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