THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS

Coleman Francis, 1961, USA

To the "bad film" aficionado, there is nothing quite like the consummate incompetence of an old B-monster B-film. "The Beast of Yucca Flats" is a fine example of that complete ineptitude. Every scene aches with poor timing, bad narration or dialogue, weak or nonexistant acting and action... you see better on youtube these days. But it takes a special lameness to elevate a film to cult bad status, and "Yucca" has it. Hmm, being English, I briefly but stupidly misread the title as meaning some menace of a housing estate of some kind; but nope, Yucca flats is open terrain used for - uhoh - ATOMIC TESTING!! What will it be next? Ants? Scorpions?? Coyotes??? No, it's Tor Johnson! He's a - ahem - Russian agent defecting to the USA, carrying a suitcase full of secrets that actually provides the film's one notable special effect.

Wait, first, a pre-credits sequence that has a breast-bearing woman being murdered in her room by over-sized hands. Well, we would guess these are the hands of "The Beast", and although we don't see his face, those hands and that butt which blocks out the screen and alludes to necrophilia look big enough to be Tor's. This poses a chronological and narrative quandary: since Tor spends all his time raging from a cave out on the flats, whose home is this and at what point did he commit this murder? And who the hell was she? The only plausible explanation is that this is Tor's murdered wife, mentioned in narration... but those hands are so big... can't... compute.... we soon discover that, no, the scene was just there for the titillation. To the "ominous" sound of a ticking clock - and boy, those clocks sure ticked loudly in those days, huh? - this has to be the most quiet and sleepiest murder ever put to screen. Actually, this will be typical of the entire film: people don't seem to die; rather they fall into states of chronic drowsiness. Hmm, same as the dialogue, which seems to get more disinterested as the film goes on. You can also practically see and hear the man with the stick trying to prod the actors to, you know, do something. But not the narrator. Oh no. Not him. He's got things on his mind. Important things. Frightening things. Prophetic things. Appalled. Random. Things. Progress. Science. Inhumanity. Fate. Coyotes. Flying Saucers. Well, it's hard to tell why he mentions flying saucers, but one obviously fluttered through his mind when giving his droll running commentary. "Nothing bothers some people. Not even flying saucers," he says. Man, that's so good, I'm making it as a reusable by-line and quote for a long time to come!

According to (the wonderful) jabootu.com, the soundtrack for "Yucca" was lost and so what we have is quite a disjointed experience. No natural ambience, just sound effects trowelled on and dialogue recorded with a tin can found on the flats replacing a more costly microphone. It all fits together with all the finesse of Robot Monster's expressive hand gestures to his dialogue: almost. Not quite. Figuratively. But what this does mean is that we get the priceless narration, which surely marks out "Yucca Flats" from its bad movie peers. "Flag on the Moon. How did it get there?" he says, apropos of nothing. Oh, wait, this is some cool, abstract reference to Professor "Tor" Javorsky's "secret plans" with which he arrives at Yucca flats. But uhoh, Russian agents are waiting with their sneaky plan of trying to kill him a the airport with open gunplay and follow-on car chase. The most somnambulistic car chase in cinema. Geez, even the cars looks like they can't be bothered. They seemingly chase all day into the night... no, wait, it's day... no: night... no: day. There's finally a stand-off: guns fire randomly and unconvincingly; some guys fall asleep... oh, they are dying... Tor simply walks away. At a snail's pace. He looks like walking is going to make him pass out. He's a big guy ... I guess the bad guys never went to target practice.

He's also a big Swedish former wrestler... hmm, wonder if that will come in handy later? But what do you know, Tor "flees" from his assassins into an atomic testing zone!!

His briefcase smoulders.

Symbolically.

And that is the best visual and effect of the film.

