way too much extraneous stuff that had nothing to do with the movie. For one thing, the couple find an old man (R. G. Armstrong) whom the kids have allowed to live, obviously because he could get things the kids would need, such as tools. But since those same kids kill him off before the movie is halfway over, they must not have needed his help THAT bad...

 

At least the movie kept the fact in the film that their is SOMETHING out there in that cornfield. Although whatever it is, it pales in comparison in it's fright value to the kids themselves. Someone, I think it was King himself, called it a "gopher from Hell", because most of it's scenes on screen are just scenes of something burrowing underneath the soil of the cornfield. Even when it finally foes come up out of the ground, it looks more like left over special effects from Tron. (A demon from a computer world...? Maybe it's really an early invasion of the Borg...)

As cheaply as this movie was made, with a budget of only $3 million, and with King's name attached, it was probably a foregone conclusion that it would make a profit. And it did. Sort of... It mad $!4 million in ticket sales. But word of mouth probably hurt it. I think Roger Ebert, who was probably not a big fan of King in the first place, put it best: "By the end of Children of the Corn, the only thing moving behind the rows is the audience, fleeing to the exits." 

The seemingly never ending raft of sequels that the movie spawned, I think, says more about the audience's willingness to dive into this "evil children" trope than it does about how well the story flows into a fluid tale. Given that probably 75-80% of the potential audience for these sequels are probably parents themselves, it would seem to me that they might be deriving a satisfaction of seeing their own "little monsters" in the roles of those kids. (Not having any of my own, I may not be the right person to judge, but be that as it may...)

Personally, I think the story would have been better served if it had been made as part of an anthology, sort of like Creepshow or Creepshow II. (Replacing that segment in Creepshow II with the India would have been a better choice.  The film suffers a lot from the fact that it takes way too long for anything interesting to happen. It feels exactly like what it essentially is, a 40 minute film that was padded to fill an hour and a half slot.

Interesting note: Goldsmith has later claimed that the script was a metaphor for the Iranian Revolution of 1979, with the kids being the Muslims and the couple being the American hostages. Not sure how I feel about that. Is he saying that the revolutionaries were basically just kids?  

OK, so this is not exactly one of the greatest King films, it's not even one of the better 80's King films, but for a brief break from some of the other films I have reviewed over the years, it's not entirely bad. Just be sure to take a good shot of your Red Bull or Monster before cuing it up, or you may doze off during the lulls between action scenes. And  try not to laugh too hard when the demon shows up at the end.

Until next week, drive safely, folks. And stick to the highways. Those detours through the backwoods burgs are a little risky.

Quiggy

 

 

   

 

Semiquincentennial Movie Project #37: The Beast of Yucca Flats

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

 

Week #37: Nevada -

The state of Nevada was established on October 31, 1864 

Details about Nevada:

State bird: mountain bluebird

State flower: sagebrush

State tree: bristle cone pine

Additional historical trivia:

Considering that Nevada has legal gambling, lotteries are illegal unless run by a church.

The Lunar Crater in Nevada was a location where astronauts trained for the moon mission (Or possibly where the moon mission was faked... Who knows...?)

Rayolite is the home of a house made almost entirely from glass bottles.

The Extraterrestrial Highway, so named because of the numerous sightings of UFO's is in NV.

 

Supposedly the Las Vegas Strip is so brightly lit it can be seen from space. (Since I've never been to space I can't verify that is true.)

Famous people born in Nevada: Bryce Harper, Kyle and Kurt Busch, Andre Agassi, Dawn Wells (Mary Jane on Gilligan's Island), Jenna Jameson, Nevada Barr and former First Lady Pat Nixon.  

 

 

The Beast of Yucca Flats (1961):

 

There are a few things you need to know going in to this week's feature film.

First: The Beast of Yucca Flats often makes many lists of "The Worst Film of All Time". And, admittedly, there are some aspects of it that put it in that category. For one thing; apparently the film was either made without a sound guy on the set, or possibly the audio was lost somewhere along the line. Sometimes it feels like you are watching a silent movie, as characters are speaking to each other on screen, but we don't hear what they are saying. Occasionally we do get some dialogue, but since the camera is almost never on the person who is speaking, it's obvious the dialogue was added in post-production.

Instead we get a narrator (who was actually the director, Coleman Francis, in real life) telling us what is going on.  This movies stars no one you have ever heard of, (or possibly will ever hear of again...) That is, with the exception of Tor Johnson. People of a certain bent will recognize the face, if not the name. From 1934 to 1961 Johnson cropped up in uncredited roles in various low budget schlock films, most notably as Bela Lugosi's henchman in several of Ed Wood's movies. He was unmistakable, whenever he appeared on screen, since he was a big hulking former Swedish wrestler. He almost always had no lines (possibly because no one could have figured out what he was saying, due to his Swedish background?). Wikipedia notes that one source claims a latex mask created in the 60's was one of the best-selling Halloween masks of the time period.

