Depth of Field: Auteur Theory – Godmonster of Indian Flats

Vision is hard to come by in films. It takes more than a keen eye for imagery or an imagination doped up on daydreams to fulfill the peculiar promise of cinema. People go to the movies to be transported to places they’ve never been before, to see and experience things that only exist in the most magical regions of the mind’s eye. What they don’t want to see is the same old slop, reprocessed and repackaged to resemble what came down the pipe just a few months ago. Yet over and over again, those talentless titans of Tinsel Town deliver derivative goods, groan inducing retreads of ideas and images that didn’t really work the first time through the viewfinder. Sure, banking on originality is a gamble. But the payoff can be sweeter than sweating out the criticism.

The classic examples all prove the point. Hitchcock may have been the Master of Suspense, but audiences flocked to his films because of their iconic style, not their clockwork plotting. David Lunch sets his world in the unpredictable plain of dreams, and then slowly lets the nightmare limits of the locale seep into the slumber. Quentin Tarantino takes every trick he’s learned from three decades in front of the screen – big or small – and amplifies it through his own engorged ego into something sublime and special. In the Hollywood hierarchy, it would be nice to see a Burton for every Bay, a Gilliam for every glorified video director. But the commonplace commands commerce, and as long as the derivative is driving dollars into the BO coffers, no one is going to be calling for creativity.

It’s the same even in exploitation. The outsider arena of moviemaking did have its prophets, those inspired thinkers who moved beyond the T&A tendencies of the medium to expose the raincoat crowd to something freaky – and not necessarily deaky. But they were the rarity in a business more concerned with the bodkin than the beatific. Though true geniuses like Doris Wishman reinvented the filmic language while staying set inside a certain type of tale (in her case, the nudist and/or roughie realm) others had to seek solace in less trodden paths. Whether it was the gore film, the drug scene, the dippy hippy power of flower or the sexual revolution, these visionaries tried to find a way to get their thoughts and metaphors on screen. Many failed. But those who succeeded have a tasty Technicolor testament to be remembered by.

Fredric Hobbs was such a motion picture maverick. After helming the musical mindfuck called Roseland (about a mystical place where lust and dreams run wild…or maybe it was really a psychiatric institute sex farce) Hobbs wanted to champion environmentalism and government corruption in a showcase that would send a strong message to the Establishment. What he decided to use as his messenger however can only be called “different”. Taking a leaflet out of the “nature run amok” school of schlock and plopping it directly into one of the most offbeat settings ever conceived for a monster mash, (one of those recreationist societies that preserve everything the way it was 100/200 years ago) Godmonster of Indian Flats was born.

The film’s plot is loaded with symbolism, counterculture ideology and some of the oddest ducks this side of an irradiated game preserve. A local mine, once the home of a “legendary” creature, starts leaking a foul smelling gas. Naturally, a pregnant sheep gets a whiff, and before you can say “genetic mutation”, a bloody bulbous fetus makes a fantasy sequence appearance. That’s right, a drunken shepherd, rolled for his money by the denizens of the local dive bar, has a vision with bones and a golden light. One case of the DTs later, and our mangled mutton is born. The resident scientist, who works at the local college cum powerplant ruins, takes the sickly sweater makings back to his lab, where he nurses it back to health with a combination of chemicals and over the top tirades.

Oh course, the local big wig Mayor Silverdale (played by Russ Meyer stalwart Stuart Lancaster in a mannerism so clipped you’re liable to cut yourself on his dialogue) wants to know what’s going on in the rundown wreck of a university. He soon has his own problems to contend with, however. A high-minded businessman from “back East” is in town trying to buy up all the indigenous mining rights. Seems Silverdale wants those little leases for himself. As the two industrialists battle it out for smelting supremacy, the baby beastie grows and gets angry. He breaks out of his flimsy cage and starts stalking the landscape. When Silverdale and his gang can’t kill the creature, they decide to capture it. How else do you expect to charge the public two bits a gander to see this notorious nuclear ewe?

There is absolutely nothing normal about this movie…NOTHING! Don’t let the corporate dealings and entrepreneurial underpinnings fool you – Godmonster of Indian Flats is the strangest, most surreal exploitation movie ever made. It offers up a Six Gun Territory theme park as a township without batting an eye, has its characters dressed like rejects from Disney World’s Diamond Horseshoe Review and infiltrates the insanity with an eight foot, carpet covered sinister sheep that enjoys moonlit dances with the neighborhood Earth mother. Honestly, Hobbs has crafted a certified jaw-dropper here, a film that fails to make a lick of narrative sense but keeps us spellbound in other, less plot-oriented ways. Lancaster is in classic form, playing Silverdale as a laidback loon, a madman too lethargic to go yokel on the locals. And he is surrounded by actors who all believe that this is their Method moment. There is lots of hammy thespianism here, and as the old saying goes; it’s never good to mix your meats.

Indeed, the Godmonster itself is what really sells this silliness. In one classic scene, it slowly ambles up to a group of children playing. As it takes its time attacking, the kids keep looking directly at the camera, waiting for their cue to react. A few screams, a couple of close-ups, a scattering of bratlings and a classic work of crackpot cinema is born. Godmonster of Indian Flats is one of those clichés in the pantheon of pathetic films – it really does need to be seen to be believed. From Silverdale’s elite squad of enforcers that appear like black dressed dandies from a gay rodeo, to the mindbending finale which resolves nothing and seems to infer victory for the villains, Hobbs’ hobbled hoot is hilarious. Disturbing and demented, but uproarious and original nonetheless. Besides, its films like this that prove once and for all that, when you’ve got your own style, substance will only hold you back.