Ah, to be fair, not even director/writer/narrator Coleman Francis can quite ruin the natural stark beauty of "Yucca Flats". And we'll see a lot of them. Otherwise there's a moment of random cleavage from character Jim Archer's wife, but we don't see her again and otherwise it's the flats for us. The beast kills a young couple who stop out on the highway, or at least grapples them into heavy slumber. I could mention how badly staged this is - Tor seems to be in the back seat one moment, without the woman noticing, then he's outside... oh what's the use? It's quite painful watching Tor - all Beasted up with what looks like randomly applied flour patches on his face - trying to lumber across the flats with the woman under his arm. He looks likes he'll have a hernia at any moment, and you keep waiting for him to drop her. No monstrous striding for Yucca Beast, just some awkward lumbering. You'd think that there might be some military presence, the flats being the site of atomic testing and all; and you might expect to see a soldier or two, what with all that "killing" going on. Surely they've seen the "Beast Kills Man and Wife" headline? But nope, what we have instead are dumb-ass Jim and Joe from the Sheriff's department. Their plan seems to be focusing on a single plateau - they must have had a map of the vast flats and just stuck a pin in someplace - which just happens to be where Tor-Beast is hiding out, fondling his female's hair. Now, the whole scenario concerning the unreachable plateau is the subject of much head-slapping from almost every review on "Yucca". But not this one. It's just plain stupid though. Anyway, Jim and Joe get to Tor's corpse bride... wait, no, she's alive (??!), and they... wait, no, she's dead (!!?).

Next up are a family who stop at a gas station - "Boys from the city, not yet caught in the whirlwind of progress, feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs." - And, hey, there's a coyote. Tor could do with a radioactively enhanced coyote. Sure! "Coyotes... once a menace to... travellers...missile bases... run them off their hunting grounds." Oh. Oh well. That's out then. No atomic coyotes after all. Anyhow, after the thrilling gas station visit, the family go out onto the open road and get a flat tyre in the Beast's general vicinity. Well, it looks like the exact same spot as the attacked travellers earlier... The two boys wander off like tumbleweed and when their dad Hank goes in pursuit, the cruel Tor-like hands of fate, or "man's inhumanity to man", intercedes and - for no good reason - he is mistaken for the killer. This'll be the shoot first, questions later philosophy of Jim and Joe who are flying around Yucca, searching for The Beast. It's not quite "North By Northwest", since (a) it is absurd they would open fire, and (b) they aren't really flying, now are they? Just a camera tilting up in a close-up of the plane window. Anyway, he gets back to his wife, leaves her there, takes the car to get help (!!), and.... bah. The kids just happen to stumble on the Beast, who dynamically WALKS after them and somehow herds them into his formerly inaccessible cave. Beast returns home and expresses his rage at finding the woman gone by throwing a rock and making bad I'm-A-Monster grunts.

ARRGH! fumes Tor.

The kids get out, the Beast WALKS in threatening pursuit, Jim and Joe attack him, there’s a bit of a struggle in which The Beast exhibits some strangely Swedish wrestler-like manoeuvres. He's dead... Jim and Joe are relieved. A little bunny rabbit - according to legend, unscripted and seizing its chance at scene-stealing brilliance - hops up to the body of The Beast who then comes awake again - Tor Johnson apparently also seizing his moment at unscripted and improvised pathos - kisses the bunny and expires. Hmm, Jim and Joe didn't really check he was allll dead then.

"The Beast of Yucca Flats" oozes desperation. It's desperate to pad out its barely-an-hour running time. Desperate to create tragedy, creeping menace, narrative, action.... desperate to make one minute look credible. It's tough to sit through all in one go. Take a pillow. But it is enjoyably bad, although it can't even muster enough energy to be wonderfully bad, like "Robot Monster" and Tor's other crowning achievement, "Plan 9 From Outer Space". I guess they tried. But when a small desert bunny out-does everything else in a 'monster' film, you know that film is in trouble.

JAMES BOND... and me.

