Review: The Beast of Yucca Flats

Ha. You guys would be thinking, when did this movie come. Isn't it ? Let me explain as to why you haven't heard of this movie ever.

1. Directed by Francis Coleman who is widely considered to be the worst director of all times, in the esteemed league of Ed Wood.

2. Widely regarded as the worst sci-fi 'B' movie ever, almost as bad as 'Plan 9 from outer space'. Now as a rule, 'B' movies are called 'B' movies for a reason. the reason being their superhuman ineptitude at everything ranging from acting to direction to dialogues to coherence and what not. And we are talking about the worst of them all. You get the idea here.

3. The most important reason you have never seen this movie is probably because not many people have survived to tell the tale after watching this. I barely managed to snatch life from the jaws of death. As the movie came to a screeching halt, I found myself short of breath, my lungs barely being able to supply the much needed oxygen, my heart rate slowed down to almost half the normal, my life functions halted down to almost a trickle. The only reason I could survive the movie was that I have grown upon a steady diet of movies that have defined the term crappy. And boy oh boy, did I need every single one of those experiences to make it through today.

The premise of the movie is as follows. A scientist (played by Tor Johnson, a veteran Swedish wrestler) wanders into a nuclear testing facility (Yucca Flats) where radiation turns him into a beast. He starts killing people in the desert and he inturn gets killed in the end. Oops! Thats it. Thats the whole premise! If you think I am exaggerating the thinness of the plot, be my guest and watch the movie. I am sure by the end of the movie you will find it hard to sum it up in a single sentence (i.e. if you survive), not because of a plethora of nail biting action sequences but because once you are 3 minutes into the movie, your mind goes numb and you are basically overwhelmed by the incredible stupidity that is being played in front of your eyes.

The movie begins with a lady being murdered in the shower. No allusion whatsoever of this incident is made in the movie ever again. When the director is not wasting minutes of footage shooting dusty cars running on dustier roads in Yucca flats, he wastes them on shooting the elaborate parking skills of the drivers driving those cars. Rest of the time, he basically focusses his camera on non-consequential things like non-consequential bushes, non-consequential rocks and pebbles, non-consequential rabbits, coyotes and pigs. He criminally wastes atleast 10 minutes of the movie focussing the camera on the face of a person who does not give even a single expression, does not say a single thing and frankly looks pretty self-engrossed to realize that he has been invested with 1/5 of the running time of the movie. No coherence, no plot, no character development. It almost seems that there was a constant tape of random ideas running in the director's head and he picked at random and decided to make a movie out of the concoction of completely unrelated events.

And I have not yet mentioned the salient feature of the movie. The problem, apparently in the begining, was that they had shot the complete movie without dialogues and when the time came to put the audio in sync with the video, they ran out of budget. The director came up with an ingenious plan at this point. Thanks to his improvisation, there is not a single scene in the movie where the character who is speaking the dialogues is also seen in the video!!! He/She is always somewhere in the background. It would be an understatement to say that the movie was the cinematic equivalent of feeding your hand to a wood chipper. On any given day, I would be ready for the latter option if asked to watch this movie again.

If you have the guts to watch it, here is the link :
Link1 (Warning: A little nudity in the begining)
I would rather recommend watching the Mystery Science Theatre version as it atleast has people passing funny comments during the run:
Mystery Science Theatre version (The movie starts at about 4 minutes into the video)

Duration : 53 minutes. Seems like : 753 minutes
Precautionary measures: Oxygen mask, First aid handy, A friend capable of giving CPR. I advice that don't watch it alone or atleast not in one single sitting.
Disclaimer: I shall not be held responsible for any permanent disabilities or death which might result to those who watch it. No financial compensations for medical expenses shall be incurred upon me in such a situation.