Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973) Review

GODMONSTER OF INDIAN FLATS (1973)
Director: Fredric Hobbs

Writer: Fredric Hobbs

Producers: Robert Bremson, Fredric Hobbs, E. Prentice Welles, and Stephen Williams

Editor: Richard Brummer

Cinematography: William Heick

Music: Henri Price

Starring: Christopher Brooks, Stuart Lancaster, E. Kerrigan Prescott, Peggy Browne, Richard Marion, and Karen Ingenthron

Runtime: 1 hour 29 minutes

Rating: Not Rated (Comparable to PG)

Genre: Western, Horror

Release Date: 1973 (no date given)

Intro: I've recently gotten into Reddit. One of the subreddits I follow is r/badmovies (upon finding it, I exclaimed, "my people!"). I found Godmonster of Indian Flats because somebody posted a link to the full movie and the comments all said it was hilariously bad. So, I decided to give this one a shot. I... just don't really know what to make of it. Godmonster of Indian Flats misfires just about everywhere and has a completely incomprehensible storyline that culminates in a nonsensical, yet unbelievable ending and a hilarious monster, a giant mutant sheep.

Plot: The plot is so complicated and nonsensical. I'm going to try my best to highlight it. In an old west mining town and tourist trap in Nevada, an African American businessman from the east named Barnstable (Brooks) comes to the town hoping to buy the mines and get them up and running again, but meets a lot of opposition from the locals. Meanwhile, a local sheep farmer wakes up from hallucinations to find a mutant sheep embryo that suddenly appears next to him. He takes it to a laboratory to be experimented on it as it grows into a hellbeast.

Things People May Find “Objectionable”: There's some very mild swearing and a little bit of blood, but nothing too bad. I mean, it was made for TV in the 70s, so they couldn't show much.

What wasn't Horrible:

     -Humor: None to speak of in the way of intentional humor. Unintentional humor comes from the ridiculousness of the monster and laughing at just how poorly done everything is. I mean, this movie even fails to tell its story. That's saying something.

     -Script: The script wasn't horrible, but it was pretty bland. I really can't say too much about it one way or another.

     -Directing/Cinematography: The shots were all fairly static and boring. Also, there were hardly any close-ups at all. It made things rather boring to look at. 

Yes, that's the monster in the background.

     -Acting: I'm currently drinking a glass of water. That glass of water, when I put it down, sits on a wooden table. Why am I telling you this? Because I think that table is less wooden than most of the actors' performances. The guy who plays the main character (can we call him that with all the storylines?) Barnstable is actually not bad, but the supporting cast really isn't great.

     -Originality: Godmonster of Indian Flats was extremely original. However, in this case, this was not a good thing. There's a reason nobody makes movies about a killer mutant sheep. It's because it's a stupid idea!!!!

What was Bad:

     -Story: There is one main problem with the story: IT MAKES NO GODDAMN SENSE!!!!!!! I ended up yelling the word "what?" at my TV so many times during this thing. Is it that hard to tell a cohesive story, guys?! For as stupid as the story as Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter had, at least they told it in a way that makes sense. This thing could've used way more plot exposition. Nothing is really explained and it's all sort of a guessing game at times as to what is happening. I've made it through Memento, Inception, and Primer, so believe me when I say this is far and away the most confusing movie I have ever seen. If you can understand this movie, you are a freaking genius.

     -The Ending: I really don't have the slightest idea what happened at the end of the movie. There's just this unbelievable and seemingly random sequence of events that seems like it would only make sense if you were on a lot of LSD. It kind of needs to be seen to be believed. It'll leave you shocked, astonished, and scratching your head. It is as astonishing as it is incomprehensible.

     -Characters/Emotional Involvement: I really didn't care about any of the characters, and in the end, it didn't matter for the most part who they were and what their relationships with one another were. The filmmakers just wasted a lot of time developing a lot of the characters. This technique is also called padding.

Think of this sign as being at the North Pole and
Godmonster of Indian Flats as the rest of the world, where
all the signs are pointing.

     -Sound: Pretty freaking bad. It's one of those things that you don't notice unless it's done badly. Well, I noticed it. The sheep sound effects were especially bad. They literally had like 3 different sound effects of a sheep and played them over and over again in every sheep scene. Also, there's one scene where a character fires a gun and I swear they use the worst gun sound effect ever. It literally sounds like someone hit a table lightly with their fist.

     -Action/Suspense: The movie is pretty boring for a while until the monster shows up. You just kind of have to get through the first hour of the movie to get to the worthwhile part, which is the last half hour or so.

