THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS (1961)
Tagline: Commies made him an atomic mutant!
(Sci-Fi, Horror, Atomic Testing) [PG]
Note: This movie was not given an MPAA rating, but likely would have landed a [PG] just due to the fact that there are several non-Kaiju murders.
Flag on the moon, how did it get there?
Oh, man. If you are familiar with this movie you know it sometimes shows up on the 50 or 100 worst movies ever lists. It currently has a 1.9 rating on the Internet Movie Data Base, IMDb. It’s about a Soviet scientist that is in the area of some atom bomb testing and ends up a badly deformed killer chasing kids and women around in the desert. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.
This movie is heavily and unintentionally comically narrated throughout and features a blistering pace of non-acting. In fact, there is hardly a script at all. Outside of the narration, there might be 6 lines in the entire movie all of which were inserted after it was filmed. Even the quote I have above was narrated. One of the strangest scenes in this mostly uneventful movie is the very last scene where an unscripted baby jackrabbit just wanders up to the “beast” of Yucca Flats and starts sniffing his neck. Actor Tor Johnson just calmly snuggle the bunny a little then moved it a bit and it hopped away. By the way, in case I haven’t mentioned it before, Tor Johnson who plays the “Beast” was a towering hulk of a man but was known for being gentle very kind, and generous. The setting of the film was based on the real-life Yucca Flat, which has been called "the most irradiated, nuclear-blasted spot on the face of the earth.”
In 2010 there was actually an unofficial sequel to this movie called RETURN TO YUCCA FLATS: DESERT MAN BEAST, the tagline was aptly “30 Corpses... 1 Man Beast... 0 Plot”. That tagline actually sums up the original quite well only I think the number of deaths was maybe 6. I admittedly lost count because of this movie's weird ability to put you right to sleep in an almost coma-like state.
Acting wise we actually get a brief scene with Douglas Mellor. His acting career only spanned over 4 movies, but incidentally, he does show up in THE LOST BOYS for an uncredited role. No one is really acting in this movie, they are just doing stuff, so I can only say – he was certainly in this film. We also have a Barbara Francis sighting as Lois but she is in the film so little it seems like her scenes were just unrelated to anything else in the film. She was also in a movie called the SKYDIVERS, 2 years later. That was pretty much it. She was also in this film and I can’t tell you much other than that.
Sorry guys and gals, this thing is just rough as heck. I wish I had more to say. I can tell you that if you sit through this thing (and I have 3 times) without falling asleep or checking out, they ought to get an award. The pacing is slow and the sets are wildly uninteresting. I am not going to bash on the desert, but it’s a desert. It’s not going to blow your mind. I can also say that the score is forgettable and that the direction is hap-hazard. If anything works at all it’s the makeup on the beast. It isn’t much, but Tor does look like a menacing creature you wouldn’t want to mess with.
This thing gets a 1 out of 7. Yes, somehow it is worse than THE INCREDIBLE PETRIFIED WORLD.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF CARDOZA-FRANCIS PRODUCTIONS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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