the Beast of Yucca Flats

[Flangepart]

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!

[Chopper]

"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).

[Dunners]

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 :)

[JohnL]

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?

[Kory]

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.

[peter johnson]

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

[Andrew]

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!

[Chopper]

haha! you know a b-movie has power if it can make your mother-in-law laugh. :)

[bj]

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.”

[JohnL]

>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"?

[Dave Munger]

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.

[Chopper]

lol, it's all good Dave! i'm happy my posts can stimulate good, intellectual film conversations :).

[peter johnson]

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

[lester1/2jr]

technology is a bear???



anyway, this movie is dfinately good for drinking and talking over.

[JohnnyM]

I am sorry fellas but this is the greatest comedy EVER!