The Last Movie You Watched

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project is The Beast of Yucca Flats. Yep, it took two years for the Project to get to something that was on Mystery Science Theater 3000. While I have been literally a lifelong fan of MST3K, and this no doubt eventually led to my starting the Project, surprisingly, most of the movies featured  on the show lean far more towards "So Bad It's Good," there'd usually be one movie per season that actually was that bad, something like The Castle of Fu Manchu, Monster A Go Go, Invasion of the Neptune Men, or the filmography of Coleman Francis. Think of Coleman Francis as Ed Wood's evil twin. Neither had any talent as a filmmaker, but while Ed Wood's incompetence was endearing, Francis' was, well, to quote Kevin Murphy: "Director Coleman Francis uses edits like blunt instruments. He uses blunt instruments like blunt instruments. His major themes are death, hatefulness, death, pain, and death. He looks like Curly Howard possessed by demons from Hell. He tried to pass off Lake Mead as the Caribbean Sea. His films have the moral compass of David Berkowitz. He hurts us and I want him to know it, except if he's still alive, because there's the small chance that he's still strong enough to crush my windpipe with his bare hands."" Fortunately, Coleman Francis died two decades before MST3K decided to riff all three of his films. Surprisingly, The Beast of Yucca Flats, despite meriting a mention on TVTropes' "So Bad It's Horrible" page, is easily the closest to So Bad It's Good, and that's largely because of its bizarre style, with a mind-numbingly slow pacing, and almost no dialogue (due to Francis not having enough money to shoot with sound) except for occasional exchanges that are either off-screen or (more rarely) in such a long shot that nobody would tell whether or not their lips matched the words on the soundtrack (so, in essence, anyone with any dialogue is Fake Shemping themselves), or the terse and enigmatic narration, delivered by the director himself. And since it's on Amazon Prime, I'm taking it on. 

• I'm torn between making a reference to "Warm Leatherette" and being shocked that we actually got to see more titty in this version than I expected.
  
• That girl from the prologue? Never appears again. The guy who strangled her? Never revealed. Any relevance whatsoever to the remaining 52 minutes of the film?
  
• Yep, the protagonist of this film is credited as a guest star.
  
• "Flag on the moon. How did it get there?"
  
• Y'know, Coleman Francis, feel free to go into more detail. It's not like you're going to talk over important dialogue.
  
• Scientific progress? The more I learn about the whole "A-bomb testing" thing, the less I can reconcile it with scientific progress. The whole race to nuclear power started because of what can only be described as a comedy of errors, and while I tend to be in favour of nuclear energy (at least if done properly), the atomic tests conducted after August 1945 didn't really do much good but give an excuse for America and the Soviet Union to wave their dicks about and threaten the survival of the human race.
  
• Yes, we know Javorski was a noted scientist. You just said that a few minutes ago.
  
• Holy shit, actual dialogue. I did not expect to actually see people talking in this movie. To be fair, they were far back enough that it probably didn't matter if their lips didn't sync.
  
• Wait, there are no flying saucers in this movie. Why bring them up?
  
• Coyotes, once a menace to travelers. And now they're in my hometown.
  
• Okay, so, I'm writing this during dinner, and I paused a movie I was watching earlier so I could go to dinner. That movie? Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse. It's basically a movie about the end of the world, but done in a superficially similar style. For the most part, the setting is limited to one failing farm (even the opening spiel about Nietzsche's descent into madness is just told via narration, with no real connection to the plot except that maybe the horse in the story belonged to the farmer in the movie), and the content is more abstract, with the first 35 minutes or so being devoted to a farmer coming home and his daughter making their dinner: two boiled potatoes. The rest of the movie isn't a hell of a lot more conventionally exciting, and when the world eventually ends, it's because the lights all go out and they can't even light a match without it immediately burning itself out. While it might seem tedious as Hell, because Tarr is a great (if highly idiosyncratic) director, he knows how to put it together in such a way that it all works, and then, you end up feeling for these two when they're eventually reduced to eating raw potatoes when they can't cook them, seemingly resigned to their fate in the darkness of a world where they can neither grow new food nor even cook the food they already have:
  
  
  And because Coleman Francis is a shit director, when he makes a movie with long takes, and several scenes with little apparent connection to anything else, it just comes across as boring and the director someone who doesn't really know what the fuck he's even doing, a feeling not helped by the fact that the narration keeps repeating the same few phrases long past the point where they'd be relevant. He makes a movie about a man turned into a monster by a nuclear blast, and all he does (for the most part) is just wander around the desert and occasionally groan. He can be easily outmanoeuvered by two random kids and the whole plot against him means nothing. And it's not like  Mr. Neutron where a big part of the joke is how this supposedly omnipotent guy is doing nothing but puttering around a British home and trying to seduce Mrs. S.C.U.M., the woman who does for Mrs. Entrail, and the US government's response is to bomb EVERYTHING except for the parts where he actually is. It's just shit.
• Wow, the pilot's talking and no words are coming out. A sure tell of the fact that they couldn't afford to shoot with sound.
  
