Directed by:
Fredric HobbsScreenplay:
Fredric HobbsCinematography:
William HeickComposer:
André BrummerCast:
Christopher Brooks, Stuart Lancaster, E. Kerrigan Prescott, Erica Gavin, Robert Hirschfeld, Ann Wagner, André Brummer, Richard Marion, Frank E. FordPlots(1)
A large mutated sheep embryo is discovered by a rancher. The mutant is whisked away to the secret lab of Dr. Clemens and his faithful assistant, Mariposa. Dr. Clemens discovers that the old mine gives off some strange phosphorus vapors that may be the cause of the mutation, as well as being the origin for the old legend of a monster that once haunted the area. Clemens puts the creature in an incubation chamber, and it's not long before the mutant sheep has morphed into an 8-foot monstrosity, which escapes and terrifies the town. (AGFA)
(more)Reviews (2)
The renown of Godmonster of Indian Flats promises a bizarre spectacle and, indeed, that is what it delivers. In attempting to classify this unhinged amateur neighbourhood work, we can reach for the analogy that it comes across as a mutant clone of Ed Wood and Robert Altman. The latter evokes the former with a patchwork of disparate characters and their storylines, but combines them with both Ed Wood’s intuitively artless style and naively agit-prop ambitions. Though everyone who has seen this film and wants to share their trauma places emphasis on the storyline with the sheep-monster that terrorises the American backwoods, the truth remains that it makes up barely a third of the film and the monster doesn’t fully begin to figure into the narrative until the last quarter. On the contrary, most of the runtime is taken up by the Altman-esque following of a gallery of bizarre characters, most of whom are involved in intrigues revolving around how to force a guy who is buying up land for a big company out of rural Nevada. Both storylines are concurrently about the xenophobia of (not only) American small-town bumpkins, for whom the monster becomes the perfect personification of everything foreign that needs to be controlled and subjugated or destroyed. Thanks to the abundance of authentic dilapidated and desolate settings, chillingly appropriate non-actors and sequences involving authentic country celebrations with their dull pomposity and unsophisticated forms of entertainment, Godmonster of Indian Flats turns out to be a grotesque treatise on the American West, which remains wild, untamed and degenerate. It is necessary to admit that, despite being generally unwatchable and hollow, this “film” remains intensely fascinating thanks to its disjointedness and fundamentally unsettling derangement.
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The American movie Godmonster of Indian Flats is a beautiful romp, and it really does not matter that it is fifty years old. Godmonster of Indian Flats is a movie that will survive even if it remains simply a cult movie. However, that is a real shame because although it is a low-budget affair, it is made in a way that has something to say to the viewer, either because it is entertaining or because it simply shows them something they probably have not seen before.
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