Growing up in the seventies and eighties, it's inevitable that I grew up with Bond in some way. Bond sign-posted special occassions, such as Bank Holidays and Christmas. There was always a 007 to catch up on or remind yourself of, always heralded with "Bond. Is. Back." It was near enough a patriotic duty to watch the Bond... practically mandatory... and I guess it is still meant to be. I was a kid when I saw "The Spy Who Loved Me," "Moonraker" and "For Your Eyes Only" at the cinema (1977, '79' '81) What do I recall remembering about them? Richard Kiel as Jaws, an arachnid-like underwater base; "Star Wars" tendencies and a "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" security code gag; A parrot and some snow. When you're young, you're quite innoculated to the tackiness of these 007 outings, you go with the silliness and the puns - which I was used to from the "Carry On" films and Saturday night TV. I remember watching "Octopussy" ('83) when it came out, renting it on VHS of course, and watching it maybe two or three times in a week. Dear Lord, how weak and camp it actually turned out to be.

Of course, these weren't my only points of reference for Bond: I knew all the earlier stuff. "You Only Live Twice", for example. I was intrigued at the conundrum of the title, and knew I loved the sweeping strings of John Barry's music and the longing in the theme song. And I loved it equally when the Trash Can Sinatras did a heartbreaking cover of it. I remember thinking Roger Moore was the "funny" bond ... I didn't know what 'tongue-in-cheek' was, but I knew that "From Russia With Love" wasn't it. No, Bond number two related far more to my knowledge of steely, humourless Cold War-esque Seventies thrillers. I knew Bond was exotic, because he travelled and kick butt in countries that were only now being promised to us with the incredible opportunities of Concorde and and developing holiday industries. I knew Bond slept with any attractive woman onscreen and that they all had dirty names, not that I could quite work out why or how. I knew he wasn't part of the real world.

Apart from the mini Austin Martin car I possessed (pop-up bulletproof shield and ejector-seat! - the latter doomed to be lost...somewhere...), I also owned a book of Bond. Probably called "Book of Bond", I forget. It was a book without a wraparound jacket, so I was left with the serious black hardcover to contemplate. Inside, the book was packed with all the things you had to have or do or know to be a spy. I was young and impressionably and took much of this as rote and truth, and it panicked me that you had to have, do or know these things. It was threatening and anxiety-provoking because it seemed to be an anology for all the adult things I would have to do, and couldn't, and was expected to succeed at. Masculine things.

And Bond is nothing if not an mythical machismo. Being British, of course, it is suave and viper-like. It cuts you down with a deadly karate move and a neat one-liner, set off with either a sadistic smirk or raised eyebrow. And in a suit. It's very British, that. You reserved and repressed yourself until the right moment, and then struck at just the correct point in a surge of precise violence. I'd seen "The Avengers" and I adored "The Prisoner", so I knew all this. Americans, however, were earthier men, in cowboy and soldier outfits, chomping cigars with shark-like teeth a'la James Coburn, Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef. Or Magnum P.I. I like, and probably still like Bond best when he is silent, suited and deadly. Bond versus Oddjob... well, that was glorious. Lethal Englishness against the inscrutability of the East.

I also knew that "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" was meant to be the crap one, because it had that other Bond who only appeared once. But that's a general fallacy, it seems, and I note a lot of reclamation of George Lazenby's outing in later criticism by more serious aficianados. Truth is, Lazenby does seem to be the perfect embodiment of the morphing from hallowed Connery to variable Moore. He looks and acts like he handle himself in a fight, and yet comes burdened with those puns that diffuse the horror of his murderous manner. "He branched off." Despite this, it was a film that, for all its silliness of brainwashed colour-coded national females stereotypes and so on, tried to have the sharper edge of the first Bonds. Oh yes, and tried to shade him in with an ill-fated wife. Diana Rigg makes the film, and when she turns up late in the adventure on the ice rink and smiles, you realise how sorely she's been missed for the middle chunk. The other fluff can't compete. And Lazenby was unfairly dismissed. "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" still seemed to possess the Bond qualities that I liked most: good action; a certain edge of threat, rather than the TV-humour, tacky moments and excesses of, say, "Live and Let Die". Does the franchise's humour and campness increase as Bond's misogyny and sadism falls out of favour towards the Twenty-First Century? And yet Dalton was chastised for returning to the earlier seriousness... Brosnan settled a happy medium for a while.

