By 1961, the infamous Ed Wood had abandoned any ambitions to crack Hollywood, the failure of his Psycho knock-off The Sinister Urge the year previously inspiring a pivot into an exploitation scene far more befitting of his unique talents. Perhaps sensing a gap in the market for crudely made genre pictures with a willful disregard for logic, jobbing actor Coleman Francis made the leap to director for a monstrous mash of Cold War espionage, boogeyman horror, and nuclear protest movie that made Wood appear the height of competence.
Indeed, it doesn’t take long for The Beast of Yucca Flats, named after the very real irradiated area, to leave audiences utterly perplexed. In the opening scene proper, we learn the Soviet Union, a nation not exactly renowned for its shy and retiring nature, have kept the fact they’ve beaten the United States to the first moon landing entirely under wraps. And having just jumped ship to their fiercest rivals, their top ‘noted scientist’ Joseph Javorsky (Tor Johnson) is now being hunted by the KGB before he can spill this unfathomable secret.
