The Beast of Yucca Flats (1961)

Thanks for the memories!

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

In a remote desert outpost called Yucca Flats, a noted scientist, Mr. Javorsky, has just escaped via airplane from behind The Iron Curtain with a suitcase containing secrets. As his plane lands he makes a desperate escape from assassins sent by the Kremlin to retrieve the stolen secrets. As they are closing in on Mr. Javorsky a nuclear weapon detonates in the distance and its affects are terrible. In another part of Yucca Flats, apparently unaffected by the massive blast and nuclear fallout, a young couple stops by the roadside, only to be strangled by some hulk of a man, Mr. Javorsky, who has undergone a sinister metamorphosis due to the nuclear radiation. The death is reported to the sheriff, who finds the body of the murdered husband, an abandoned purse, and footprints that wander off into the desert. The sheriff picks up his deputy to search for the missing woman. Meanwhile Mr. Javorsky, a beast, a deprived creature since the nuclear explosion, is hold up in a cave and seems to have a carnal interest in his captured woman. As the beast roams the desert, the two law men miraculously stumble upon the missing woman, they take her lifeless body back to town. At a gas station, also unaffected by the nuclear blast, a vacationing family stops for gas, while the two law men resume their search for the killer of the young couple. As the beast avoids capture, the law men employ an airplane to parachute onto an un-climbable Mesa in hopes of finding the killer and ending his rampage. Meanwhile a flat tire has stopped the vacationing family and the couple's two young boys have wandered off, alone in the desert. The parents search haplessly in and around a government missile range for their boys as the airplane closes in and the beast looks for his next kill. In a sudden turn of events and without any evidence, the deputy mistakenly believes the father is the beast and shoots the father from the airplane. The father survives but the deputy, an ex Vietnam paratrooper now on the ground, begins to stalk his prey. The father arrives at his car ahead of the deputy but crazily.tells his wife to stay behind in case their boys show up, even though he's nearly been killed by the advancing deputy. Luckily for the wife, the sheriff intercepts the deputy and they head off in another direction. Meanwhile the two lost boys and their abandoned mother plug along as night closes in, as the beast closes in. After a near death run in with the beast, the boys find a cave to hide in which just happens to be the cave of the beast, who then settles in for the night. The boys manage to slip out past the beast but he awakens and chases them. Suddenly the law men appear and quickly shoot the beast. But as the beast stirs from the shooting, he makes a last attempt to kill. In the ensuring fight, the sheriff finds his revolver and apparently kills the beast. But as the movie ends, the beast rolls onto his stomach, then grasps at a young rabbit, releases it, and then remains motionless...but ready for a sequel.

Sometimes, I can't help but wonder what goes into a film such as this. Did anybody involved think that this would be fun or entertaining? Did anybody THINK at all? Or did they charge ahead dutifully? Did the filmmakers have a shooting schedule? Or did they just wing it from Day One? Here was the first attempt by Coleman Francis, potentially THE worst director ever. And THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS has found a place in cult classic history. Clocking in at just over an hour, TBOYF features Tor Johnson (from the monumentally enjoyable bad epic PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE) as an escaping Russian scientist. In New Mexico, two guys in suits (Feds, I guess) get into a car chase and shoot out with two guys in hats (KGB spies, I guess). They're attempting to kill the scientist and steal his briefcase filled with sensitive information. But wouldn't ya know it, the area just happens to be a place where the Army's testing a new atom bomb. Wandering out into the desert, the Russian scientist gets horribly scarred, his clothes in tatters, and goes around waving a walking stick. Some other characters come along, doing nonsensical stuff. Tor chases them away, bellowing. And eventually, he dies. Maybe. While a cute little rabbit nibbles at his fingers. Scary, huh? Rumor has it that they had no audio equipment on-set and so they resorted to having stuff recorded in post-production. Hence the odd, slightly disturbing, voice-over musings by Coleman Francis himself. In a weird sort of way, it almost works as an art film. It's certainly got no plot, or coherent story structure. But, even at an hour, it's difficult to watch and sit through. Bravo MST3K, you've got yourselves a winner. To you, I give 8 Mewling Tors out of 10!

