Tick …. tick …. tick …. tick

The clock is ticking throughout the 1961 film, The Beast of Yucca Flats.  There’s only so much time left for someone who is trying to escape from a repressive, communist regime.  There’s only so much time that one can spend wandering through the desert before he starts to succumb to the heat and has to remove almost all of his clothes.  There’s only so long that the police can search before they get trigger happy and go after the wrong guy.

Tick …. tick …. tick …. tick

The Beast of Yucca Flats opens with a woman stepping out of the shower and getting attacked and strangled by someone hiding in her house.  Who attacked her and why?  How does it relate to the rest of what we see in this film?  Was this a flashback or a flashforward?  I’ve watched The Beast of Yucca Flats a few times and I don’t know.  Perhaps it’s just a sign of the randomness of fate.  Who knows how to control the whims of the universe?  Or maybe director Coleman Francis was just looking for an excuse to bring some nudity into the film.  As enigmatic a figure as Coleman Francis may have been, he undoubtedly understood that importance of selling tickets.

Tick …. tick …. tick …. tick

Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson is perhaps best known for his work with Edward D. Wood, Jr.  He was Lobo in Bride of the Monster.  He was the police detective who was raised from the dead in Plan 9 From Outer Space.  By most accounts, Tor was a nice guy with a good sense of humor but he was also a hulking and intimidating physical presence and he had a difficult time delivering dialogue.  However, Ed Wood was not the only director for which Tor Johnson worked.  He also worked with Coleman Francis, playing Joseph Javorsky in The Beast of Yucca Flats.

Tick …. tick …. tick …. tick

Joseph Javorsky is a Russian scientist who has defected to America and who is carrying a briefcase full of not just nuclear secrets but also evidence that the Russians have already landed on the Moon.  Russian agents follow Javorsky out to Nevada and assassinate his American contacts and his bodyguard.  Javorsky wanders into the desert and, due to the heat, he has to remove his clothing to survive.  This film allows you to see more of Tor Johnson that you’ve probably ever wanted to see.  Unfortunately, Javorsky wanders into an American nuclear test and is mutated into a monster who is motivated by rage.

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It’s hard not to feel sorry for Javorsky, who seemed to have the best motivations when it came to defecting to America.  He’s turned into a monster and finds himself being pursued through the desert by the police and a father who worries that Javorsky has kidnapped his children.  Tor Johnson is thoroughly miscast as a nuclear scientist but if you can overlook the fact that he’s Tor Johnson wandering around the desert, he actually is a sympathetic figure.  His niceness comes through, even after he starts to turn into the beast.

Tick …. tick …. tick …. tick

The Beast of Yucca Flats is not a film that makes any sort of sense, not in the usual way.  It works if one views it as being a filmed dream but let’s not give director Coleman Francis too much credit.  While the dubbed dialogue and the narration and the odd performances all create a surreal atmosphere, there’s nothing to indicate that any of that was deliberate on Francis’s part.  If anything, one gets the feeling that Coleman Francis mostly made this movie so he could fly his airplane over the desert.  The Beast of Yucca Flats may not be good but that final scene of poor old Tor reaching out to the rabbit still brings tears to my mismatched eyes.