The Beast of Yucca Flats:
Supposedly a.k.a. Girl Madness and The Atomic Monster. Shot on weekends over the year of 1959 and not released until 1961, The Beast of Yucca Flats, an infamous movie as there ever can be, was the second production credit of the bad-film producer Anthony Cardoza (26 May 1930 – 7 Dec 2015), who the year previously had sunk his money (supposedly, and believably, to no returns) in his first production project, Ed Wood's Night of The Ghouls (1959 / a trailer / full film).* It was through that project that Cardoza came to know Tor Johnson (19 Oct 1903 – 12 May 1971), so when some guy named Coleman Francis (24 Jan 1919 — 15 Jan 1973) called up "out of the blue" looking to get in contact with Tor for his self-scripted directorial debut — initially scripted as The Violent Sun but released as The Beast of Yucca Flats — a three-film working relationship resulted between Cardoza and Francis.
"Flag on the moon. How did it get there?"
To give credit where credit is due, the opening scene of The Beast of Yucca Flats is no-budget-film gold, the type of offbeat but sleazy and thrifty pre-grindhouse violence that offers a lot of promise. Set to the sound of a loudly ticking clock, we see a topless woman (an uncredited Mary Torres a.k.a. Lanell Cado) finishing up after her shower. Wrapped in a towel, she wanders from her cheap bathroom to her equally cheap-looking bedroom — and is promptly strangled to death and, in all likelihood, sexually abused as a corpse. The scene has an obvious tacked-on-afterwards feeling, as if added as an afterthought: not only is the unseen-but-for-his-hands murderer definitely not Tor Johnson,* the titular "Beast of Yucca Flats", but there is no way the scene could fit into the actual narrative timeline of the movie as it progresses thenceforth.
* Some allege that the hands are those of director Coleman Francis. Not according to Cardoza, however, who claimed that the hands belong to Tor Johnson's double and that the scene was added just because "Coley liked nudity. That's it! [...] She was an Italian girl from New York. I saw her that one time there, and that was it. She was choked by a guy who doubled for Tor Johnson. [...] That scene was shot in an apartment in Van Nuys. [B Monster]" Cardoza's memory is a bit faulty: he met her again later, in 1961, when he and Francis made their last film together, Red Zone Cuba (full movie), in which she had a larger and credited role, and which was released five years after it was made, in 1966.
"Nothing bothers some people, not even flying saucers."
The Beast of Yucca Flats:
Not that it really matters, for the rest of the movie is a senseless train wreck that defies description and truly earns its reputation as one of the worst films ever made. Some have claimed that the movie, which was Tor Johnsons's last headlining appearance, killed Tor's career, as his only other film appearance thereafter is an uncredited quickie in The Monkees film, Head (1968 / The Porpoise Song). What truly ended Johnsons' career is arguable, but he looks less threatening and monstrous in The Beast of Yucca Flats than unhealthy and overweight. Watching him topple and stumble around, sometimes with the assistance of a stick, with toilet-tissue scars* poorly plastered onto his face, one is alternately overtaken by the urge to guffaw and by a deep sense of shame and sorrow for the man — but then, it isn't exactly like he sank into bad films; he was always in bad films, so he knew what he was doing.
* "Larry Aten (14 Jun 1931 – 27 Sept 2001), who played the sheriff [was the makeup artist]. The 'scars' were toilet tissue that we wrinkled up and then pasted onto Tor. Then powder was put on, to make it look like he was really burned from the atomic blast. That atomic blast was, of course, the real thing — stock footage. [Cardoza at B-Monster]" Larry Aten, rightly so, never made another movie, either as actor or makeup artist.
"One hundred ten degrees in the shade... and no shade."
At a mere 53 minutes in length, The Beast of Yucca Flats is an unbearably long movie when watched alone. Not only is any scene that could have been conveyed in five seconds extended to what feels like five minutes, but the time in between every such scene is also padded with any padding possible, not to mention an inordinate amount of driving scenes of cars going and coming and parking and pulling away and driving and driving and driving. (The best car of the movie is undoubtedly the white 1960 Valiant V-200 driven by the incompetent KGB hitmen played by Cardoza and John Morrison [of Unhinged (1982 / full movie) and The Adventure of Mark Twain (1985 / trailer)].)
"Boys from the city not yet caught by the whirlwind of progress. Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs."
The Beast of Yucca Flats is very much a movie which, like Ron Ormand's The Mesa of Lost Women (1953), is best watched a group and with a lot of beer, so that the communal experience of absolute abysmality can be enjoyed and jeered as a the social occasion it is best meant to be. And much like Ormand's earlier, equally inept filmic train wreck, The Beast of Yucca Flats is one of those movies that becomes a more-enjoyable experience in your memory after the actual experience of watching it is over with.
"Families on vacation go east, west, north and south."
