Beast of the Yucca Flats

Today's movie is "The Beast of the Yucca Flats", starring Tor Johnson. This is a classic movie, full of Tor Johnson, the desert, a couple of policemen... some coyotes.

OK, so its a little sparse.

But it has Tor Johnson. So you have to watch it.

Tor plays a Russian scientist, defecting to the U.S. when an atomic blast turns him into: Tor Johnson, with some ripped clothes and a couple of small radiation burns. I think the picture on the left is actually touched up a bit, as Tor's make-up job is no where near this good in the actual movie.

One thing of note, this movie was filmed entirely without sound. The sound was dubbed in after filming, which would account for two incredibly obvious things. Number one is the lack of dialogue. The actors almost never have to speak aloud. This movie has less dialogue than a Rambo flick.

The second thing is the narration. You might think this was a nature movie from all the voice over work, but its not. Its an extreme low budget horror movie.

Now, to give you a taste of how the narration adds flavor to this flick, let me run off a few quotes for you.

"A man runs, someone shoots at him." -Narrator

"Touch a button. Things happen. A scientist becomes a beast." -Narrator

"Boys from the city. Not yet caught by the whirlwind of Progress. Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs. " -Narrator

"Always on the prowl. Looking for something or somebody to kill. Quench the killer's thirst." -Narrator

See the pattern? With the exception of the first quote, which is a one-liner (Probably because its an action sequence and there wasn't need for more), each of these is a three sentence statement. You'd figure that with a movie lacking any real dialogue to move the story along, that the narrator might want to flesh things out a bit.

You know, with words.

But no, he keeps it short, concise. Kind of like Hemingway looking for the perfect sentence. As a matter of fact, I like it so much, I'm going to write the rest of this review in Beast of the Yucca Flats narration style (get ready for some pain, kids).

A movie. Someone moves onscreen. And something happens.

Tor Johnson. He's in a movie. And its not a good one.

The Beast. He kills people. By choking them.

Some random girl at home. She takes a shower. Nipple in the mirror.














Don't shower in a horror movie. Bad things happen. You get choked to death by Tor Johnson before you ever get a speaking line.

The Sheriff and his war buddy. Not too smart. Also probably gay.

Get in a plane. Look for a killer in the desert. With no ID and no clues.

Some guy with his wife and kids driving in the desert. Kids get out and run off. Leave them there.

Guy goes to look for his kids. Not what I would have done. Gets shot at by some guy in a plane.

See Tor walk. See Tor sleep. See Tor angry.




Tor finds a stick. Tor walks with a stick. Tor still angry.








So do you feel it? Feel the pain? The pain of this movie?

Can I stop now? Stop typing like this? Can I stop at all? Ever? Ha, fooled you. OK, so it loses a little in translation without moving pictures. But, given this ham handed editing job, you've got to hand it to Tor for making the movie watchable. Because he's the only reason it is.

Shameless Plug

Thanks to a shameless plug I posted on a bulletin board for Anima RO (See my links. Also why aren't you downloading and playing it right now?), I hope that my fan base will grow somewhat. You know, more than the like 3 or 4 people who read my reviews now.

Good God! I might get a fifth reader!

Anyway, as most people don't comment on my reviews, I really have no accurate way to tell if I'm entertaining or just posting into the ether. So this post is to get all you Spored_to_Death readers to introduce yourselves to everyone. And to give me a reason to keep watching and subjecting everyone to the filth I regularly watch.

Aw, hell. I'd subject everyone to it anyway. This is just an excuse to do it.

Also, this is a good opportunity to get people to suggest movies for me to review. I've got a few options for this week. I'll be viewing the new version of "The Hills have Eyes", but something tells me it won't be as bad as I'd like. I'm also thinking of reviewing "Pieces", Satan's School for Girls", "Horror Rises from the Tomb" and "Little Corey Gorey". We'll just have to see what my victims, er roommates feel like watching with me this weekend.