     -Special Effects: With only a budget of $135,000, you can only guess the quality. Other than the monster, which was spectacularly bad and hilarious, there wasn't much. The monster. Oh man, was it unique or what? I mean, it's a giant mutant sheep that is blatantly a guy in a suit. It even stands on two legs. What sheep, even a mutant hellbest version of one, does that?!? The monster was probably the most entertaining part of the movie.

The Verdict: Godmonster of Indian Flats is a complete and utter mess. Just about everything misfires and it leaves the viewer scratching his or her head just trying to understand what is going on.  I've never taken LSD or any other hallucinogen, but I have a feeling that watching this movie gives you a pretty good idea as to what they are like. This one is just so unbelievably bad and will leave your head full of questions that really can't be answered. This movie just kind of has to be seen to be believed just because of its across the board failure and astonishing ending. If you're a b-movie fan, give this one a shot. It takes some patience, but then ending makes up for it and you really won't believe your eyes.

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Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966) Review

The movie was released as a double feature
with Billy the Kid vs. Dracula. It makes
sense because the movies have the same
director, producer, writer, cinematographer,
and orchestrator.

JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER (1966)
Director: William Beaudine*

Writer: Carl Hittleman*

Producer: Carroll Case*

Editor: Hahahahaha!!! There's no editor listed!! This should tell you something about this fine film!

Cinematography: Lothrop Worth*

Music: Raoul Kraushaar*

Starring: John Lupton, Narda Onyx, Cal Bolder, Estelita Rodriguez, Jim Davis, and Steven Geray

Runtime: 1 hour 28 minutes

Rating: None (Comparable to PG)

Genre: Western, Horror, Sci-Fi

Release Date: April 10, 1966

*= held the same position for Billy the Kid vs. Dracula

Things people may find “objectionable”: There is one gunfight scene that isn't that bad. There is also a little blood, but barely any. In no way is it dripping or gushing out. It's just a wound or two. Finally, there are a couple scenes involving strangling, but it isn't that violent compared with the kind of stuff you see in movies today. Though it isn't rated, I'd say it's comparable to PG.

Intro: This October was great for bad movies. The sad truth is, I only DVR-ed two, this and Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, but these two were totally worth it. As promised in my review of Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, here is the review of its companion piece Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter. The two movies were released as a double feature and the crew is almost identical for both. You would then assume the two movies would be similar in terms of badness and enjoyability, but this isn't the case. Though both movies are quite bad, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter is the worse, and yet more enjoyable, of he two just because of how bad it is. The writing, acting, and special effects are crap and it's ridden with historical inaccuracies and stupidity,  which serve as proof that the filmmakers just didn't give a crap. And this makes it enjoyable if you're a bad movie fan like me.

Plot: After a failed stagecoach robbery, Jesse James (Lupton) and his partner Hank Tracy (Bolder) are on the run for the law. Tracy is badly injured by a bullet wound and he needs to get to a doctor, but the two have nowhere to go, since they will be arrested if they go near any town. They soon meet a local named Juanita (Rodriguez) who leads them to a doctor in a castle a few miles out of town. This doctor is Maria Frankenstein (Onyx), the famous Frankenstein's granddaughter (the title is a misnomer) who relocated from Europe to practice more freely. With one experimental brain from her grandfather left, Maria needs new test subjects other than some local boys she has used and killed in the process. When Jesse and Hank come by, Maria sees an opportunity in Hank to help her get power. Jesse must try and save Hank and Juanita from Maria before it's too late and she begins to gain power.

Ratings:

     -Directing/Cinematography: 5/10. Not horrible, but not exceptional. I feel pretty much any guy with a camera and a tripod could've done just as good of a job. It wasn't special in the least.

     -Acting: 3/10. It's kind of interesting since I saw this movie only a few days after seeing Lincoln. The acting in Lincoln was phenomenal and worthy of all kinds of Oscars. Then you get to Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter. The acting was crap. The actors could all read their lines ok, but most of them weren't great at conveying emotions. It became funny sometimes watching the actors try and fail epically at conveying emotion. The best and funniest part about the acting was the actors trying to speak spanish and totally sounding like a bunch of ignorant white guys who didn't even know what they were saying. And that's probably how it was too.

     -Writing: 3/10.

          -Story: 3/10. "Hmm... We want to make a western, but I also kinda want to make a horror film." "I got it! Let's combine them! We'll have Jesse James meet Frankenstein's daughter! That's brilliant!" I have a feeling this is how they writers came up with the idea for the story.