According to Cardoza, the total budget of The Beats of Yucca Flats was around $34,000, which would be about $364,650 today (2025). By the look of the movie, which was filmed without sound and had its often non-sequitur and always inane and repetitive narration added afterwards — much like how every car is shown driving three or more times, many a statement in the narration is repeated two or more times — Cardoza either substantially over-estimated the money spent on the project or someone siphoned off a lot of dough. The plot involves a defecting Russian scientist (Tor Johnson) who is chased onto the Yucca Flats A-bomb testing ground by two incompetent KGB agents. The radioactivity inexplicably mutates the once respected and peaceful scientist* into a murderous monster with a taste for buxom women and prepubescent lads, though he never actually manages to get the latter.
* Coincidence? A year later, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced a mild-mannered scientist who gets changed into a violent beast when exposed on a bombing range to the radioactivity of a test bombing in the Marvel comic book The Incredible Hulk #1 (dated May 1962). Lee always insisted that the inspiration for the character came from the classic novels Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but the timing (not to mention the narrative in the comic book) is pretty auspicious to a possible tertiary inspiration...
"Touch a button, things happen. A scientist becomes a beast."
And so the now beastified man wanders around the desert, pursued by two extremely incompetent law officials, Joe Dobson (Larry Aten) and Jim Archer (Bing Stafford), the type of men too stupid to realize a woman (Aten's then wife Linda Bielema) is dead — which leads, as they carry her off the mountain, to a truly immortal line of overdubbed dialogue, "Well, doctors can't help her. Maybe angels, but not doctors" — and that truly think shooting at the first man you see in the desert is a viable way of keeping society safe. The man Dobson shoots at, and apparently kills, but who is back up and unharmed in the next scene, is Hank Radcliffe (Douglas Mellor [10 Jun 1929 – 13 Oct 2004] of the Christian film Fanny Crosby [1984 / trailer]), the city father of the two city boys that get lost in the desert and almost become Beast fodder. For much of the movie, one thinks that Hank's city-wife Lois (director Francis's ex-wife Barbara Francis [9 May 1920 – 11 Jan 2012]), who spends a lot of time standing around alone at the side of the road, will become a victim of the Beast, but regretfully she never does.
"A man runs, someone shoots at him."
Speaking of women who never become beast fodder, take a look at the slatternly looking woman (Marcia Knight of [2 Feb 1924 – 17 Jan 1980] of Stanley [1972 / trailer]) so prominent on the poster and at the side of all the movie lobby cards. The wife (?) of Dobson, she is seen in The Beast of Yucca Flats for a few short scenes which, like the opening murder, were probably added subsequently. She serves no real purpose other than to pad the time by glaring and showing cleavage and leg, which she does so memorably that one finds it a shame that she never shows up again.* (The movie actually has a very low body count, if you get down to it.)
* Over a good decade later, however, William Shatner does the dirty to her in one of the movies he would prefer to forget having made, Impulse [1974 / trailer].) According to Shatner: "I've forgotten why I was in it. I probably needed the money. It was a very bad time for me. I hope they burn it."
"Twenty hours without rest and still no enemy. In the blistering desert heat, Jim and Joe plan their next attack. Find the Beast and kill him. Kill, or be killed. Man's inhumanity to man."
We draw attention to both those female characters to point out that The Beast of Yucca Flats displays more than just an amplitude of no talent, it is also padded with some missed opportunities: women who should be victims, aren't. Instead, the surreally circular and directionless narrative features gunmen that let opponents reload, cars that drive in circles, a man runs and runs and runs and runs, a lawman skydives for no real reason, a narration that appears to follow the William Burroughs cut-up method of writing, and actors that give bad acting a bad name.
The Beast of Yucca Flats is truly a filmic disaster of undeniable excess, a movie that fails in any way to project, in any way, shape or form, an iota of cinematic talent. (Well, except for the sleazy opening murder which, while ultimately unconvincing, does have its cinematic effectiveness.) One finds it hard to believe that the obviously untalented auteur director Coleman Francis (24 Jan 1919 – 15 Jan 1973) went on to write and direct two further filmic fuckups, The Skydivers (1963 / trailer) and Red Zone Cuba (1961, released 1966 / full movie), both produced by Cardoza, before his directorial career crashed and burned, never to be revived.*
* Coleman Francis (above, not from the movie), was an actor prior to and subsequent to his doomed attempts at direction. He can be found in, among other fine films, Ray Dennis Steckler's Body Fever (1969 / full movie) and both Russ Meyer's Motorpyscho! (1965 / trailer, with Haji) and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970, see the Babes of Yesteryear series at the lower right of this page). In the last, he's seen a few seconds as a "rotund drunk", which he had pretty much become by then. His end, as told by Anthony Cordoza, is typically tragic and either mundane or mysterious, depending on how you look at it: "Coleman Francis' body was found in the back of a station wagon at the Vine Street Ranch Market. [...] There was a plastic bag over his head and a tube going into his mouth or around his throat. I don't know if he committed suicide, or ... I have no idea. Never looked it up because we were on the outs at the time. [B-Monster]"
The Beast of Yucca Flats — watch it at your own peril. That said, masochism can be fun under the right circumstances...
The full film with boobies —
Beast of Yucca Flats:
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