Here was me thinking that only Jess Franco had the ability to somehow stretch time beyond its constraints and make a relatively short film seemingly last for about six days, but I after I'd finished watching the Beast of Yucca Flats, I swear I'd aged at least two years.This is a fairly well known bad film, and although I'm the easiest viewer in the world to please, on my first attempt at watching this I could feel myself drifting in and out of consciousness. On the second attempt I'd had a couple of beers and got up the next day thinking that I'd probably missed something at the end, but no. On the third attempt I realised that I hadn't missed anything at all, and that most of the entire last half of the film involves people wandering around a desert looking for each other.The story involves Tor Johnson being a defecting Soviet scientist who gets chased by the FBI into the Yucca Flats and gets caught in the blast from a nuclear test, turning him into a monster. He wanders the Yucca Flats strangling people and two cops go after him. Meanwhile, two kids wander off from their family and their parents go looking for them, and therefore you have a film consisting mainly of the cops looking for the killer, the parents looking for their kids, and the kids wandering around the desert followed by a waddling Tor Johnson in bad make up.I read (on here, I think) that the film was recorded without sound, which adds to the sleepy atmosphere. You've got people wandering around in near silence for ages at a time while a narrator waffles on about anything that comes into his mind. I like my bad films to be delirious and hilarious (like Ninja Terminator, Clash of the Warlords or Fearless Tiger), but if there's one thing I cannot stand in a film it's people wandering around looking for each other endlessly (see Legend of the Mummy 2 or Psycho Cop for examples).There are parts to this film that are funny, from the inexplicable murder at the start, the gunshot wounds that heal themselves over time and the bad acting of everyone involved (Johnson can hardly move at all, let alone chase kids through the desert), there's too much waffle and not enough action on this film. It's more of an endurance test than anything else.

Many years ago I read a review from colleague of mine which exclaimed that the Beast of Yucca Flats was a bad film with no defenders. No one, he said, would ever come to this film's defense and proclaim it to have some special message no one understood, no accidental genius, or no grand ineptness as with films Plan 9 From Outer Space. For years – I agreed. Yucca Flats, after all, was a film with no focus, hardly any dialogue, and a narration that made no sense. I would have gone as far to have said, I hated this movie. It wasn't fun to watch with friends, it didn't make you laugh at its stupidity and it didn't leave you feeling that any real effort was poured into the film. Recently, however, I decided that I must come to Coleman Francis' defense and give a legitimate review, and honest praise for this movie. This review is a defense of the anti-film, the bad as bad gets. And a story about how I stopped hating and learned to love this cinematic bomb. Before I divulge into why I feel that this film is a masterpiece, I think I should discuss what the storyline in the film is about: A Russian Scientist, Joseph Javorsky (Tor Johnson) has escaped from behind the iron curtain, deflected to the United States and now wants to help the US defeat the communists by giving data on certain Soviet activities, including, but not limited to, a moon landing and information about the atomic bomb. Before any of this can happen Jovorsky is chased down by two KGB agents, he manages to escape but quickly wanders off into a nuclear bomb testing area right when a test bomb explodes. The resulting fallout turns him into a monster, hungry for blood. My first realization of this films greatness was in its rewatch factor. I was not content with watching this film once, and while I never felt entertained by it, I never got bored of it either. The bleak desert atmosphere and creepy off handed narration took me into a time warp. This fifty minute film slowed time; in many cases it felt as though hours passed while I watched it. Yet, even now, after having seen it several more times than any sane person ever should admit, I still remain entranced by it. It literally feels like hypnosis. The second aspect of its greatness lays in Coleman Francis' narration. I never understood what I liked about it so much, but recently on an IMDb forum I think two users helped me come across an answer. The explanations were this: First nearly all of Francis' statements are stated as though they are haikus, i.e. "Flag on the moon – how did it get there?" Secondly, most of these questions posed by Francis could only be answered by the now insane Joseph Jovorsky. The fact that many of Yucca Flat's plot points go nowhere is directly tied to the fact that the one person who holds the answers to the narrator's cannot answer it – he himself is a victim of the Cold War—a genius whose whole entire life was destroyed by the by the American's atomic bomb and the Soviet's spies. It's interesting to note that Coleman's go to phrase is, "caught in the wheels of progress." He exclaims that nearly everyone in the film is a victim of the atomic age. It's kind of funny, because it seems to be true. Joe Dobbson was wounded parachuting in the Korean War and now works seven days a week with his partner to help protect his community. Because of this, his wife is frustrated, and his town is near a nuclear testing site. Jovorsky is also a victim, his family has been killed, his genius has been used only for the Cold War effort, and he his ultimately killed by the wars biggest symbol – the atom bomb. The film ends with Jovorsky being gunned down by the two patrolmen. Right before he dies a wild bunny rabbit visits the dying scientist, almost looking concerned for the dying man, the dying man looks at the rabbit, touches is as if finally remembering that he was once a caring man and dies. Leaving us to wonder: perhaps we are all the victims of progress, living in a world much faster, and much more dangerous than ever before.