Track of the Moon
Beast
Once again this weeks
movie was a movie I’ve heard the name of, but never seen before. Why had I
heard the name? It was on MST3K of course. I’m starting to feel sorry for a few
of these movies now. I know they appeared on that show because they were awful,
but there are probably worse films out there. Besides I liked the title of this
movie, it sounded like it could be quite fun. So how far off the mark was I?
During a meteor
shower, mineralogist Paul Carson (Chase Cordell) gets struck on the head by a
lunar meteorite. Somehow this lodges in his brain (no, really…) which causes his
transformation into some sort of were-lizard whenever the moon is out (well at
night anyway. It seems everyone but the writers, Charles Sinclair and Bill
Finger (comic writer and co-creator of Batman and The Green Lantern!), know that you can
often see the moon in the day…) which goes on a nightly murderous rampage.
Concerned for his health, Paul’s girlfriend Kathy (Donna Leigh Drake) and his
former teacher Johnny Longbow (Gregorio Sala) seek to help him, eventually
discovering about his nightly changes. The meteorite has now fragmented though,
and Johnny remembers stories from his tribe about how these monsters would
eventually explode. Will they be able to help Paul in time? Or will Paul just
end up as chunky lizard pieces when he can no longer get on the floor, and walk
the dinosaur?
So there we have it.
Werewolves are boring, were-lizards are the rage now! Well I guess that was the
thinking of the filmmakers, unfortunately the make-up isn’t quite convincing
enough. You know when you see a toddler that has found its mums lipstick and
has drawn over itself (and the walls, the cat and everything else in reach),
that would be a more convincing make up job. You know when the skinniest guy
you know rubs green face paint over himself to go to a fancy dress party as The
Hulk? That is more convincing. Hell, even the crappy monkey suit in The
Barbaric Beast of Boggy Creek II (see here) was more convincing.
To make matters worse,
the transformation scene is one of the worst I’ve ever seen. In other similar
films, such as An American Werewolf in London, the transformation looks
incredibly painful, in this movie it just looks like Paul has gotten drunk. His
vision blurs a bit, he stumbles about, he breathes like he’s making an obscene
phone call, then it looks like he’s grabbed a Halloween lizard mask and just
put it on and starts snarling for fun.
Talking of acting
drunk, Track of the Moon Beast has without a doubt the worst camera work and
editing I’ve ever seen in a movie. The camera operator looks as though they spent
their entire day in the pub before filming this, with the picture blurring at
odd intervals and the camera wobbling throughout. It’s so bad at times it even
makes you feel slightly seasick. As for the editing, it looks as though someone
has taken each scene and cut the beginning and ending of it in a random place
and stuck them together in a way that jars your senses every time the scene
changes.
The camera work isn’t
actually a problem too much of the time, due to the fact that when it doesn’t
look like the movie was filmed with a camera that had its lens covered in
Vaseline, it’s often so dark that you expect Mulder and Scully to walk onto the
set. The sound editing doesn’t fare much better, either sounding like it was
recorded underwater, or in a wind tunnel.
So aside from the
awful cinematography and special effects provided by Blue Peter, does the rest
of the movie fare well? I’m afraid that’s a resounding no. Apparently the
script was written in a weekend, and I’d love to say that it shows, but
honestly it sounds more like it was written on the back of a receipt on a short
bus journey home. It’s not only poor, but the pacing is so slow that it makes
continental drift look like an episode of The Benny Hill Show. It’s also really
badly researched (I guess there weren’t many books available on the bus
journey). So bad that even a junior school student would be able to point out
it’s factual errors. For example, at one point the police consults a
biologist/herpetologist over a cast of what appears to be a large lizards
footprint. He tells them that they’re looking for a lizard that walks upright
“Some form of reptile, closely related to the Tyrannosaurus Rex”. Even a
biologist in the 70s would have known that dinosaurs and reptiles were two
distinct classes of animals (not to mention that the picture of the T. Rex he
has on the wall looks more like it should be stuck to the fridge by a proud
parent than the wall by a biologist).
I’m not sure what’s
worse, the script or the completely wooden way in which it’s delivered. Chase
Cordell says his lines like he’s a schoolchild just learning how to read, which
has a nice irony to it, as the lines sound like they’ve been written by a
schoolchild who’s just learned to write. The rest of the actors are no better,
with Gregorio Sala veering between worst storyteller and worst cookery show
presenter ever, and Donna Leigh Drake putting in a performance so bad that it
may have actually been the inspiration for Sydne Rome’s performance in The
Pumaman (see here).
Track of the Moon Beast
really is a poor excuse for a movie. But, to its credit, there is some fun to be had in laughing at
how an inept film this is, and I had great fun tweeting along. I’m also looking
forward to getting a chance to watch the Mystery Theatre 3000 team riffing it, but I wouldn’t recommend you watch this movie without that in mind. It’s
too dull to enjoy as a movie on its own merits and you won’t so much be marvelling
at the were-lizard, more asking the question “why-lizard?”
