The Beast of Yucca Flats

source: The Beast of Yucca Flats

The Beast of Yucca Flats

This Coleman Francis gem is now infamous for its horrible acting, editing, erm, pretty much horrible in every way. A defecting nuclear scientist is being chased by the Reds into the desert, where a nuclear test just happens to be taking place. The scientist (played by Tor Johnston, from other cinematic gems such as The Unearthly and The Atomic Brain) is made into a hideous monster by the radiation from the nuclear blast, and he roams the Arizona desert looking for victims to strangle. I think the thing I find the most annoying about The Beast of Yucca Flats is the endless prattling by the narrator, who says inane things such as "Push a button, something happens", etc. Huh??? This movie has even more narration than The Creeping Terror. Don't even attempt to watch this movie except maybe the MST3K version. Joel and the bots can ease your pain through it.

Forget "Plan Nine from Outer Space" and "Bride of the Monster" this Coleman Francis calamity gives Tor Johnson the role of a lifetime. As a scientist turned atomic desert mutant, Tor gets to stumble over rocks, pet a bunny, and scare two ugly kids with a stick, all without a soundtrack! Arguably the worst film ever made.

I had no idea when I started watching this movie what it was about but I was very well surprised by the extremely low quality of the movie. It consists of no on screen dialog, a speaker-voice reads an pretensious load of crap as Tor Johnson staggers around as a confused Russian scientist harmed by a nuclear-test. Even if someone for some bizarre reason would WANT to make such an insane movie they would not have been able to come up with something like this. Only a truly deranged mind could make such a movie. A genius in its own world of badness, competing with brilliant filmmakers like Ed Wood and others but Coleman Francis outnumbers them all!!

The towering presence of "Swedish Angel" Tor Johnson and laughable narration that sounds at times like some kind of oriental poetry fail to make this film more than barely watchable. There is no real dialogue (presumably the producers couldn't afford a travelling microphone) -- all the dialogue is postdubbed with the actors conveniently turning their heads away when the speak! -- or story, and the only effects are a guy parachuting off a helicopter and Johnson in pancake makeup. Still, a somehow amusing low-budget film filled with friends and associates of the late great Ed Wood.