Cinema Associates [1961] 54′
country: United States
director: COLEMAN FRANCIS
cast: TOR JOHNSON, LARRY ATEN,
cast: BING STAFFORD, DOUGLAS MELLOR
“Touch a button . . . Things happen . . . A man becomes a beast . . . ”
THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS is a terrible film on a technical level – that needs to be gotten out of the way to begin with. The first of three films conceived by producer Anthony Cardoza and writer/director Coleman Francis shows the novice nature of its creators at every turn and that it stars Ed Wood regular Tor Johnson as the titular beast has certainly done it no favors in the forty seven years since it was made. BEAST has been bashed regularly and universally since being unleashed upon the public at large, most famously by cable show Mystery Science Theater 3000 – one would be mad to say that said bashing was entirely unwarranted.
But as a reviewer who’s interests have been growing more and more focused on subtext, the technical aspects of this 54 minute oddity are of no concern. The question then remains, is there enough subtext to THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS to warrant a serious critical appraisal of it?
That answer, at least as far as I am concerned, is an emphatic yes! By the end of this article [one of a series I am working on covering the directorial endeavors of Francis] I hope that at least a few of my readers will agree.
The plot for THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS is relatively simple. Soviet scientist Joseph Javorsky [Tor Johnson] has defected and is on the way to the Yucca Flats proving grounds to hand over top secret documents on his country’s space program – pursued by KGB agents, Javorsky wanders onto Yucca Flats in the midst of a nuclear test and is, in a flash, turned into a barbaric primitive. His only concerns? Killing whomever should wander across his path and, should they be female, taking them back to his cave hideaway to sate his crude sexual desire.
Finding themselves forced into the situation are patrolmen Jim Archer and Joe Dobson, who, upon discovering the beastly Javorsky is responsible for a spate of local murders and abductions, quickly go on the hunt. Wandering in unawares are the vacationing Radcliffe family – a mother, father, and two young boys – who find themselves in all manner of trouble when their sons wander into the territory of the beast. In the end the beast is killed, but not before the brutal onslaught of progress has had its chance to ruin a formidable number of lives.
The above probably makes the narrative aspect of BEAST seem considerably more appealing then it actually is – all the better for those of you who have yet to see it! I recommend doing a search at Google Video and giving the film a watch before proceeding further with this article.
Released in 1961, THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS is definitely a child of the Cold War tensions of the time – with the Cuban Missile Crisis only a few short months in its future and the threat of nuclear destruction becoming more and more believable all the while, it’s no wonder that nuclear weaponry plays an important role in the film. But scads of science fiction efforts of the period used nuclear tinkerings as their catalyst – fallout [with a healthy dose of voodoo] was to blame in the abysmal FROM HELL IT CAME [1957] while lingering radiation what created THEM! [1954] [it was only a garden variety nuclear detonation that brought THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS [1953] back from the ice age].
What makes BEAST unique among the rest of the nuclear-beast-run-amok films of the time period is what the bomb in this case represents. As was hinted at in the synopsis, the real demon of the picture isn’t Tor Johnson or the bomb that drove him to savagery, but the relentless onslaught of progress. The thesis of BEAST is that every step we take forward is the proverbial two steps back – that by thoughtlessly trudging ahead we are at risk of losing ourselves.
Writer/director Francis makes no bones about it – in the world he depicts, progress is nothing less than a destructive and dehumanizing force. As the fiery mushroom cloud rises from the desert floor early on we catch a glimpse of Javorsky’s briefcase [filled with important scientific documents] engulfed in flame – the collected knowledge of man destroyed by one of its own greatest achievements. And no image in the film better encapsulates its thesis of progress equaling destruction than that of Javorsky, once a worldly man of science, reduced in an instant into a scarred and inhuman beast. But Javorsky is hardly the only person to be, as Francis’ incessant narration aptly describes, ‘caught in the wheels of progress’.
In the order of those most closely affected first come the victims of the beast. In the opening framing sequence of the film we see a young freshly showered woman strangled to death by the titular character before he takes to molesting her lifeless body. After the test a young vacationing couple is also killed, the husband strangled and the wife dragged back to the beasts cave lair, presumably under the same pretenses as with the victim in the framing sequence [in these two scenes Francis makes a distinct connection between sex and violence, or more aptly the urges from which they result - its an interesting idea that sadly goes unexplored in the remainder of the film].