• Jesus God, Tor's actually saying shit at a distance where I can actually make out his mouth movements. Technically  he's just saying "Aah:" (and I use the colon to signify that his delivery is trying for a scream, but falls far short of that) but at least it's something.
  
  
  
• Why are all the shots in this climax so disjointed? Why can't I make heads or tails of who's supposed to be where in this chase through Yucca Flats? It's almost like The Snowman all over again.
  
• What the fuck is that expression on Tor's face when he's hug-strangling that one guy?
  
• Okay, so about the ending: apparently, the ending was just supposed to show Tor Johnson lying dead on the desert ground for some reason. Then a wild jackrabbit hopped up to Tor and, since Tor was actually a kindhearted man (even if he was typecast as a dumb brute), he started to hug and kiss the rabbit. Somehow, this ended up in the finished film (with a few insert shots like they actually meant for that to happen) and became a favourite scene of the people who saw the film.
  

Well, that happened. It's chock full of padding despite not even reaching an hour. So little happened that I was able to launch into a mini-dissertation on Bela Tarr and miss shockingly little of consequence. I get the feeling this could have been made more interesting film if it was done like, say, Brand Upon the Brain with live score, foley, and a live benshi, but I'll settle for Mike and the Bots. And the only way he grew as a filmmaker, is he eventually raised enough money to shoot his next two films with sound. His next film after this is The Skydivers, which, despite a few decently-executed moments, manages to make inherently interesting things like the music of Jimmy Bryant, extramarital affairs and jumping out of planes boring as all hell.

And his final film Red Zone Cuba was meant as a tragedy starring an everyman with poor impulse control (perhaps a cinematic updating of the naturalistic novels of the late 19th century) and ended up as a piece of shit whose protagonist is basically a sociopath physiologically incapable of turning down any opportunity to commit a crime (exemplified by the whole plot of seeing a military recruitment ad and immediately deciding to join up and deserting as soon as he got the recruitment bonus, plus the fact that he ended up throwing a random restauranteur down a well and raped his blind daughter just because). And he dropped the ball on most, if not all aspects of filmmaking just as bad as he did for his protagonist. It's really telling that the film's theme song sounds like this:



And it's still generally considered one of the best parts of the film. Well, that and Cherokee Jack.

But neither of those two films are on Amazon Prime, and Beast of Yucca Flats was. And you know what? I think I'm finally going to take on A Talking Cat!? next week, and the one I have planned for the week after is going to be a real doozy...

[rado84]

"Skylines" 1, 2 and 3. "Skyline 1" is good but the other two were quite boring. They tried to make a movie similar to "Independence day" but far from successfully, I might add.

[Angrboda]

Rampage.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Of course the wolf flies."

[Gwaithmir]

[Gawdzilla Sama]

About half of "Gretel and Hansel".

For my birthday I'm watching John Wick, John Wicker and John Wickest.

[AFTT47]

Flight of the Intruder.

I first saw this movie in the early 1990s when it was made. It's about a US Navy A6 Intruder pilot flying missions against North Viet Nam from an aircraft carrier. He becomes depressed with political restrictions of targets and decides to go against orders and hit forbidden targets in downtown Hanoi.

I rented this movie after hearing that the Christmas bomber in Tennessee played the song, "Downtown" over his RV's PA system before detonating his bomb. Petula Clark (the singer) was horrified and befuddled about why he did this. It's almost a certainty that that act was inspired by this movie.

[Rev. Rye]

You know what, I'm not feeling well, and I'm going to try and get through A Talking Cat!?! for the Deep Hurting Project. Hopefully I can stay awake long enough to watch it all.

• Wow. It's the first line and you can already tell that Eric Roberts is literally phoning in his performance. And the funny thing is, he actually recorded all his lines in his living room in 15 minutes. Also, that cat looks absolutely nothing like the cat on the cover.
  
• You know, I'm kind of liking this sketchbook effect you're doing with this cat footage, but does this title song have to go on for this long?
  
• His name is Duffy? I actually had a Westie with that name, well, technically my grandma did, and his name was MacDuff, but still.
  
• Wow, this place really looks familiar, like it was Santa's summer house or something.
  
• I'm really fucking waiting for the Dad in this to start saying "no respect."
  
• And the camera is really lingering on this teenage boy's legs. It's almost like this is directed by a guy who also moonlights in doing gay cheesecake and the most salient difference between that and his kids movies is that the latter have fewer dudes showering.
  
