Post on a livejournal; How did it get there?

[abqreviews]

One of the great things about being a reviewer/fan of cult films and participating in the fandom is that, although you will occasionally get criticized for not liking something popular(be it Franco movies or Rocky Horror Picture Show), no one ever gives you any flack for loving something that any normal viewer would consider a guilty pleasure at best. As Jonathan Haze tells the plant in the real version of Little Shop of Horrors; "There's just no accounting for people's taste".
 

More perplexing, however, is the film that you are completely fascinated by but that you don't even like. It's a phenomenon that's hard to put into words. You saw the film, and it was bad, and you weren't entertained by it, and yet you don't hate it. You are perplexed by it, haunted by it. And yet, you can't say that you liked it. It made for a more compelling experience than the umpteenth viewing of your favorite movie. Everyone's seen that kind of film at least once, and for more than a few horror and science fiction film viewers; no film fits that description better than Coleman Francis's 1961...er...opus...The Beast of Yucca Flats.
 

Beast is one of those films that can be synopsized by a reviewer as simply as possible in one sentence without any real specifics and that will still tell you all that you will ever need to know about the film in question and that any other information could not possibly help you view it differently: Fat man stumbles around desert; narrator says things. It may also be the only film that a simple, deadpan capsule review without any emotion put into it by the author can be written that can also function as a parody of the film in question, just like those Uncyclopedia articles that are ''written in the style of the things they are about''. Beast is burdened by the prescence of a narrator(Coleman Francis himself) who spends the entirety of the film spouting nonsensical garbage("Flag on the Moon; how did it get there?", "Nothing bothers some people, not even flying saucers", "A man runs, somebody shoots him" and my personal favorite: "Boys from the city, not yet caught in the whirlwind of progress, feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs". ) that has little, if anything to do with the film and that sounds alternately like a review, an observation, or what one critic describes as ''poetry written by protozoa''. Honestly, does my little red, bold-faced capsule sypnopsis not sound like it could fit into the film's narration?
 

It isn't just soda pop they want...


Relevance to the plot, what does it have?

It is this bizzare, cryptic narration that probably accounts for Beast 's continued cult popularity. But that still doesn't fully explain, or rather, is too simple an explanation, for the bizzare, almost hypnotic power that this terrible little turd of a film posesses. 
 

Your eyes will be glued to the screen.

Is it because it's campy? Well, it is, but that level of absurdity caused by Coleman's asides still is not delivered with the panache or frequency that a constant barrage of silliness can cause to inspire a cult following. Is it because the film is entertaining or well-paced? Fuck no. This film is paced more lethargically than waking up on a hot morning in Mexico under heavy sheets with a hangover while suffering from the Flu and an upset stomach after not getting any sleep for days and ahving just been exposed to sleeping gas. Is it star power? Well, the fact that the biggest names in the cast are Tor ("Time for go to bed") Johnson and Conrad Brooks should tell you something, as well as that Conrad appears in a small role so small I still have yet to spot him. 
 

Forget Waldo, where's me?

Or perhaps it is because the film is the kind to inspire people to look for deep meanings in it, however absurd? It's human nature to try and read meanings into things, to analyze them, that's why I started this goddamn blog in the first place. Beast is clearly devoid of meaning, and any that Francis may have intended was clearly lost, either because the film couldn't express it well enough or Coleman just stopped trying. However, that's still not why I find this film fascinating. I always analyze things, so much that I have been called out on it more than once. It's just what I do to everything I read, write, listen to and watch. I may not always succeed at understanding, but I at least try to. But for this, there's no reason to try, even as a joke.

I think I may know the reason why I don't try and either dissect or parody this film though: It's way too much fun watching other people do so. About the only episodes of MST3K I can stand to watch without wanting to shove Tom Servo clean up Mike Nelson's(Or was it Joel's?) smug asshole is their Beast episode, as well as their other Coleman Francis-centric episodes. It's not my lack of creativity in mocking stuff, I just don't think Beast is worthy enough a target(Yeah, I know how weird that must sound after creating a whole post dedicated to it) and that other people have done better jobs before me. For example, would you try your hand at a Beast-bashing/mock analysis after reading this?*:

In The Beast of Yucca Flats, filmmaker Coleman Francis brings his audience a startling depiction of heteronormativity defending its hegemony against deviations from its sexual standard.

The film begins with a pre-credit sequence of a beautiful, slightly androgynous woman coming out of the shower. She is then killed by an unseen man. This sequence sets the stage for the films thematic concern with repressed homosexuality bubbling up into violence.

