Godmonster of Indian Flats

GODMONSTER OF INDIAN FLATS is a monster sheep movie, but that's only a portion of this nonsensical mishmash. Some of it plays like a weird western, occurring in modern times. Imagine if Ed Wood and Al Adamson got together, and directed BLAZING SADDLES, and it all comes clear.

Complete with humans "bleating" over sheep footage, mad science, a secret cowboy cult, and a deformed sheep fetus, this movie weaves its tale of sheer idiocy. Duller than glass smeared with sheep-dip, 99% of the "action" has nothing to do with monster sheep.

The title creature -resembling a pulsating ham- is kept in an incubator for most of its limited screen time. By the time it does fully emerge, most sane viewers will have slipped into a death-like state.

Yes! A woman dances with a giant mutant sheep! Yes! It ruins a child's party! Yes! It blows up a gas station! All in the final 10-15 minutes!

In short, someone was at these tourist trap locations, and said, "Hey! Let's come up with a story, so we can run around these local landmarks!". Alas, this isn't the best way to make a movie.

The lone star is for the woolly behemoth's scant appearances, and the movie's apocalyptic, Shakespearean, cowboy denouement at the city dump!...

Apparently unseen since its initial theatrical sweep in the early 70s(presuming it actually received distribution at all), this long-forgotten little coprolite was excavated from some lost-film boneyard during the late 90s, and has since laid claim to its rightful spot on the roll-call of the weirdest movies ever made.

GODMONSTER weaves an ambling configuration concerning a sheep fetus being exposed to a strange chemical vapor. Taken to a lab by scientists, it matures into a bald-headed, lopsided hirsute beast with a parched lolling tongue and a gimp arm. Naturally, the upright-walking miscreation escapes and hobbles over the arid desert terrain, scaring a few kids and wreaking general minor havoc. This course of events gives rise to a climactic stage so heteroclite...SO IMPOSSIBLY RANDOM...that it literally defies description.

All the elemental constituents of this film are surprisingly solid, and performances from the key players are moreless on-the-beam. It even has sharply defined characters and a developed, articulate subplot touching on sensitive sociopolitical issues. In taking note of these niceties, the burning question arises...how in hell could the folks involved with GODMONSTER have justified applying their erudite capacities to such a fly-ball project? Could a concept as utterly 'non-compos-mentis' as this have possibly seemed like a felicitous undertaking at the drawing-board stage? The mind boggles.

We can't lose this film again, or future generations will dismiss the lore as either a collective hallucination or an elaborate hoax. 10/10? 1/10? ...how does one possibly rate something like this?

I have seen every sort of monster: birds, cats, piranhas, crocs, bats, ants, grizzles, sharks; but killer sheep is a new one. I looked forward to seeing a flokati attack humans.

Yes, the acting is baad, the story line is baad, sometimes downright silly, the special effects were criminally baad, and the monster really looks baad. One flighty character (Mariposa) even tries to communicate with the creature with some kind of new age arm waving.

Just because a movie takes place in the West, doesn't make it a western, and just because you have a mutant sheep, you can't call it a horror movie unless there is some actual horror.

No, folks, this is NOT a no-budget horror flick from the seventies. Look again - it's well-shot, well-staged, and, if anything, it's wildly overpopulated with enthusiastic minor characters and extras.

Godmonster isn't like anything else you've ever seen, heard, read, smelled, or tasted, with the possible exception of a Thomas Pynchon novel. Like Pynchon, Hobbs keeps piling on plot until you think the plate in your head is going to shatter. And then you realize that it's only the first thirty minutes. And it keeps coming at you and it WON'T STOP.

I've seen them all, from Acid Eaters to Zombie Nightmare. I've laughed at Begotten, wept over Forbidden Zone, sat amazed at semi-legal prints of White Dog with Dutch subtitles and Addio Uncle Tom with Greek subtitles.

I've got Killer Klowns in Spanish.

But Godmonster is the last stop on the line. I wish this WERE a crappy rubber-suit monster movie. It'd be vastly less disturbing.

You aren't gonna find a movie like GODMONSTER OF INDIAN FLATS at your local Blockbuster! If you have briefly seen clips of this one on the TV program REEL WILD CINEMA, then you've already had a fair idea of how weird this turned out to be. For those who have never seen this one before, let me explain further. It's another no-budget creation that is by far remaining to be extremely unusual to this day. Our late-night creature feature concerns an embryo that later becomes a giant eight-foot killer SHEEP monster ready to attack a small Nevada country town. (That's right, I said "sheep"!) Just as THE MIGHTY GORGA did with horrible costume design, so does this obscure film, having another ridiculous outfit in the history of cinema! It appears similar to another goofy costume on a kooky Kroft kiddie show! Notice that one arm is over twice as long as the other! And watch how this monster walks, too!

There has to be more to this utterly unknown artifact. I can honestly tell you that this is the second film I've watched containing the name Frederic Hobbs, another "lost & found" director who must have made the silliest movies ever printed on a negative. Unfortunately, he did only three films; the more familiar one is ALABAMA'S GHOST. He also designed (yes!) the ugly sheep costume that is present in this film. Did his career backfire or something? There's no telling!

An interesting fact according to a description written by BASKET CASE director Frank Henenlotter: the movie was played theatrically in 1973 until patrons suffered from massive seizures that later cut short of the film's circulation. This was due to the flashing colors of red that occured in scenes where the sheep was held in captivity during an experiment. The effect looks far better than the costume. At least this one accomplished a few good visuals such as the creeping red-orange smoke. The only thing that looks better is the silly script that contains scenes from a messed-up episode of "GUNSMOKE", which has NOTHING to do with the movie! It also has what may very well be the looniest, dumbest ending ever recorded on film!

I find this title interesting. Completely interesting! Interesting for its rare view of the drive-in theater that once ran a bunch of one-shot sleepers! Not a classic (and why should it be one?), but an entertaining staple to fill up those night owl minutes. It's a sure sign of how many more strange, lost, and forgotten movies are waiting to be recovered!