• And if only you had a personality, this movie might actually be good.
  
• A bowl of milk would be great. As a cat, I'm lactose intolerant and for whatever reason, I'd really love for Leon Trotsky to turn my colon into his own personal Coyoacan. Oh, yeah, I turned a diarrhea joke into a reference to Russian/Latin American history.
  
• That was horrible? I've still got 68 minutes left of this shit.
  
• Nathan Rabin once said of this film that it had a budget of $1 million, and he's still wondering where the other $990,000 went. Maybe it went to Disney to keep the lawsuit away for that Background Music that sounds like a lot like "It's a Small World." Or that sample of Key Largo's dialogue. Christ, Blue Ruin was released the same year, had a budget 42% that this film allegedly had, and it still looks infinitely more professional.
  
• Wow. That girl's clearly as shocked by the fact that a cat is talking as I was by the time I found out Dad accidentally bought the wrong edition of Nosferatu for Christmas. And I'm certain most of that surprise is that the cat's mouth moving is clearly a shitty effect done in Aftereffects.
  
• Duffy can only speak to someone once. What the shit kind of rules are that?
  
• Yeah, learn to code, it's not like there's going to be a glut of people with those degrees, rendering them useless by the time you graduate.
  
• Okay, what movie did Bogie interact with the Danish? I have to check IMDb for that, and I found nothing. Or is he talking about The Dain Curse? Because that was only adapted in 1978, over two decades after he died.
  
• You'd think that this scene with Duffy talking and immediately clamming up when Chris comes inside would be a good time for the Dad to say "No respect." Or should I expect him to talk about the time he got so blitzed he thought his wife was Chris' older sister and that's how he was born? Crap, that was the mom who said that, wasn't it?
  
• "UN PINCHE DIA A LA VEZ" because when I want to make a movie for kids, I want to include a shirt with the F-word on it in a language that some people in your audience are likely  to know.
  
• Then again, what is the audience for this movie? This talking animal shit really only has appeal for little kids and maybe furries, and the former will likely be bored to tears by all the talk about business and matchmaking, and the latter are still likely to just find it boring as all fuck because David DeCoteau can't fucking direct and 30% of the movie's runtime consists of establishing shots and scenes of Duffy just doing nothing (and, according to Tranquil Tirades, that's not an exaggeration, and this doesn't even include scenes of the humans wandering aimlessly up stairs, through the woods, and puttering about the kitchens).
  
• You know, earlier, the girl said she didn't read because who needed books when they had movies and TV. And they're studying Hamlet, a movie that was famously given an exhaustive adaptation in 1996 that interpolated as much of the original texts (yes, plural) as was possible.
  
• Wait, Duffy's talking to Chris again? Didn't he just explain multiple times that he can only have one conversation with any given person?
  
  
  
• Wow, they introduced a major character about a third of the way through the movie. And already, Tina's brother Trent actually has far more chemistry with Chris than Tina.
  
• Wait, is that peripheral for Tina's outfit-matching app a fucking booklight?
  
• Wait, did Duffy get run over by a car? And why does the scene of Bela Lugosi's death from Plan 9 look better executed? And why did they just cut to a shot of the sea? And for that matter, why does it look like one home's in the Pacific Northwest and the other on the coast of Southern California?
  
• And who the fuck is that other girl with the bowtie necklace? And why did they decide that Duffy's magic collar would help him heal, and why the fuck do they have to find it hidden in the woods, and why hasn't he been wearing it? 
  
• What happened? We did something. Well, that explains it.
  
• Fucking Hell, Duffy's in critical condition and I'm already more infirm-looking than him.
  
• Yep, it's the credits, and we're still going to pad it out by about eight minutes by showing overly long clips from the movie you just watched. No, DeCoteau, you're no Orson Welles, and this ain't The Magnificent Ambersons.
  
• And now you can see how DeCoteau got the cat to actually cooperate with the movie: a laser pointer.
  
• Why is there a reggae version of "The Itsy Bitsy Spider?"
  

[pocaracas]

In a world of magic... poverty still gets exploited.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Flight of the Intruder.

I first saw this movie in the early 1990s when it was made. It's about a US Navy A6 Intruder pilot flying missions against North Viet Nam from an aircraft carrier. He becomes depressed with political restrictions of targets and decides to go against orders and hit forbidden targets in downtown Hanoi.

I rented this movie after hearing that the Christmas bomber in Tennessee played the song, "Downtown" over his RV's PA system before detonating his bomb. Petula Clark (the singer) was horrified and befuddled about why he did this. It's almost a certainty that that act was inspired by this movie.

The scene where they're sitting on picnic tables while waiting for their verdict was shot at Long Beach Naval Station, on the seawall around the harbor. I was there on Peleliu.