Casting the net still further we find the Radcliffe family – the two youngest members of which have wandered and become lost in the desert scrub land around Yucca Flats, in harm’s way as a result of a series of seemingly unrelated events [the defection, chase, and nuclear detonation] that have, none the less, conspired against them. The wife of the family is left waiting on the side of the road while her husband goes off in search of the children, unaware that progress is working to rip them apart forever. As the father walks the countryside he finds himself the unlikely target of an airborne assault – someone with a rifle is firing at him from the safety of a small plane.
And just who is firing at him? Why Jim Archer, of course, who’s humanity has been crippled by a tour of duty in the Korean War – progress strikes again! He takes to the idea of killing again quite naturally after spotting the unsuspecting father from his perch, firing off shot after shot with no sign of remorse or hesitation. But Jim alone is not to blame, as Joe has given the orders – “Shoot first, ask questions later,” he tells Jim as he boards the plane, unaware that he may be sealing the fate of an innocent man in the process. Joe and Jim are both caught up in the moment, with neither of them having seen the beast up to this point – progress has derided the course of justice and paved the way for the murder of an innocent man.
In a strange act of mercy, Francis allows the Radcliffe family as a whole to survive the whole terrible ordeal – the father escapes Jim just as the children escape Javorsky, providing viewers with the slightest of glimmers of hope that humanity may not be as lost as it seems.
As has been previously mentioned, THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS isn’t much of a success on a strictly technical level. One of the biggest and most noticeable problems it has is that it was filmed without sound [a budget-minded decision, dialogue was obviously intended to be added later] and boasts, as a substitute for actually hearing what’s being said on screen, a running philosophical commentary in the guise of expository narration voiced by the director. The narration here is a very far cry from those that appeared in many cheapies of the time – THE LOST MISSILE [1958] and the US release of GIGANTIS THE FIRE MONSTER [1959] come to mind. Not satisfied with simply describing what was occurring on screen at any given moment, Francis opted for a more abstract application of the process – the end result is a succession of ridiculous lines that seem to have little at all to do with what’s going on in the film [the best example might be the line 'Nothing bothers some people, not even flying saucers', which is spoken over a shot of a gas station attendant relaxing in a lawn chair - flying saucers are mentioned at no other point in the picture and have absolutely no baring on the happenings therein].
Another bi-product of the cost effective sound-free filming was an abundance of long and distanced takes – taken in conjunction with the absurd narration, the scatterbrained structure of the proceedings lends an odd level of effectiveness at times. Francis’ narration forces us to view the images it is connected with in abstract and often illogical ways while the cold and distanced photography keeps empathy on our part to a bare minimum – in preventing the audience from developing emotional reactions to what is being shown and heard, the film manages to further support its thesis on destruction and dehumanization. The effect is far from perfect and, more often than not, the narration becomes unintentionally funny [ex. the line about flying saucers mentioned in the previous paragraph].
Confusing things further is THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS’ prologue – a framing sequence in which a woman, having just gotten out of the shower, is killed and raped by the beast. While successful in setting the tone for the film, it becomes obvious by the end of things that the segment has no real place within the body of the picture. The beast, after all, never leaves the confines of his Yucca Flats tramping grounds and the woman in the beginning, seen in what looks to be an apartment or hotel, doesn’t seem to be anywhere near the nuclear proving grounds. In the end the sequence does more to confuse the already strained continuity of the proceedings than help it.
Technologically barbaric to such a point that, at times, it can almost seem intentionally so, THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS is probably rightfully referred to as one of the worst films ever made. It was famously featured in season seven of the cable show Mystery Science Theater 3000, effectively dooming the possibility of any appreciation of it on a critical level. Yet still I try – having seen the film a dozen times or more and even edited together a silent version of it [complete with color tinting and intertitles - it can be found on Google Video easily enough] I can honestly say that it has grown on me, thanks in large part to the interesting ideas it proposes.
THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS is proof positive that even the lowest of low budget productions can still have something meaningful to say and, awful as it may be, I can’t help but recommend it.
