*note* The singular page for this movie "cannot be found", but since it already exists in the database, can't be added again, so I'm posting this review on the page for the BoYF/Mesa of Lost Women 2-pack because the photo included shows ONLY the BoYF cover. --CDM.


While some movies are character-driven and the story unfolds as a result of the characters’ actions and reactions, some movies are plot-driven wherein the characters are almost at the mercy of the plot and the situations. THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS (1961) is intended to be the latter. Problem is, it sucks on just about every level you can imagine.

Tor Johnson plays defected Russian scientist Joseph Javorsky who has come to the US to turn over some Russian military secrets. The KGB get wind of his intentions and they show up as he’s being loaded into a car at the airport. A car chase and shoot-out ensues, leading to the death of Javorsky’s US guardians and Javorsky himself flees into the desert. Well, I’m sure “flees” was the intention, but Johnson was close to 400 lbs and a casual mosey was about the best he could manage.

The KGB chases Javorsky into the desert of the Yucca Flats test site in Nevade where they get too close to an A-bomb test. When the bomb detonates, the agents are killed and Javorsky is turned into the Beast. As the Beast, he looks pretty much like Tor Johnson with a couple of “radiation burn” latex appliances on his cheek and scalp. Apparently the radiation has also taken his speech and intellect as well.

The Beast then goes on a murderous rampage, which means he kills a motorist on the side of the road, strangles the man’s wife, then steals her body and hides her in the desert. I’m not sure why. The police find the murdered man and begin to track his missing wife.

Meanwhile the Radcliffe family is on vacation. When they stop to fix a flat tire, the boys, Art and Randy, wander off into the desert and become lost. Their father goes out in search. While he’s in the desert, the police are in a plane, trying to spot the missing wife from the air. They see Mr. Radcliffe and, mistaking him for the killer, open fire.

Mr. Radcliffe escapes, but the boys Art and Randy soon stumble upon the Beast’s cave. Running from the monster, they’re found and saved by the police who gun down Joseph Javorsky and end his reign of terror.

I believe THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS was intended as one of the “cautionary tales” Hollywood was always telling in the 50s and 60s--in fact, the narration of this movie ensures that was the intention--but it’s so badly-done, so laughable at every moment, the message is overwhelmed by the movie’s myriad flaws.

For one, THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS was shot without sound, dialogue and sound effects added later. To keep from having to synchronize the track with the film, the actors are never shown speaking their lines. Instead we see them from behind or with their mouths hidden behind their hands when they speak. And the few times we actually do see an actor’s mouth moving, nothing comes out. A good 80% of the soundtrack is mood music, with very little dialogue, and believe me that only adds to the agonizingly slow pace. You’d think a movie that’s only 54 minutes long wouldn’t be able to drag, but man this one pulls it off.

Second, while most of those “cautionary tales” were full of camp, they seemed to be a little more self-aware and while not playing up the camp, they didn’t pretend to be more than they really were. THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS, however, honestly doesn’t seem to know it’s campy. Writer/director Coleman Francis narrates the movie--providing most of its dialogue--in a very flat, monotone voice, delivering the lines with all the emotion of Robert Patrick in TERMINATOR 2. And those lines consist of half-warning, half-nonsense. I believe the point of the narration was to get across the dangers of scientific progress and how the world of today--today being 1961--is so fast-paced and set on advancement, we begin to lose our humanity and are, ourselves, becoming machines.

Some of the more memorable and brilliant lines Francis uttered, some of them apropos of nothing:

“Caught in the wheels of progress.”

“Touch a button, things happen. A scientist becomes a beast.”

“A prehistoric beast in the nuclear age. Kill. Kill just to be killing.”

“A man murdered. A woman’s purse.”

" 110 in the shade, and no shade.”

“Man’s inhumanity to man.”

“A man runs. Somebody shoots at him.”

At times it seemed as if Coleman Francis was trying to turn his beat poetry into a movie. I’m not sure whether to place the blame for this movie on the low budget or the lack of experience of the filmmakers. It was Francis’s first writer/director job--amazingly he would go on to write and direct two more movies, THE SKYDIVERS (1963) and NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNDO FINE (1966)--but he had been acting in movies since 1948, so he should have known better. I mean this isn’t some innocent mistake, a naive first attempt by a young kid trying to make a name for himself; Francis was 42 when he made this thing.

And while, according to quotes from friends and family, Tor Johnson seemed like a very nice and gentle man . . . do you really want to cast him as your scientist? He never seemed the most articulate human being. Coleman Francis’s direction to Johnson during the making of this movie seemed to be pretty simple, though. Be fat and bald. Okay, good. Stumble away from the camera. No, don’t trip and fall, do it like you’re disoriented, not clumsy.

In the end, whatever Francis was trying to do, he failed, big. A lot of old cheesy horror movies are charming in their ridiculousness. THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS is just plain bad in every single way. Classic horror doesn’t have to be brilliant or even of the best quality filmmaking, but come on, man, throw me a bone will you? This movie is just painful to behold.



other Horror Classics
Carnival of Souls: http://www.epinions.com/content_403446140548
Atom Age Vampire: http://www.epinions.com/content_403512856196
Creature from the Haunted Sea: http://www.epinions.com/content_403596349060
Nightmare Castle: http://www.epinions.com/content_404037799556
Black Dragons: http://www.epinions.com/content_404796575364
The Invisible Ghost: http://www.epinions.com/content_405221379716
One Body Too Many: http://www.epinions.com/content_405861076612
White Zombie: http://www.epinions.com/content_405939326596
Attack of the Giant Leeches: http://www.epinions.com/content_409233493636
The Screaming Skull: http://www.epinions.com/content_414279896708


Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older