Film Year: 1961
Genre: Horror, Science Fiction
Director: Coleman Francis
Starring: Tor Johnson and a lot of ADR
MST Season: 6
Shorts Featured: "Money Talks!," "Progress Island U.S.A."
The Shorts
We've got a pair of shorts for you to try on!
First off we have Money Talks, an instructional film in which Benjamin Franklin haunts a pouting teenager who doesn't have enough money for the dance. Intimidating him with his silhouette, Benji tries to talk him into forming a budget.
Definitely a short shown to high-schoolers in order to encourage saving over spending so they don't end up homeless, Money Talks is simple and easy to understand. Though big picture ideas are ignored in favor of little teenage views, it's a fair study and lesson in money.
Up next we stop by in Progress Island U.S.A., a short devoted to the booming industries of Puerto Rico. Did you know they make pants in Puerto Rico? How about drugs? How about booze? Yeah! Now you're interested in Puerto Rico!
I'm going to assume this was a promo piece that was cobbled together to convince people to invest in Puerto Rican business or to become involved and work for it in it in some capacity. It's a very colorful and flashy short, and the locals are beautiful. You know what? I'll buy! The short is fine, though it seems to drone a bit more than the previous.
The Movie
Tor Johnson plays a Russian scientist caught in a nuclear explosion, which turns him into a murderous...I'd say "beast" but technically he's still human. He's just kinda burned and pissed off. He wanders around for about an hour and strangles people, meanwhile those who aim to hunt him down shoot everything in sight.
I'm going to be honest, I kind of like Beast of Yucca Flats. Not in the traditional sense, but it's just a movie where so many creative choices are so absurd that I can't help but watch this movie and be entranced by it. In some ways it's comparable to The Creeping Terror, in which we're given an oddball horror film that doesn't have a proper soundtrack so we're given a narrator to help try and make sense of it all. Creeping Terror at the very least stays simple though, while it's not enough for Beast to be a simple monster movie, but it tries to be philosophical as well. Our narrator throws metaphors out the wazoo to try and give the wild shenanigans a deeper meaning, but half of it doesn't make a lick of sense. "Flag on the Moon, how did it get there?," "Push of a button, something happens," and, my favorite, "Some men aren't bothered by anything, not even flying saucers."
While the film does this it showcases a very angry world of cruelty, but also one without logic. The first image of the film is of a woman being hopelessly murdered, which presumably happens after Tor is turned into the monster, but the sequence doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of the film leaving us to wonder just when the hell he was supposed to kill this lady. Also, a group of kids go missing in the desert in the midst of a manhunt for the beast, which causes their father to almost get shot looking for them because "Shoot first, ask questions later." A criticism of law enforcement? Possibly, but I doubt it. It was probably just nonsense for the sake of drama.
Beast was the first film directed by the infamous Coleman Francis, who directed some of the most painful films featured on the Mystery Science Theater. While it's true that I personally am slightly intrigued by the bleak inanity of Beast of Yucca Flats, to a layman it's a very tough film to get through. I couldn't recommend this film to anybody except for those who seek out the weirdest of the weird. For them I say go nuts.
The Episode
Mike, Servo, and Crow brace themselves for the final Coleman Francis film they'll be subjected to (not including his small cameo in This Island Earth), but somewhat under the radar is that it's also the final Tor Johnson movie the show has featured (as of this writing, that is). It's mildly fitting because the film was one of Tor's final roles and it's also one of his strangest. But at least he's not a thug named Lobo.
Beast of Yucca Flats is actually a surprisingly easy film to riff. The movie is all voice-work and poorly done voice work at that. There is no on set sound, which means all of the empty voices from nowhere, up to and including the film's narrator, are easy to add onto. A lot of the riffs are them finishing sentences to humorous effect, and there is some great hilarity as a result. They keep the mood cheerful, because this is a dour movie and the counterweight is deserved. The overall riff commentary is quite funny overall.
And there's more. This is the fourth and final time the series offered more than one short in a single episode, and I think it's arguable that the riffing is probably more consistent between these two shorts than in other examples in the series. Money Talks is a goody, as Mike and the Bots take an opportunity to heckle a lecture by Benjamin Franklin, and why wouldn't they? There is a mopey teenager, a supernatural figure that tells you what to do, and a moral drilled into your forehead. It's perfect! Progress Island U.S.A. is a bit of a jarring change of pace, but Mike and the Bots keep up with it. There is even an argument that can be made saying that it might be the superior of the two. One thing I can say for certain is that it probably was the harder short to riff, since Money Talks is much goofier. Progress Island is a disembodied voice accompanying a bunch of images, while the guys offer their own disembodied voices to go with it. I laughed fairly often during these opening thirty minutes.
Given how good the theater work is, the host segments are a bit of a letdown. The highlight of the group for me is Crow's ad for Film Anti-Preservation, which is a hilarious plea for some films to just rot. The Proposition Deep 13 segments, which try to present the episode as a political attack, are quite fun too. But the rest feels like hollow filler, and I don't believe I laughed all that much.
Beast of Yucca Flats was briefly mentioned as one of Mike's training films in his first episode, The Brain that Wouldn't Die. The fact that it comes out of the blue here as an official experiment is a pleasant surprise, though Mike doesn't seem to remember he's seen it before ("Just repeat to yourself..."). I'd say Beast winds up being a memorable episode, because the movie is a doozy and the riffing is quite hilarious.
Good
The DVD
Beast of Yucca Flats on DVD. How did it get there? Shout Factory of course! This was one of the episodes featured on their Volume XVIII collection. Video was spotty, filled with tape hits throughout, while audio was solid.
First up was a thirty minute documentary on the making of the film, called No Dialogue Necessary: Making an "Off-Camera Masterpiece." This featurette talks to people who worked on the film, film historians, as well as Bob Burns, who screened the film with Coleman Francis, and MST's Frank Coniff, who discusses the film's use on Mystery Science Theater. A lot of the oddities of the film are addressed, and everyone is very upfront about the "quality" of this movie.
Up next is an interview with Lee Strosnider, who worked with Coleman Francis on Beast and The Skydivers. He discusses working with Francis and being his friend, right down to his sad end.
Rounding out the disc is a jazzy bongo drum trailer for the film as well as a gallery of still photos from the film (but not many).
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