Godmonster of Indian Flats

source: Godmonster of Indian Flats

Godmonster of Indian Flats

I don't know how it's rated even as highly as it is, but this film is so awful I couldn't even get halfway through it with Rifftrax. It fails on every level: story, editing, direction, lighting, acting, costuming, music, etc. This film makes movies like The Guy From Harlem and Miami Connection seem like triumphs of cinema by comparison because at least they're entertaining even on their own.

GODMONSTER OF INDIAN FLATS is a passable grade z movie that's more interesting as a time capsule than a "it's so bad it's good" movie. Some scenes are unintentionally hilarious, like when the sheep monster sneaks up behind the kids who are picnicking, or when the guy from the garage runs away in terror, with the monster tip-toeing "menacingly" towards him. And the ending as to be seen to be believed (did they lose the script?) but the production values are better than most grade z movies and in the end, the movie is not that wretched or trashy enough to be entertaining. Fans of bad movies should check it out but it's more of a rental than something you buy. You should buy the GODMONSTER OF INDIAN FLATS DVD for the second feature on it, called THE GIRL AND THE GEEK (or PASSION IN THE SUN). Now that's an amazingly bad and hilarious movie.

I have seen every sort of monster: birds, cats, piranhas, crocs, bats, ants, grizzles, sharks; but killer sheep is a new one. I looked forward to seeing a flokati attack humans. Yes, the acting is baad, the story line is baad, sometimes downright silly, the special effects were criminally baad, and the monster really looks baad. One flighty character (Mariposa) even tries to communicate with the creature with some kind of new age arm waving. Just because a movie takes place in the West, doesn't make it a western, and just because you have a mutant sheep, you can't call it a horror movie unless there is some actual horror.

For the first, say, 85 minutes, I couldn't make heads or tails out of this film. It appears to be a lost episode of the Brady Bunch where they wake up and discover themselves in a lost episode of Gunsmoke where they all wake up and find themselves in a lost episode of Night Gallery. I get why the hookers wear Victorian get-ups, but why does the visiting financier wear a Wild, Wild West outfit while trying to close a business deal? Most realistic dump ever. Coolest movie monster ever. It looks like a huge plushie that got caught in a fan and half skinned. And sheepy got back! Somehow, the last five minutes of this extraordinarily aimless film turned it into an existentialist allegory and it all seemed perfectly sensible. Except maybe the white plastic casket at the dog's funeral and, of course, the pie eating contest.

No, folks, this is NOT a no-budget horror flick from the seventies. Look again - it's well-shot, well-staged, and, if anything, it's wildly overpopulated with enthusiastic minor characters and extras. Godmonster isn't like anything else you've ever seen, heard, read, smelled, or tasted, with the possible exception of a Thomas Pynchon novel. Like Pynchon, Hobbs keeps piling on plot until you think the plate in your head is going to shatter. And then you realize that it's only the first thirty minutes. And it keeps coming at you and it WON'T STOP. I've seen them all, from Acid Eaters to Zombie Nightmare. I've laughed at Begotten, wept over Forbidden Zone, sat amazed at semi-legal prints of White Dog with Dutch subtitles and Addio Uncle Tom with Greek subtitles. I've got Killer Klowns in Spanish. But Godmonster is the last stop on the line. I wish this WERE a crappy rubber-suit monster movie. It'd be vastly less disturbing.

Indescribeable, and a must see for so bad it's good movie connoisseurs. Even without the ridiculous looking sheep, "Godmonster of Indian Flats" is terrible. It comes across as three or four separate scripts that somehow the audience is supposed to believe are related. One highlight is a dog's funeral, complete with church service and white doggy size casket. An attempted lynching of the black man who supposedly killed the dog is another stunning moment. Then there is the scientist's sincere belief that the phosphorous belching beast "could unlock the mysteries of creation". In fact, the film actually seems to be drawing a parallel between the birth of the mutant sheep, and the birth of a divine being. The whacked out story concludes on a mountain of trash, which seems like an appropriate ending for the "Godmonster" - MERK