my friend and i attempted to watch this turkey last night but were only able to get about 30 minutes deep. Tor Johnson (from Ed Wood fame) plays an evil commie assasin running amok in middle America, killing random people, and carrying a briefcase of deadly secrets.
i'm not quite sure why but i have a hard time getting into black and white b-movies unless if they're MSTk'ed. it must be because i'm a child of the color tv generation.
Trust me, THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS is rough going for anyone.
lol, thanks. now i know it wasn't just "me."
You have to love that narration. Radiation man from Russia in the American Southwest. Tor Johnson was an original.
I don't know what it is about some folks & color --
Color film has been around since 1924, but different directors have, from time to time, preferred to work in black and white because of the mood & contrast it can create. Certainly, color film was available to Ingmar Bergman in 1956 when he shot "The Seventh Seal", but it would be a completely different film in color. Ditto "The Innocents" . . . or "Plan 9 From Outer Space".
Watch some of the old Twilight Zone TV shows & think about how much less-forceful they would be in color.
I guess, like silent film, it's something you have to invest some time in to get used to the conventions.
peter johnson/denny crane
Is it pronounced "Yuck-uh" or "You-ka"?
yeah now that i think about it there are a lot of black and white films i love: the 7th Seal (like you mentioned), Manhattan, Stardust Memories, the General (which was shot in color but John Boorman meant it to be viewed in black and white).
I can't imagine NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD in anything but black and white.
Sadly, I was just out at Hollywood Video and saw that they do indeed carry a colorized version of NOTLD(1968). Even worse was the fact that the B&W version was no where to be found. This travesty pales in comparison to the horror that is colorized Stooges! Oh B&W I mourn for thee!!!!!!
I'm with Blkrider!
A lot of films would be seriously hurt by being in color. Take the original House On Haunted Hill for example. It's a great cheesy old horror film. I am quite sure that it could have been made in color at the time. The same goes for NOTLD. Great films, but color would detract from them.
I am considering buying the new color DVD of NOTLD not because of it's novelty but only because it has an entire commentary track by Mike from MST3K.
Though colorized NIGHT does work on a comic level....I remember the colorized version being played on television during the 80s.
The NIGHT remake which is in color still doesn't have the same power as the original. I just don't think "nighttime horror", fear of the dark, or what have you, plays as well in color.
Picture the original Nosferatu in color if it had been available...wouldn't have been nearly as creepy.
I saw the colorized NOTLD years ago. It was a completely different movie in that it didn't evoke nearly the same feelings as the B&W version. Some things should just be left alone.
This might sound weird but sometimes I like to turn the color on my tv down all the way to make everything B&W. It gives movies more zip, especially horror.
I think it's "yuck-ca" -- just like the spikey plant is so named.
peter johnson/denny crane
"You have to love that narration. Radiation man from Russia in the American Southwest. Tor Johnson was an original."
hahaha so true. a commie spy visiting midwest America in the 50's during the iron curtain, makes sense to me!
A classic MST, and a movie that is the best in the Colman Francis trilogy.....not that thats saying much.
Ah, Tor Johnson,...the man, the legend. The B-flick icon.
"Time fa go ta bed!"
Let us pause to remember man mountin in all his B-glory.
Oh, and , B&W is as good as color...if you know what your doing!
"Oh, and , B&W is as good as color...if you know what your doing!"
very true. i've seen black and white films that are superior to color films because of the way they were shot. it's all about the cinematography baby! (one of the most underappreciated arts in filmmaking).
Actually he wasnt an assassin he was a russian scientist who is sneaking secrets to the US. Course it doesnt matter cause it doesnt make sense :)
You all do realize that up until the 1960s or so, most filmmakers used B/W because color film was too expensive, not because it was their choice of mediums, right?
The black and white was VERY effective in Schindler's List- especially how they made certain things in color (the little girl's jacket). I can't imagine that movie making even half the impact it did if they didn't shoot it in that way.
Budgetary considerations certainly played no small part, especially if you were churning out serials or Gabby Hayes Westerns, etc.
