The Beast of Yucca Flats (1961; Coleman Francis)

Everything you have read about Beast Of Yucca Flats is true. It really is one of the worst films ever made. Or, are we missing the point? Surely no one would aspire to make something this terrible, or is this film an intentional gob of spit in the face of Tinseltown?

 

In his lifetime, Coleman Francis (1919 - 1973) was known as a supporting player in such B films as T-Bird Gang, The Jailbreakers, and Russ Meyer’s Motorpsycho, plus a couple for his friend Ray Dennis Steckler (Lemon Grove Kids Meet The Monsters; Body Fever). Today, like actors John Cassavetes or Erich von Stroheim, he is better known posthumously as a director. Between 1961 and 1965, Francis wrote and directed a trio of grimy Grade Z genre pictures, with Anthony Cardoza as producer: Beast of Yucca Flats, The Skydivers, and Night Train to Mundo Fine (better known today as Red Zone Cuba). All had found a new audience thanks to their inclusion in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 cable series. Wait. Did I just reference Coleman Francis in the same sentence with Cassavetes and Stroheim? Well, yes, like any work by those men, there is a distinct authorship in Francis’s films as a director.

If people like Cassavetes, Stroheim or Orson Welles can be credited with advancing the film language, Francis set it back about 40 years. Right from the beginning, this is cinema at its most crude, primitive form. We are given a teaser of an introduction, as a cute brunette (who is briefly seen nude) gets ready for bed, and then is strangled to death by a slightly off-screen brute. Then we are given the opening credits sequence, displaying all those responsible for this film. The next scene shows a plane touching down, and exit Dr. Joseph Javorski, played by none other than Grade Z Legend, ex-wrestler Tor Johnson, who had appeared in several films of the immortal Edward D. Wood, Jr. (And speaking of Ed Wood, his frequent player Conrad Brooks, also appears here in a small role.)

Standard-issue hired guns show up to waste Javorski and his associates. After a lame car chase, the doctor runs away on foot as his pals try to draw the fire of the enemy agents. Somehow, no one is able to aim at the 400-pound doctor, or at least to catch up to him. Alas, none of that matters, as an A-bomb goes off. Due to the radiation, the good doctor is now reduced to the basest form of existence, namely hulking around and strangling people.

As the beast is humanity at its most primal state, the movie is the basest form of filmmaking. This work's most distinctive property is the absence of a soundtrack. Even in the first scene, it is glaringly obvious; the strangulation sequence has the sole sound of a clock ticking, conveniently replacing all diegetic sound. (The opening scene is out of the time frame of the rest of the film, which unfolds in standard A to B narrative. Was this scene included later as a little teaser, especially because nudity was still rare for 1961 non-raincoat cinema? Or is it much more than that?)

In the Grade Z universe, Beast of Yucca Flats predates the Creeping Terror school of filmmaking in that it appears that someone may have lost the soundtrack, but so many scenes appear to have been shot entirely without dialogue in the first place. The only "onscreen" dialogue is present during long shots or overlong cutaways-- in fact, they are merely voiceovers. The crude, canned, post-dubbed sound removes any “you are there" feeling for its small town and grassy knoll settings. 

The rest of the film's soundtrack, if not limited to spare sound effects, is filled with a tired narrator (Mr. Francis himself) reciting the most absurd psychobabble, which has nothing whatever to do with the onscreen action of the moment. During the early chase scene, the deep-thinking voice utters: "A flag on the moon, how did it get there?" It gets better.

A gas pump attendant is taking an afternoon nap to the soundtrack of "Nothing bothers some people; not even flying saucers". (Huh?) The two-hard-working cops investigating the murders are separately introduced as men "caught in the wheels of progress". A rare sound bite that actually kind of makes sense is the footage of The Beast carrying away a body while the lamenting narrator mourns: "Joseph Javorski; noted scientist- dedicated his life to the betterment of mankind".

