Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973)

GODMONSTER OF INDIAN FLATS

WRITER: Fredric Hobbs

DIRECTOR: Fredric Hobbs

STARRING: Christopher Brooks as Barnstable
Stuart Lancaster as Charles Silverdale
E. Kerrigan Prescott as Dr. Clemens
Peggy Brown as Madame Alta
Richard Marion as Eddie
Karen Ingenthron as Mariposa
Robert Hirschfeld as Sheriff Gordon
Steven Kent Browne as Phillip Maldove

QUICK CUT: There’s trouble, we got big trouble,right here in Comstock City, trouble with a capital T, and that rhymes with G which stands for Godmonster.

THE MORGUE

Eddie - A young farmer who has some good luck, until he doesn’t. He’s dedicated to keeping his family ranch going, and will do anything for his flock.

Dr. Clemens - A kind scientist who helps Eddie out, but takes a special interest in what they find on his farm one day.

Mariposa - Clemens’ assistant, and Eddie’s love interest.

Mayor Silverdale - A rich man who lives in the past, and will enforce his will upon the entire town he helped rebuild.

Barnstable - A businessman from back east, looking to buy some of the mining rights in town for his employer in New York. The town does not like Barnstable, for some strange reason.

Maldove - Silverdale’s associate, and rival of Barnstable. He’ll do whatever it takes to take care of the outsiders.

Perhaps the real godmonster was the friends we made along the way.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! To start off March, I decided to do a movie I've been meaning to do for awhile, but for one reason or another, usually because uh, I forgor, but this year I finally put my foot down and actually put it on the schedule. Anyways, let's dive into the Godmonster of Indian Flats.

After Eddie, a sheep rancher, has a great day playing the slots in Reno, he's taken out to a place called Comstock that is so ridiculously remote, they could be my neighbours.

We get some exposition that these mountains used to be rich with gold, and that some of the people wish they could go back and live in those times. Make Comstock Great Again!

This town is SO stuck in the past, everyone there still dresses like it's the old west, and it doesn't entirely seem like work uniforms for tourists. They're just...like that. They do talk a bit about tourism later on, but this town has some commitment to the bit.

Eddie gets friendly with a girl, who swipes a lot of his winnings. He tries to accuse her, but the town throws him out of the saloon. They don't like strangers 'round these parts.

He gets a ride home thanks to Dr. Clemens, and checks on his flock of sheep, before passing out in one of their pens. He then has one HELL of a fever dream, with sheep dancing around his head, and strange cries in the night.

It's kinda one part fever dream and one part visitation. It's never made ENTIRELY clear just what happened, and the best explanation we get is "this place has a history of weird shit". And Clemens much later speculates that some weird gas coming out of the ground affects people’s minds and creatures.

The next day, Clemens and his assistant, Mariposa, return to Eddie's farm to see how he's doing. He was in rough shape from crossing the townsfolk of Comstock, and when they find him the next day, he has come across a strange egg sac which is pretty much a horribly mutated sheep embryo.

We also get a brief mention that Comstock is full of a secret society, called the 501st legion and...no wait, they're not Stormtroopers. The 601. My bad.

They take Eddie, who is still in shock, and the egg up to their lab in the remote Indian Flats, and isn't EVERYthing in this movie remote?

While the worst storks get set up, we jump back to Comstock and spend a lot of time around the town. In fact, this movie spends more time with the townsfolk than the plot I'm actually interested in.

Mayor Silverdale, the man who restored the town, insists on everything being the way it was, holding tight to tradition, explaining the earlier weirdness. And guess what else they hold onto tightly? RACISM! But more on that later...

Atomic batteries to power, incubators to speed.

Out in Indian Flats, they've got the egg thing into the lab, and hurry to get it secured away in their equipment to keep it alive and study it. Clemens was shockingly ready with that incubator and fish tank.

They also give us some exposition about Clemens being out here for exactly this kind of research because of some weird fossils no one can explain.

Back in town, Silverdale is meeting with Mr. Barnstable, a man looking to buy some property in town and develop it, but for some reason, the mayor has no interest in selling, for SOME reason...

Clemens and Mariposa go down into the mines, and she succumbs to a strange yellow gas that fills the air. They get back to the surface, and the doctor rambles about how this is all connected with the past creature sightings, and whatever they're growing in the lab. They actually lay out a LOT of possible science that really just makes you go, “Yeah, sure, whatever!”

Following a lengthy parade and celebration in town, there's a target shooting competition, during which the sheriff gets his dog to literally play dead, blaming the death on Barnstable. They'll use this as a pretense to arrest the man, and run him out of town.

They even go so far as to hold a fake funeral, and the sheriff reveals he sent the dog to live with his brother. Wow, the one instance when the dog really DOES go to live on a nice farm upstate!

These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.

Back at Indian Flats, Clemens goes into the science of how the monster works, oh right, there's a monster in this movie. Kinda. Maybe. We're halfway through, and it's still cooking.

However, we don't get the godmonster quite yet, and instead fart around the town some more while they continue to have their western style celebration and harass Barnstable.