 

The movie also struggles in terms of being actually called a "movie". It barely clocks in at just over 50 minutes in length. Even with commercials it would barely fit in a hour and a half time slot on the local TV midnight movie slot. 

The director, Coleman Francis, could be classed along with Ed Wood, Ray Dennis Steckler and Herschell Gordon Lewis as one of the worst movie directors of all time. To be sure, it takes a stout heart indeed (or a masochist, possibly...) to watch a Francis film. IMDb notes that every single movie that Francis made was the subject of an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. (MST3K, in case you didn't know, specialized in ridiculing some of the cheesiest Hollywood output, some of which have been the focus of The Midnite Drive-In)

The movie opens with a girl (Lanell Cado or maybe Mary Torres... she is identified in places by different names) just getting out of the shower and being strangled by an unseen person. And what this has to do with the story is anybody's guess. Her strangling never comes up throughout the rest of the movie. Apparently it was just added because the director liked the way she looked topless... 

 

And this is as close as you'll get to the topless scene for my blog

When we finally get to the movie proper, the narrator introduces us to Joseph Jaworsky (Johnson), a Russian scientist who has defected to the U.S. with proof that the Russians have secretly landed on the moon (this movie was made and is set in 1961, BTW, 8 years from the official landing made by the U.S., and since this is during the Cold War era, a Russian group getting there first would be troublesome for the Americans...)

Comrade Jaworsky, Soviet scientist extraordinaire 

 

BTW, why is the scientist landing at a remote spot in the desert with this potentially high security information instead of the Washington National Airport in D.C. (or whatever would pass for a high security port of call in the capitol area in 1961)?  

The Kremlin, via the KGB, being intensely interested that their secret not get out, has sent a couple of KGB agents (John Morrison and Anthony Cardoza) to kill Jaworsky and retrieve the incriminating evidence. And, boy, they must have sent the bottom of the barrel in agents because they fire off several shots and hit absolutely nobody, including Jaworsky. Since he is a pretty big target you would THINK it would be no problem... (BTW A note on the low budget aspect: Everyone appears to be using the same gun in this scene... Note the white butt on the grip...)

 

John Morrison

 

Producer Anthony Cardoza pulling double duty

 

This is followed by one of the slowest car chases in cinema history. I couldn't help but think back to the live video of the police chasing O. J. Simpson in the white Bronco, where it seemed like no one was really interested in apprehending their quarry. 

 

Low speed car chase! Don't want a ticket...

 

And, to top it off, the two cars end up stopped on the side of the road for a good old-fashioned gun battle, and Jaworsky takes to the hills. On foot. Walking. Or maybe better said, strolling...

 

Jaworsky working up a sweat on a hike through the scrubs

 

Unfortunately for Jaworsky, even though he is able to avoid the potshots of the Keystone Kops KGB, a test bomb of a nuclear weapon goes off in his vicinity (and don't even ask how he was able to get anywhere near the test site in the first place...)  But, since Jaworsky is ten feet wide, the bomb doesn't actually kill him. Instead it transforms him into our title monster. (Thank God, or this movie would have been even shorter than it is... Did I mention it's only about 50 minutes long?) 

 

The beast change in progress

 

Cut to a scene on a deserted portion of the highway where a man and his wife stop. While the man checks out a problem with the car, the wife calmly smokes a cigarette and waits. The man is strangled, and the killer manages to get in the back seat of the car and strangle the woman, too (without her noticing he even got back there...) Then the beast gathers up her body and goes stumbling off into the desert.

 

Waiting for her neck massage

OK, we're only 15 minutes into this movie, and nothing at all is clear. If it weren't for the narrator telling us what is going on we would be as oblivious to the action as those two unfortunate strangling victims. But it is revealed by the narrator that the strangler is the former Jaworsky, now a mutant nuclear monster. (Gee, thanks helping out, Mr. Francis...)

 

The beast himself

 

Next we get one lone police officer, Joe, who has been informed by a passing motorist that there is a dead guy lying on the road by a car a few miles back. He comes upon the body, notes the fact that there must also have been a woman because she left her purse, sees the tracks going off into the desert, and for a brief moment I think this John Wayne wannabe is going to go  chase after the strangler all by himself. But apparently he either comes to his senses, or more probably gets cold feet, and goes to a buddy to get help.

The officer gets his partner, Jim, who is asleep with his wife at his house. We get a brief scene of the wife in a negligee, whose apparent presence is just to have her cleavage on screen. Still fully dressed, unlike the girl in the opening scene, but her appearance seems to have no purpose except to titillate the viewer.