          -Script: 3/10. Extremely uninspiring script. It was written by the same guy who wrote Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, so you can imagine how good it is. 

     -Special Effects: 2/10. Terrible. It's fun to laugh at just how bad some of the sets are. In some shots, it's clear that there's a town for a good 40-50 feet and the rest is pretty obviously a painting. The best moment is when they zoom in on the painting to look at the castle, showing you even more clearly that it's a painting.

     -Music/Score: 3/10. Nothing at all special about the score. It didn't stick out at all. It was just kinda there.

     -Power/Emotion: 1/10. They try to make you care about the characters by putting love stories and emotional backgrounds to the characters, but it really doesn't work. I can't say I really cared that deeply about any of the characters. I think I could care more about the used kleenex I have in my pocket (which I threw out while writing this sentence) than a majority of these characters.

     -Adrenaline: 2/10. Not really exciting at all, but at least after the first 30 minutes the plot actually goes somewhere unlike Billy the Kid vs. Dracula's.

     -Intelligence: 1/10. The movie was created for cheap entertainment and a quick profit, and that's really all it's good for. See stupidity section below.

     -Stupidity: 9/10. Oh this factors in quite a bit. First of all, the name is stupid and the idea is stupid. The point of this and Billy the Kid vs. Dracula was to make a quick profit off the name alone, and their goal was achieved. Also, holy crap, the historical inaccuracies! Here's a list of just a couple below, plus a really stupid shot.
          -Historical Inaccuracies: Part of the stupidity section, but needed another section to cover them all. For this, let's assume the movie takes place in the 1870s or early 1880s, since Jesse James died in 1882. Yes, I really did take the time to look this up and find these shots.

Licking an envelope

               -Licking an envelope: The glued envelopes you lick, or "gummed envelopes" were invented around the 1890s. The invention of envelopes you lick came at least 5 years after the movie is supposed to take place.

Plastic Helmet

Backwards desk. Notice the drawers

      -Plastic Helmets: It's pretty clear that the mind-helmet thing Maria uses to kickstart Igor/Hank has at least some plastic in it. The plastic we know today wasn't invented until 1907, at least 25 years after the movie is supposed to take place.
          -This Shot--------->: Notice how Maria Frankenstein is sitting at a desk. Also notice how all the drawers and place where she puts her chair are facing the audience. In other words, she's sitting on the wrong side of the desk. Yes, the desk is backwards, Ladies and Gentlemen.

     -Humor: Intentional: 1/10; Unintentional: 5/10. Laughing at the stupidity and historical inaccuracies was fun. The acting was also hilariously bad at times. Definitely an entertaining bad movie when you pay attention to some of the details. Much funnier than its counterpart, Billy the Kid vs. Dracula.

     -Best Credit: None. They had a pretty minuscule cast and crew.

     -Final Score: Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter was both worse and better than Billy the Kid vs. Dracula. While it was a worse movie, this made it watchable and entertaining, unlike its counterpart. If you're looking for a stupid movie and/or cheap entertainment, watch Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter instead of Billy the Kid vs. Dracula. If nothing else, make sure you count the historical inaccuracies. And you think I trashed it? This article argues that it's the worst Western ever made.

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Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966) Review

When it was released, it was released as a
double feature with Jesse James Meets
Frankenstein's Daughter, which I also
took the liberty of recording. I will write
a review of it soon.

BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA (1966)

Director: William Beaudine

Writer: Carl Hittleman

Producer: Carroll Case

Editor: Roy V. Livingston

Cinematography: Lothrop B. Worth

Music: Raoul Kraushaar

Starring: John Carradine, Chuck Courtney, Melinda Plowman, Virginia Christine, and Bing Russell.

Runtime: 1 hour 13 minutes

Rating: Not Rated. Comparable to PG

Genre: Horror, Western, Drama

Release Date: April 10, 1966

Intro: (Please bear with me. I know it's November now, but I started writing this in October. It's a good intro though, so I decided to keep it.) I love October. The weather starts to get cooler and it actually starts to rain again (I mention it a lot in my review of Drive), the baseball playoffs are on a lot and those consume a lot of my time, and, of course since it's near Halloween, there are tons of cheesy horror movies being shown on TV. This is where I found Billy the Kid vs. Dracula. While perusing through channels, I found it and immediately set up the DVR to record it. I mean, can you really pass up recording a movie called Billy the Kid vs. Dracula? I sure as hell couldn't. It turns out that the movie is about as stupid as you'd imagine it would be. Billy the Kid vs. Dracula had very little hope and budget starting out, and with the hope and budget it has, it doesn't do much with it.

