Movie Review - The Beast of Yucca Flats

The Beast of Yucca Flats


Yuck-uh is right. This movie leaves such a bad taste in your mouth that you'll be liable to go drink some toilet water rather than watch this movie. True, it is a B-movie, but still - that doesn't give this movie any excuse to be so damn sucky. Only hardcore B-movie buffs will even want to attempt to watch this movie, since it's extremely hard to get through and even when you do, you're not left with anything meaningful to contemplate.

The Beast of Yucca flats opens with some sort of chase, with a man with a briefcase, who's a scientist. His name - Joe Javorski, or something like that. After an atomic bomb goes off, Joe is turned into a Hulk-like being, except not green, not really menacing, and well - not really anything. He has to sate his bloodlust, so he goes about killing anyone around him. And we get some family that has happened to be around him, and some cops trying to take Joe down, and an overall confusing and meaningless plot.

One of the first things that I noticed about the movie was the way in which any action was performed. Without any effort whatsover should be the theme of this movie, because every actor seemed to have no motivation. During the first chase sequence, everyone looks like they're having a friendly game of hide-and-seek. And these guys have guns! They do look like they're water pistols though, so if I were in the same situation, I'd probably wouldn't be scared of the "imposing" men either. In all of my life, I've never heard of guns with no recoil, yet both the pistols and rifle seem to have the capability to control their recoils, leaving their user with no jolt. No smoke ever comes from the barrel of the gun either, but the guns do make the stereotypical BANG and the richochets make the pinging sound most notable from old westerns.

Then, I noticed the narrator, who sounds like he's narrated a film noir full of useless information. It's a wonder no one who read the scripted lines for the narrator thought to say to the writer, "You know, it's probably not such a good idea to tell the audience the thing that they're already seeing." Or that it's really annoying to have him repeat, "Joe Joborsky," and then have him say something about his beast-like nature. Here are some quotes that I thought were quite entertaining from the narrator, and obviously, they're quality things for each human individual to think upon.

"A man runs, somebody shoots at 'em." This was said during a scene when a man was trying to outrun a man shooting from an airplane. During this scene, the runner has zero urgency, and it seems he backtracks and runs in a circle or something because the scenery NEVER CHANGES. Huh.

"Some people don't notice anything, even a UFO." Wait, what? Excuse me, but what does this little parable even mean? Where did UFOs come in? Huh?

This movie also allowed me to develop a math equation that no one has ever thought of before. You can see that

Fat, bald man + spontaneous explosion of an atomic bomb = scary, bloodthirsty, fat, balding man

Interesting. So what should one take from this movie? Absolutely nothing. The plot is a sad excuse for a story, because there's too much bull to actually make a coherent movie. Stay far, far away from this movie, unless you want a good comedy. I hate to rain on someone's parade, but this movie's just a beast.

PS: See that lady on the poster up there? She's in it for about 5 seconds. There is also barely any talking, and when there is, the lips match up worse than a Godzilla movie with a ten second delay.

The Beast of Yucca Flats on Rotten Tomatoes