Starship Troopers 2 and the introduction of the Fecal Sequel

OK kids, its time for a lesson in sequels. Yup. Sit down and let your uncle Spore tell you about a bad movie, and how it changed my way of looking at the Hollywood phenomenon known as a "Sequel".

It all started when I saw this movie, "Starship Troopers". It wasn't a bad movie. It wasn't a great movie. It was OK. It starred that Casper Van Dien. You might remember him from Dracula 3000: Infinite Darkness.

Well, after the movie Starship Troopers, someone must have come up to Casper and said, "Hey. Casper van Dien. You've just finished making the movie Starship Troopers. Wanna be in the sequel?"

At which point, Casper must have said "Hell no! I'm moving on to bigger and better things!"

(note: I'm making all this up. Practically as I go. I have no information about what might have transpired at the end of shooting Starship Troopers. I just have a healthy imagination and a blog. But you knew that already, didn't you?)

So, after that, someone did a bad thing. And I watched it. I watched it all. Then I drank until I couldn't feel feelings anymore.

And when I woke up, I thought about this and all the other stuff I watched, and I came up with this idea. You see, when a movie in Hollywood makes a lot of money, they make a sequel to it. Sometimes more than one. As the sequels are produced, they generally degrade in quality, like a photocopy. Sometimes, the sequels are planned and it works out. Other times the sequels are shot only because the first movie made a lot of money. Or even just some money. But when a movie is shot many years later for purely financial reasons, chances are that the sequels will degrade the quality of the product. No matter what that product is.

Sometimes its not so bad. And other times it really sucks.

But what if you have a movie that's not to bad, but then make a sequel that just bombs? Well, then you have a "Fecal Sequel". Yes kids, a Fecal Sequel is when you go from OK to poop in one movie. A movie so bad that it kills the entire franchise. No, it doesn't count if the first movie sucks. It has to be a sequel, and it has to kill it outright. Not a long slow painful death. It has to kill off a possible franchise in one blow.

So in conclusion, Starship Troopers 2 is a shining example of a Fecal Sequel. And I made that term up all by myself (how does one copyright a phrase?). But I will give Starship Troopers 2 one thing. It did one thing that made me happy, ever so briefly amidst the 2 hours of misery that I remember through an alcoholic haze. I got to see Kelly Carlson naked.

Slaughter Party

What is it with "the little people" lately? First, these guys go on vacation to Ireland and proffer promises of bringing us back dead leprechauns. Then, this other guy has a review about an Irish pro-wrestler and his leprechaun buddy who pops out from under the ring.

But I got them all beat.







Top that.












Last night I had a choice, between watching Slaughter Party and Hostel. I chose poorly, but only because I love all of you so very, very much. Little did I know that when I selected Slaughter Party for last night viewing that Mighty Mike Murga would be spending the next 76 minutes chasing around half naked women with a knife. Thank God for Troma films!

Like the evil monkey on Family Guy, Craig (played by Murga) doesn't start out evil. He's actually a pretty normal guy. He smokes a lot of weed, drinks and apparently likes to watch episodes of Lizzie McGuire... without any pants on.

But when a mad doctor (played by Ford Austin) kills (and eats) his friends and then forces himself upon Craig, well, you get this:






Snake has discovered the "Underwear" Camouflage and face paint.







After that, its all blood, screaming, and necrophilia. And lots of it. Sure there's some sort of plot mixed in there, but don't bother with it. Its full of the classic plot holes, time changes, girl gets really tan half way through the movie, teleporting midget, etc., etc...

But there are a few memorable scenes in this movie. Keep your eyes out for Ron Jeremy who has a fantastic scene. Also, there's a guy played by Seymore Butts (credited as Adam Glasser). So yeah, it looks like when you succeed in the porn industry you wind up in Troma films. Hopefully Jenna Jameson will sign on with them soon.

So if you decide to take it upon yourself to see Slaughter Party, make sure you get yourself good and drunk, otherwise you might remember watching most of this. Of course, if you don't like extreme gore you can always watch something else. Like Hostel.