The Life of Coleman Francis - Part II

THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS (1961)

The Beast of Yucca Flats is 54 minutes long and never seems like less than three hours. Whereas 1950s sci fi films like Day the Earth Stood Still, Them and Godzilla reflected society’s fear of nuclear radiation and war, Francis simply exploited nuclear paranoia as a pretext for filming a once again woefully miscast Tor Johnson stumbling around the desert near Saugus, CA.

That is if, in fact, Francis was even thinking about exploiting anything for his own personal gain. One gets the sense with Beast – as one also does with The Skydivers and Red Zone Cuba – that there wasn’t actually a script anyone was working from. Or even a treatment. Francis’ movies have the feel of some middle-school friends taking a camera out into a field and filming whatever comes to mind that particular day, then heading out the next day and doing the same, wholly unconcerned with what was shot the day before.

The Beast of Yucca Flats is ostensibly about Russian defector Joseph Javorski (“noted scientist,” as the narrator intones at least three times) flying to an undisclosed location outside of the Nevada Proving Grounds with a briefcase full of “secret data.” After nearly being assassinated by altogether inept Russian spies, radiation from an unexpected bomb test turns him into the Beast, and he embarks on a murderous rampage.

But this is where any semblance of coherence ends. The rest of the movie’s 45 minutes is a baffling montage of cars driving through the desert, men climbing over and around endless rocks in the desert, and the world’s dumbest family road tripping through the desert. There is no plot. There is no continuity. There is no point. After the Beast kills his first two victims (his only two victims, excluding the film’s opening sequence), we see a boy selling newspapers with the headline “BEAST KILLS MAN AND WIFE.” But no one is called out to find the Beast – not the Sheriff, not detectives, not the National Guard. Only patrolman Joe Dobson (Larry Aten, who went on to two appearances in The Fugitive) and his partner Jim Archer (Bing Stafford, in his only film role) are on the case, and Joe has to go retrieve Jim from his house, in what appears to be a day-for-night shot. “Better come with me,” Joe’s emotionless, overdubbed voice says in a long shot where we can’t even see his face. “Trouble up the road. Murder.” “Be right down,” Jim says.

Tor Johnson plays the “beast.” As Joseph Javorski he lumbers around the southern California desert looking confused and out of sorts. As the Beast he lumbers around the southern California desert looking confused and out of sorts, but his clothes are torn and some cut-rate make-up on his face is supposed to make it look as though he lived through a nuclear bomb test. Here, then, is the titular Beast of the movie’s title, the proverbial star of the show.

And yet a sizeable chunk in the middle of the film – from 26:53 to 42:42 on your DVD – follows Jim Archer as he attempts to gun down distraught father Hank Radcliffe (Douglas Mellor, who somehow landed an uncredited cameo in 1987’s The Lost Boys) from an airplane, mistaking Radcliffe for the Beast. That’s nearly sixteen minutes of Beast that has nothing whatsoever to do with Joseph Javorski, his stolen scientific data, or the Beast itself. It’s a film-within-a-film – Death From The Air? – and serves as Francis’ statement of intent: nothing in this movie makes any sense and I couldn’t give a good goddamn if that makes watching it unpleasant. I couldn’t give a good goddamn about you. I have nothing to say, but I’m going to say it anyway.

For instance, Beast’s opening shot of a woman getting out of the shower and being strangled by an unknown assailant while a clock ticks deafeningly loud exists in a vacuum from the rest of the film. We never come back to it. It’s unclear if it happens before the events of the movie itself. We assume the murderer is the Beast, but we never see his face. Interestingly, it’s the best shot of the entire movie. It’s just solid enough to make you wonder if Francis wasn’t on set that day, if perhaps the director had a 2^nd unit shooting this scene while he wandered the desert with the rest of the cast.

The Beast of Yucca Flats was shot MOS – no sound – and for the most part, Francis didn’t bother going back and dubbing in everyone’s lines. Many scenes were comically shot to avoid showing the actors’ faces altogether (this way he didn’t have to waste valuable seconds synching) so in the few instances where actual dialog is being spoken, we don’t even see the mouths speaking the lines. We just hear the voices, which were clearly overdubbed in post. For the most part, a monotone narrator attempts to make sense of the confusing onscreen images, and succeeds only in making things worse. It is the narration that has become the stuff of legend amongst Francis’ fanbase, tirelessly muddying the already confusing goings-on onscreen:

(During a long car chase sequence): “Flag on the moon. How did it get there? Secret data. Pictures of the moon. Secret data, never before outside the Kremlin. Man’s first rocket to the moon.”

Wheels and whirlwinds of progress and justice are two themes the narrator returns to:

“Joe Dobson. Caught in the wheels of progress.”

“Jim Archer, Joe’s partner. Another man caught in the frantic race for the betterment of mankind. Progress.”

“Vacation time. Man and wife. Unaware of scientific progress.”

“Boys from the City. Not yet caught by the Whirlwind of Progress. Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs.”

“The pilot dropped his man. If Joe Dobson moves north, Hank will be caught in the middle. An innocent victim, caught in the Wheels of Justice.”

Violent death is another preoccupation:

“Hours in the broiling hot desert sun. With no trace of the killer. To put Jim Archer’s paratroop training to good use is the only answer. A trip up into the skies, and jump. And if the killer is on the plateau: Kill him.”

“Always on the prowl. Looking for something, or somebody to kill. Quench the killer’s thirst.”

“Joseph Javorski. Respected scientist. Now a fiend. Prowling the wastelands. A prehistoric beast in a nuclear age. Kill. Kill, just to be killing.”

“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.”

And some good old-fashioned Colman Francis nonsense:

“Touch a button. Things happen. A scientist becomes a beast.”

“A man runs, somebody shoots at him.”

“Vacation time. People travel east, west, north or south. The Radcliffs travel east, with two small boys, adventurous boys. Nothing bothers some people. Not even Flying Saucers.” (There are no flying saucers in The Beast of Yucca Flats.)

Online chatter points to Francis himself as the film’s imperturbable narrator, but it’s largely academic. Here is a movie where a man casually walks away from his gun-totting assassins, as though he’s just gotten off the bus and walking to work. Here is a movie with the director’s wife and two sons, none of whom are actors, in major roles. Here is a movie with Tor Johnson in his final leading role, throwing huge rocks. Here is a movie where a man is shot dead by a high-powered rifle, and then a minute later gets up and walks away, none the worse for wear. Here is a director’s debut effort where inside of nine minutes, a naked woman has been strangled, and a Russian defector has landed in the desert outside of the Nevada Proving Grounds, been chased by gun-wielding KGB agents, and subjected to a nuclear bomb blast.

Here is the strange, strange world of Coleman Francis. The Beast of Yucca Flats cost an estimated $34,000 to make, and there’s no telling how much – if anything – it grossed. Presumably the director at least turned a small profit, because his sophomore effort – 1963’s The Skydivers – sported a bona-fide soundtrack, relieving him of dubbing duties. Coleman Francis was moving up.