However, you could still shoot in color for the bigger-budget films from the 1930's on, using Eastman Kodak processing, if you wanted to. Many chose not to, and not just for budgetary reasons.
Technicolor, with its lurid red red Reds and so-sharp-it-hurts Greens was an expensive patented process that became sort of a decades-long technical fad for much of Hollywood, and yes, very very expensive, as it involved printing multiple layers of film, almost like stained glass.
That cheaper color film was readily available & could be used for feature film before the '60's is evidenced by the abundance of hand-held, windable 16mm cameras that were issued willy-nilly to our troops during WW2. Some were loaded with color film, and some with black and white. Yes, this film was marginally more expensive, and on very low budget productions could mean the "make or break", but choices not to use the color medium were still being made by film-makers who could afford the added expense yet chose to work in black and white before the '60's.
peter johnson/denny crane
I have to say that I really enjoy this one, because it is just so amazingly bad. From the narrator, to the camera focusing on the person who is not talking, to Tor's "performance." That is good stuff. Actually showed this to my mother in law and she was laughing the whole time.
Progress!
haha! you know a b-movie has power if it can make your mother-in-law laugh. :)
Bought the original after owning the MST version for years and years -- god, hadn't realized how much of the pain was alleviated by the MST joking.
This one hurts, folks, it hurts bad -- almost as much as Manos.
As Crow said, “Colman Frances had a dark muddy vision.â€
>Yes, this film was marginally more expensive, and on very low budget
>productions could mean the "make or break", but choices not to use the color
>medium were still being made by film-makers who could afford the added
>expense yet chose to work in black and white before the '60's.
How much of that was the filmmakers choosing B/W because they thought their work would look better that way, and how much of it was them being set in their ways? Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't some filmmakers try to resist the change from silent films to "talkies", claiming that sound would ruin their "art"?
The transition to talkies seems to have been especially rough, because you have to do EVERYTHING different. Most of the good actors instantly became bad actors, because now they have to remember lines and everything. Also, the silent style of acting was really over the top to compensate for the silence. I think that most of the things that seem weird now in the early talkies were holdovers from the silent era: the weird, fast, slangy speech; black people's exaggerated reactions to ghosts; a bunch of other stuff I'll notice next time I watch an old movie. I just saw something where they said that the sound the camera made was a probem, so they had to have to camera inside a special enclosure with a window or something, and that's one reason why the POV never used to move around (although it never seemed to move around in the silents either, it must have just taken forever to think of moving the camera around like a viewer with feet). Then, every freaking movie had to be a musical for about thirty years.
Wow, this didn't have anything to do with the topic. I've had this stuff on my mind quite a bit, because lately, every time I see "I Love Lucy", it seems like a cross between silent, radio, and vaudville comedy to me.
lol, it's all good Dave! i'm happy my posts can stimulate good, intellectual film conversations :).
Technology is a bear . . . the latest wrinkle will be/is the increasingly realistic digital CGI manipulation. Soon we'll be able to make films that look as if real people are walking around in real sets, but it will all be CGI. A lot of actors are very worried about this.
peter johnson/denny crane
technology is a bear???
anyway, this movie is dfinately good for drinking and talking over.
I am sorry fellas but this is the greatest comedy EVER!
people should realize and be educated to that fact that alot of ed wood and related movies are terrible movies that are hard to watch.
okay: long & many of you will hate me - Neville--The Thing; too ambiguous,
SkullNinja-X, the man with X-ray eyes, heard about that ending too. It's true, not an urban myth.
Bono-Is end of American Beauty not also the start? correct me if wrong. BTW - HATED plastic bag bit. & Sam Mendes fetish much :)
Chopper-Tor Johnson did other than Ed Wood movies? wow
okay: long & many of you will hate me - Neville--The Thing; too ambiguous,
SkullNinja-X, the man with X-ray eyes, heard about that ending too. It's true, not an urban myth.
Bono-Is end of American Beauty not also the start? correct me if wrong. BTW - HATED plastic bag bit. & Sam Mendes fetish much :)
Chopper-Tor Johnson did other than Ed Wood movies? wow