It goes so far as for Silverdale's right hand man, Maldove, to engineer a scuffle with Barnstable, shoots himself in the arm, and places the gun in Barnstable's hand when he's unconscious. This all ends up with Barnstable in a holding cell.

Clemens' experiments are causing interference with the town's bullshit, so they all mob up for some angry yelling at Indian Flats. Unfortunately, the monster is restless, and things are starting to go awry, so maybe events might occur.

The 601st gather to shoot stuff and wreck shit, and huh, maybe they ARE stormtroopers.

Barnstable is annoying the sheriff from jail, at least until the 601st bust him out of jail just so they can make him take the blame for more shit, and hang him.

Oh good, at least they’re in BLACK hoods. That way this isn’t TOO on the nose.

They're about to kill Barnstable for "escaping" but he thinks that’s actually a great idea, andDOES make an escape, even getting help from the local madam. She takes him to Indian Flats, so at least that's some plots tripping over each other.

Silverdale and his goon klux klan tear gas the heck out of the lab, making everyone pile out, and leaving the creature unattended with its equipment in a poor state. Oh finally.

Clemens begs Silverdale to call off the Proud Boys, he has a live animal in there. Silverdale agrees, as long as he turns over Barnstable. I'm sure that Clemens will do the right...ahh damnit, racism wins again.

Unfortunately, the assault on Indian Flats may have halted, but the creature is already loose. And finally we get our first death when the godmonster knocks a guy off the building.

The movie takes a SHARP turn at this point, and all the stuff about the town, and the business dealings, and even the racism, fade into the secondary plot, as everyone teams up to stop the mildly rampaging monster. It took us a LONG time to get here, and I'm not sure it was worth it. Eat your heart out, Alan Moore.

Mariposa runs off, hoping she can find the creature first, knowing he's just scared and alone, and isn't meaning to hurt anyone. Sure hope she's right, because she finds the creature pretty quick.

What’s that boy, did Timmy fall down the well??

The sun comes up VERY fast, so at least we can see the chase now, and Mayor Silverdale uses this as an excuse to declare martial law and send out his "vigilance squad" and why, why is there so many parallels to today??

We at least get to see the lumbering mutated beast shamble around and scare a bunch of kids. I wish we could get some better looks at the creature, the glimpses we get are fascinating, even if they are obviously very cheap and not much better than the Killer Shrews.

A gas station somehow gets exploded entirely by accident thanks to the creature's thrashing and scaring people, and this is not gonna help it's public opinion.

The posse chases the creature into the hills, determined to capture him alive, so the town can put him on display, making this also a King Kong allegory.

It doesn't take them long to find the monster, pretty much because there's only ten minutes left, and they circle the horses to rope and hold him in place.

As they get him roped up, he starts gushing these noxious fumes like the ones from the mine, but Clemens rushes in and tranquilizes the creature.

Ah geeze, your godmonster is burning oil, you're gonna have to take it into the shop.

There really isn't much more plot left at this point. They put the creature in a cage, the town points and laughs at it, and instead of gasping in awe, they decide it brings us love, so kill it!

Also, Silverdale rambles about his big plans for the town, but Eddie and Barnstable and others shout down his lies, causing a public riot, and everything goes sideways.

The truck with the cage goes over the cliff into the town's junk heap and explodes, all while the town goes rabid, things burn, and it all goes to shit. Capped off with Silverdale yelling about how he won. Again...weirdly still relatable.

What a weird movie.

Never forget who is the boss of you! ME! I am the boss of you!

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Looks pretty good. Maybe a bit washed out, for for a low budget flick from the early 70s, that no one paid much attention to? Pretty great.

Audio: It sounds decent enough.

Sound Bite: “I've been following you all the way from the glory hole" ……excuse me?

Body Count: A really sad performance, not helped by the monster not escaping until the final 20 minutes or so. And when things go to shit, I might have missed one or two someones getting shot. It goes quick.

1 - An hour and six minutes in, and the Godmonster finally shoves someone to their death
2 - Maldove gets shot.
3 - The Godmonster blows up

Best Corpse: Slim pickings this week, but Maldove gets the win, since it was much deserved.

Blood Type - D+: It’s very light on the blood, not helped by being light on the death, and the creature design isn’t much more than a wool cloak tossed over a guy. I like it, but it’s pretty simple, if striking.

Drink Up! every time they do a racism.

Movie Review: I did not know what I was gonna get with this. I expected your usual creature feature, but instead this movie spends the majority of its time dealing with the evils of capitalism and racism. Definitely themes that still resonate today, and the stuff with the townsfolk is well done, and chilling at times, but it feels so separate from everything else I WANT to be watching. Solid acting, and it’s well made, if a weird mix of tones and plots. But I did enjoy my time with this weird movie, where they pack the resolution of like five plots into the last ten minutes, while also piling on more ideas. I’m sure there’s some deeper layers to this I’m missing, and that’s a bit of a treat. Three out of five godmonsters.

Entertainment Value: There really isn’t much here. The monster is a delight, but comes too late to bring the movie up that much. And it’s otherwise a rather dry, if interesting, sociopolitical statement. A decent movie, just nothing to laugh about, or with, and just strange mishmash of stuff. One out of five abandoned mines.