Plot: In the Old West, a mother and her brother are heading from the East to see her daughter named Betty that she haven't seen since she was a child and her brother has never seen. On the way there, the wagon picks up a mysterious foreign traveler with weird attraction to the picture of the mother's daughter in a locket she has. When they stop for the night, an nearby indian girl is mysteriously killed by two incisions on the neck (hint) and the indians stereotypically rampage and kill everyone on the wagon train except for the strange man (Carradine). The strange man (It's Dracula, ok?) finds the locket in the wreckage of the wagon and assumes the personality of Betty's uncle she's never met named James Underhill. Meanwhile, Betty and her boyfriend Billy the Kid (or just Billy) are planning to get married when "her uncle James" shows up and tries to pull the two apart, since Dracula wants Betty for himself. While Dracula tries to trick and seduce Betty and ultimately make a her a vampire, the foreign housekeepers and Billy suspect something is wrong and try to save Betty before it's too late.

Things people may find “objectionable”: Not that much. There are a couple BWC shots and a couple scenes with minor blood, but nothing major. One thing that might offend some is that the Indians are extremely stereotyped and portrayed in a way that would have you believe that the directors are a bunch of xenophobic white guys. And you know what? You're probably right.

Ratings:

     -Directing/Cinematography:

     -Acting: 5/10. John Carradine, who plays Dracula, is actually what you may consider a "real actor." He's kind of like Vincent Price and Nicholas Cage in that he's a pretty good actor, but at least towards the end of his career, he picked really crappy movies to star in for whatever reason (seriously, Cage needs to fire his agent). His performance is more cheesy than anything else, but I'd blame that on the director. Everyone else can't act that well, but it's not truly awful acting like the kind that is seen in I Eat Your Skin.

     -Writing: 4/10.

          -Story: 4/10. I really didn't see much creativity in the story, as it's pretty formulaic aside from the whole Billy the Kid meeting Dracula thing. It did have kind of a cool vampire legend twist that was intriguing and something I hadn't heard before, but the rest of the story was worthless and cliché.

          -Script: 4/10. Very forgettable script. Wasn't great but wasn't awful like the one in The Last Airbender. I wouldn't consider the script a strength or a weakness. It was just kind of there.

     -Special Effects: 1/10. Laughably terrible special effects. The best special effects were the super-fake flying bat (see picture below).

Two of the greatest shots from the movie: the über fake bat and Dracula's creeper stare.
 If someone looks at you like Dracula is in the picture on the left, call the police immediately.

     -Music/Score: 3/10. The music was very lame and cheesy. They got a lot of work out of the one harpist the hired, as every single time Dracula does his creepy stare (see picture above), a harp plays the exact same pattern. everything else just seems cheesy and formulaic. There was absolutely no creativity in writing this score.

     -Power/Emotion: 3/10. They kinda try to get you to care about the characters, but it doesn't work exceedingly well. In their defense, the writers' work was probably done when the movie's name convinced people to spend their $5 on this movie, creating a small, quick, profit.

     -Adrenaline: 4/10. The movie is really pretty boring until the end. The story gets caught up into this whole character development and love story crap and forgets what the audience is there to see: Billy the Kid fighting Dracula. It is pretty entertaining at the end, but it isn't that suspenseful.

     -Intelligence: 3/10. This movie really doesn't make you think at all. It's pretty mindless and serves pretty much only as cheap entertainment, which was its purpose.

     -Stupidity: 7/10. The title of this movie should give you a good insight into what

     -Humor: Intentional: 1/10. Unintentional: 5/10. The movie attempts to have a little bit of humor in it, but it fails for the most part. The movie is unintentionally hilarious because of the fake flying bat, Dracula's creepy stares (see picture above for these two) and mostly because of this lovely scene below, which is during the climax of the movie:

The funniest scene in the movie, and how Billy takes out the vampire after

 using many bullets to no effect and losing a fist fight to him.

     -Best Credit: None, sadly.

     -Final Score: The bottom line is you just shouldn't make genre mashups involving westerns and try to make them serious. I think Cowboys and Aliens failed for the same reason. Trying to mash genres is hard enough, but it's even harder when you try to make it serious. Still, Billy the Kid vs. Dracula fails more than Cowboys and Aliens because of the lack of budget and A-list actors. I would recommend this to any b-movie fans out there looking to kill about an hour and a half. If nothing else, the death scene and the scenes with the bat are entertaining and a brilliant way to kill time.

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