And now there is that new Bond... with added pain again. It seems this time, it's being embraced. Zero tolerance and no-nonsense retaliation is thoroughly in vogue. The difference is that I have long since stopped being mildly excited at the promise of a Bond. I might go see "Casino Royale", I'm not sure. Last year, I read an A-Z of "Goldfinger", full of details on the development and history of the film, and my curiosity was aroused again. I have decided at some point to add the first three 007s to my collection, but I think my interest proper now in the series ends with "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". Is Bond evergreen and seemingly endlessly remakeable because the legend and market tells us so? The brand is still strong, and the critics are saying "Casino Royale" 2006 is best one in a long time, and perhaps my curiosity is sparked again...

But really, I was always more of a Harry Palmer guy. Now, that Ipcress dilemma seemed closer to home and far more disturbing for it.

CASINO ROYALE

Ian Fleming, 1953


~ What is most alarming about Fleming's novel and Bond, and what causes reservations about the romp, is the misogyny. Yes, we know Bond is a man's man and that he's a bit of a sexist from the film, therefore ditto Fleming, but nothing quite prepares for his aggression and immaturity concerning women. Vesper is a "bitch" even before he has met her; she's going to be a hinderance with her feelings and girl stuff. Why couldn't she stay in the kitchen? Or more exactly, when Vesper has been kidnapped by professional, ruthless killers:

This was just what [Bond] had been afraid of. These blithering women who thought they could do a man's work. Why the hell couldn't they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men's work to the men. ... For Vesper to fall for an old trick like that and get herself snatched and probably held to ranson like some bloody heroine in a strip cartoon. The silly bitch. (pg.116)

Or: for Bond to spiel such a stream of impassioned invective, like some cartoon ex-Etonian stereotype from a bygone age. The silly buffoon. Caresses, it seems, are for Bentley's and for a villain's gaze upon the naked spy he is about to torture. Not for a "damn fool girl getting herself trussed up like a chicken, having her skirt pulled over her head as if the whole of this business was some kind of dormitory rag." (pg. 124) And let us not forget that, even if by proxy, it is Vesper that almost brings about Bond's emasculiantion. That's women for you.

But even this isn't quite the extent of Bond's immaturity. Whenever something goes wrong, he tends to blame others: if it isn't Vesper, then perhaps it is the fault of "M" and the Secret Service for not warning him of the superior villainy of his adversary. When initially beaten at baccarat, and when tortured and told how he cannot win, Bond seems just to give up in an instant. Is this truly an efficent, pragmatic and dependable spy we thought we knew (we can omit the superhuman elements)? And no, this doesn't necessarily imbue him with a more complex humanity: upon scrutiny, it is the immaturity that rises to the surface.

More surprising, having been nearly emasculinated, Bond lays in his hospital bed and has an existential, ethical crisis. Having been forced to identify with his adversary in the increasingly sado-masochistic torture triste, Bond finds himself questioning his whole stand. Is he really on the side of good? Are his actions and motivations uninpeachable? Does patriotism justify his career? Was Les Chifre truly the face of evil, and would patriotism justify his actions? How can Bond assure himself of his own righteousness? Bond seemingly starts to grow up, or at least belatedly starts to grasp the complexity and subjectivity of behaviour, politics, morality, his whole profession and so on. When a man has almost been made a eunuch, he begins to reflect. But this, indeed, does give Bond some true shading and certainly this chapter sets literary Bond apart from his cinematic interpretation.