In someone's warped mind, however, all of this could have a point. One may assume that this film's narration babbles on to all oblivion to make up for a missing soundtrack. Instead, the onscreen action could act as more of a springboard for Francis' turgid philosophizing. In other words, by having a film whose sound and image work on two entirely different planes, we get a work that could be as dense, multi-layered, or perhaps as meaningless, as anything by Godard's films, or William Burroughs' cut-up novels. This seems almost probable due to the fact that we are also missing images that would give an indication that dialogue scenes were actually shot at all.

When Officer Joe Dobson "caught in the wheels of progress" picks up his partner Jim Archer, "another man caught in the wheels of progress", the scene's decoupage is NOT of two-shots of the men greeting one another (which would at least give the narration some relevance). Instead, we get a long shot of Joe going in, cut to an extended single take of Jim's angry wife slumping around in a nightgown (surely another law was soon to have been broken?), cut to a long shot of Joe and Jim leaving.

Also, when Dr. Javorski gets off the plane and starts talking to someone, we don't hear any of the dialogue. Here, Francis may have sabotaged the one "genuine" performance in the film, and it is from Tor Johnson, for God's sake!! He of course devotes the rest of his film lumbering around like a zombie with what looks like a fried egg on his face- just like in Ed Wood's Night of the Ghouls. However, he is really the only person in the film who gives any semblance of a performance, as anyone else's chances to emote are replaced by gratuitous, impersonal cutaways.

But given all the narrative psychobabble about people caught up in the wheels of progress, about the good doctor being reduced to a savage beast, perhaps this film is less some cheapjack exploitation film than a disturbing exploration of dehumanization. Not only is the doctor reduced to something less than human, but also all the other "characters" are caught in the wheels of progress. Perhaps all of mankind is nothing but a machine--acting out the most basic of actions, without compassion, without pity.

What better way to communicate this message than to rob the film of anything that would emphasize emotion: performances, gestures, faces, voices? Few works are as uncompromisingly impersonal as this one. In art cinema, only the worlds of Robert Bresson match Francis' automaton people. In the world of Grade Z movies, this bleak study and its threadbare representative imagery even surpasses Doris Wishman in a crappy mood.

Plus, Beast of Yucca Flats has a troubling message about the way humans treat one another. Not only is Javorski reduced to savagery by a manmade device, but is killed by one. There is no standard climax (as in a 1934 Universal horror movie) where the beast is felled by someone who has to morally wrestle with oneself to stop the monster because of the great human being it once was.. and may still exist. Instead, the beast is hunted down like an animal by another unfeeling animal...mankind, from above in a helicopter (a recurring motif in all of Francis' films as a director). 

After such a debut as a filmmaker, what could anyone do for a follow-up but with something more mainstream, digestible... better? The Skydivers is a straightforward tale of jealousy and betrayal taken to unfortunate degrees. The whole messy narrative of Red Zone Cuba exists as an excuse to examine the deplorable behaviour of its characters. Those two films, certainly more watchable than Beast, continue exploring the most primitive aspects of human nature.

Within those four years, Francis carved out a demanding trio of films, which are a perfect revenge against all in Tinseltown who shunned him, and an upset for anyone who came to the drive-in to see some standard B movie programmer. However, in the twilight of Coleman Francis' life, his efforts as a filmmaker were forgotten.

Thanks to the Mystery Science Theater crowd, Francis is better known today as a director. Finally, after decades of neglect, even after Francis lies buried, his uncompromising trio of films is back in the public eye. They remain a durable portrait of a justifiably bitter man-- one who was ignored by the system, and retaliated by creating work which challenged our conditioned responses to cinema, and which gave us stark, bleak portraits of inhumanity.

Say what you will about Beast of Yucca Flats. Even clocking in at under an hour, this ungodly turgid mess feels interminable; one of the most minimalist pieces ever committed to celluloid. But at least it’s distinct. 

Beast of Yucca Flats is in the public domain, so the adventurous viewer should have no trouble finding a copy via DVD or streaming. Most will want to see it with the MST3K version, to make it move somewhat quicker. Still, in 2001 Image Entertainment saw fit to release this on DVD as a "40th Anniversary Edition". "Anniversary" releases are usually accorded such films as Citizen Kane or It's a Wonderful Life. Everything about Beast is.... complicated.