After the credits, we are shown a Russian scientist, who has lost his family, bringing scientific secrets to America. He is chased by Russian spies into Yucca flats, where A-Bomb testing is being done. The explosion transforms him into a monster that desires only to kill. Or so it seems.

The scientist has just lost his family. This alienation from a normal family is not the cause of, but is caused by, his becoming a monster, thematically speaking. For in this film, the constant, clipped narration insists on equating science and 'progress'--the 'whirlwind of progress.' Characters are referred to as 'caught' in progress. Science is not itself in this film; it is a symbolic stand-in for liberality in society; that is, the beginning of alternative lifestyles.

The scientist is transformed into a monster by 'science'; he has come out of the closet, and for society, this is a transgressive figure, because uncategorizable, neither male nor female. He is a monster. Hence, he is chased into Yucca Flats bringing secrets to America. The secret of his homosexuality. His becoming a monster is his coming out of the closet.

The first killing the monster performs, then, is naturally upon a heteronormal couple. A young man and a young woman stop along the side of the road with car troubles. The monster kills first the man then the young woman. This is a semiotic enactment of the fears of heterosexual society that homosexuals are destructive of family.



The heroes of the film are then revealed, Jim and Joe. Joe is the first to discover the bodies. He then drives to Jim's house and calls him down. Though Jim--Jim Archer, to emphasize the phallic masculinity of his character, the one who aims a phallus and shoots--is found in bed with a beautiful woman, he instantly leaves the bed upon Joe's call.

We are even told that Jim and Joe patrol the desert together seven days a week. Jim and Joe are, as is emphasized by their similar-sounding names, repressed homosexuals. They love one another, but cannot reveal it. They are the perfect team to do battle with the monster--the monster they cannot face in themselves. It is the monster because, in Julia Kristeva's terms, it is Abject--it is what they themselves potentially could, and perhaps will, become.

At the same time, we are introduced to a family of city-folk passing through. The children feed soda to pigs and notice coyotes around the road. The narration states that the coyotes are being driven from their grounds by missile testing. Again, this is emphasizing how science--social progress--is destructive of the order of nature; for pigs normally don't drink soda, and coyotes normally avoid human settlements. Hence the arguments of conservatives that homosexuality is against nature.

This family stops along the road and the children become lost. The father goes looking for them, worried. The worry is the exposure of children to the monster of homosexuality.

At the same time, Jim Archer has decided to enter a plane to hunt for the monster by rifle. He spots the father, assuming the father is the monster, begins shooting. This is only too appropriate. Jim is unconsciously trying to destroy the very family form he has deceived himself into trying to belong to; he is unconsciously aiding the monster.

Meanwhile the monster watches the children bending over a pool to drink. As he does, he holds his large stick horizontally, pointing his phallus at the vulnerable boys. When the boys detect him, they run screaming, while the monster waves his stick.

The boys hide in a cave--taking shelter in the womb, in a vaginal opening. The monster cannot find them there, though it comes right to the opening itself. It cannot plumb the depths of femininity. It merely tosses down its stick in representation of sexual frustration.

As the boys make an escape, Joe and Jim have a showdown with the monster. They shoot it--with their phallic guns--and the monster begins to wrestle with them. Joe and Jim wrestle with their latent homosexual desires, and eventually heteronormativity triumphs, as they destroy the monster--though Joe, the most effeminate, is almost overcome.

The final shot is of a rabbit wandering before the face of the dead monster--Coleman Francis emphasizing the triumph of the natural over the unnatural.

All throughout this film a mysterious voice-over renders the proceedings abstract. Though we know it is Jim shooting the father from a plane, the narrator states, "A man runs; somebody shoots at him." The universality of the events are thus brought forward by Francis, who is trying to incite the fear of the family-destroying homosexuality alternative lifestyles, "progress," is ushering in.

There is no missing the strong attack of this film. For a greater understanding of the way heteronormative discourse is used to discourage and diminish the esteem of alternative sexualities, The Beast of Yucca Flats is highly recommended to gay/bi/lesbian groups.

That, my friends, is satirical analysis by a troll reviewer at it's finest. I dare not compete with it. 


Tor Johnson: Gay Icon.

So all I can offer in my tribute to Coleman Francis's...er...masterpiece is a first-hand video of what could easily be the infamous thirsty pigs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14pTcpq50uU

It's progress you know.~

* That review was written, incidentally, by a fellow on IMDb named passetemps1. Kudos to you, friend.