Elsewhere, there is much to enjoy in this boy' s own romp. The concentration on a baccarat game rather than world domination. A streamlined narrative focused on a handful of set-pieces and an uncomplicated prose: Casino; torture; hospital; Vesper. Then there is the appealingly cartoonish portrayal of secret agents and evil organisations; and, yes, a formidable protagonist. Fleming proposes a seductive world of exotic locations and foreign menaces, something drawing from the Cold War era and looking towards the brave new world of affordable international travel and luxuries a decade or two ahead. Even now, it's a neverland that still captures culture's imagination. The 007 premise, it seems, is still durable in its datedness and still capable of appeal and being contemporised for new centuries.

Buck vs. Fleming

CASINO ROYALE

Ian Fleming, 1953



The novel - What is most alarming about Fleming's novel and Bond, and what causes reservations about the romp, is the misogyny. Yes, we know Bond is a man's man and that he's a bit of a sexist from the films, and so ditto Fleming, but nothing quite prepares for this aggression and immaturity concerning women. Vesper is a "bitch" even before he has met her; she's going to be a hinderance with her feelings and girl stuff. Why couldn't she stay in the kitchen? Or more exactly, when Vesper has been kidnapped by professional, ruthless killers:

This was just what [Bond] had been afraid of. These blithering women who thought they could do a man's work. Why the hell couldn't they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men's work to the men. ... For Vesper to fall for an old trick like that and get herself snatched and probably held to ranson like some bloody heroine in a strip cartoon. The silly bitch. (pg.116)

Or: for Bond to spiel such a stream of impassioned invective, like some cartoon ex-Etonian stereotype from a bygone age. The silly buffoon. Caresses, it seems, are for Bentley's and for a villain's gaze upon the naked spy he is about to torture. Not for a "damn fool girl getting herself trussed up like a chicken, having her skirt pulled over her head as if the whole of this business was some kind of dormitory rag." (pg. 124) And let us not forget that, even if by proxy, it is Vesper that almost brings about Bond's emasculiantion. That's women for you.

But even this isn't quite the extent of Bond's immaturity. Whenever something goes wrong, he tends to blame others: if it isn't Vesper, then perhaps it is the fault of "M" and the Secret Service for not warning him of the superior villainy of his adversary. When initially beaten at baccarat, and when tortured and told how he cannot win, Bond seems just to give up in an instant. Is this truly an efficent, pragmatic and dependable spy we thought we knew (we can omit the superhuman elements)? And no, this doesn't necessarily imbue him with a more complex humanity: upon scrutiny, it is the immaturity that rises to the surface.

More surprising, having been nearly emasculinated, Bond lays in his hospital bed and has an existential, ethical crisis. Having been forced to identify with his adversary in the increasingly sado-masochistic torture triste, Bond finds himself questioning his whole stand. Is he really on the side of good? Are his actions and motivations uninpeachable? Does patriotism justify his career? Was Les Chifre truly the face of evil, and would patriotism justify his actions? How can Bond assure himself of his own righteousness? Bond seemingly starts to grow up, or at least belatedly starts to grasp the complexity and subjectivity of behaviour, politics, morality, his whole profession and so on. When a man has almost been made a eunuch, he begins to reflect. But this, indeed, does give Bond some true shading and certainly this chapter sets literary Bond apart from his cinematic interpretation.

Elsewhere, there is much to enjoy in this boy' s own romp. The concentration on a baccarat game rather than world domination. A streamlined narrative focused on a handful of set-pieces and an uncomplicated prose: Casino; torture; hospital; Vesper. Then there is the appealingly cartoonish portrayal of secret agents and evil organisations; and, yes, a formidable protagonist. Fleming proposes a seductive world of exotic locations and foreign menaces, something drawing from the Cold War era and looking towards the brave new world of affordable international travel and luxuries a decade or two ahead. Even now, it's a neverland that still captures culture's imagination. The 007 premise, it seems, is still durable in its datedness and still capable of appeal and being contemporised for new centuries.