The pair go off hiking into the scrubs near the abandoned car, and find the cave where the beast stashed the girl. When they find her, amazingly she is still breathing. But not for long. (BTW: don't ask how these two knew that cave was where she'd be, it'll just warp your already befuddled mind...)

 

Relaxing after her massage

 

The film gets even more batty as it goes along. The next scene shows a family of four pulling into a gas station where the attendant is lying on a cot just relaxing, apparently oblivious to the fact that he has a customer. And we get one of the greatest lines I ever heard from one of these cheesy films: "Nothing bothers some people. Not even flying saucers..."  (Wait a minute... flying saucers...? Are there aliens in this movie? No. Well, not the outer space kind anyway...) 

Here we have what becomes one of the strangest sequences of events ever filmed. A married couple (Douglas Mellor and Barbara Francis) and their kids have a flat tire. While the man, Hank, changes the tire, the boys, Randy and Art (Ronald and Alan Francis) run off to explore. So Hank has to go off hiking in the scrub to find his two bratty kids who can't be bothered to stick by while Dad does the heavy work.

Dad changes the tire

 

Meanwhile, our two intrepid police officers, (whom I could probably call Abbott and Costello, but that would insult the comic legends), are still trying to track down the killer all alone without any sort of backup. They decide the best thing is for one of them to take a plane up so they can see the country better. "Jim," says Joe, "shoot first, ask questions later." (These are seasoned police officers? Maybe they are from L.A....) The problem is that the cops don't have any idea what their quarry looks like.

So while Hank is searching for his boys, Jim is up in the plane looking for the strangler. (Yeah. You see it coming a mile away, don't you...?) But, fortunately for Hank, Jim must've gone to the same marksmanship training course those earlier KGB agents did, because he couldn't hit an elephant with a bazooka... 

 

 

Eventually these people do end up finding the real beast at one point and take care of business, however.

Stay tuned for the final 30 seconds, though. You'll get to see a scene that was unscripted, when a walk on extra accidentally blundered into the camera scene and, instead of scrapping the shot, the director just left it in. (Probably because it would have cost a dollar or two more to reshoot it? But, hey, it's worth watching just for that...)

  

You wanted to see the extra? You didn't think I'd make it THAT easy, did you?

For a movie, The Beast of Yucca Flats looks like it was written by a couple of junior high kids after they had raided dad's liquor cabinet. Wikipedia claims the movie cost about $35,000 to make, but my opinion is that it cost only about $350... 

You think I'm being snarky? Before you judge let me point out a few things. First the wife and the kids in that car? They were the director's wife and his own kids. The first man strangled, Jim Oliphant, was one of the producers of the film. The part of Jim was played by another producer, Charles Stafford, using the screen name of "Bing " Stafford. Charles' little brother, Graham, played a brief scene as a newsboy. The director Francis himself played a couple of roles, as did Anthony Cardoza, one of the other producers of the film. Larry Aten, who played Joe, was also the makeup artist for the film, and Linda Bielma was his wife. The rest of the cast was played by other friends and neighbors of Francis. Hmmm. Maybe it only cost $35 to make it...

There was one other notable name in the film, however... Conrad Brooks. He got his start appearing in many of Ed Woods' films, but graduated to a slightly higher class of films later in life, like Curse of the Queerwolf, Test Tube Teens from the Year 2000, and The Demon Monster from Outer Space. He was in 108 films of varying quality. 

Most of the negative criticism for the film is heaped upon the lack of synchronized dialogue and Francis' pretty ridiculous narration. He sounds like Jack Webb if Webb had just got up, hung over from a long night of binge drinking and just wanted to get the narration over with so he could go back to bed.   

I never would have thought I would ever see a movie that comes even as close to being as bad as Teenage Zombies (still MY vote for the worst movie ever), but this one comes pretty damn close. And ye, and YET, it's still worth a shot, if only for the unintended humor of the situation. There are so many ridiculous plot points going on in this movie. Stuff that defies logic. That whole scenario of the one cop taking pot shots at Hank, without any motivation other than the fact that the guy is out running in the desert and the cop is looking for some guy out in the desert... that's just humorous. And the fact that the man keeps running, instead of, I don't know, plopping on the ground with his hands raised yelling "I surrender!..."

This was Tor Johnson's final film, BTW. He retired from acting just after this, and if you watch it, it might be apparent that he was physically out of shape by now. He survived for another 10 years, however, not passing away until 1971 from heart failure. Even despite the fact that he was playing a monster in the film, you can't help but feel a little pity for him, because it's obvious that Johnson was struggling from the exertion he had to put out to perform the role.

Well, folks, until next time, drive safely. And make sure the car is in good shape so you don't have to stop on some deserted stretch of desert road...

Quiggy