Artists and writers have long been mesmerized by the eccentricities of chaos. Counter-culture icon William S. Burroughs used to cobble together bits of newspaper stories in what he called his "cut-up" technique and reassembled them at random to form new passages that he believed allowed "the future to leak through." Then again, he was a junkie. But the principle is pretty basic and often exhibited in collages of images, or even audio. It’s this sort of mixing and matching that intrigued experimental artist and filmmaker Fredric Hobbs who made a handful of movies that hopscotched through genres and zany situations that flirted with almost hallucinogenic results. His final and probably most accessible feature was the nature-run-amok-Western-thriller Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973, 89 minutes).
The movie: A bit of a bait and switch here. We meet Eddie (Richard Marion) a dim-witted shepherd who wanders into Reno, hits it big at the slots and wins a lot of attention from shady new friends who relieve him of his loot and send him home to sob himself to sleep among his flock. He then has a wacky nightmare that could very well have been a bad LSD trip and is found there in a stable by a local college professor (E. Kerrigan Prescott). Beside Eddie is a wet knot of mutant wool that the professor decides warrants further study. That’s about it for awhile. Then there’s all this stuff about a bizarro town under the control of a secret society that’s determined to isolate itself from the rest of the world. Something to do with mining rights and government corruption. Who knows? What happened to the dang sheep monster? Oh, there it is. Now and then the professor is shown poking it with a stick and yellow farts waft out of it. Each time the creature is seen it seems a bit larger. But most of the time the movie’s about this town and this fella from the mining company who gets everyone in town mad at him when he accidentally shoots a pooch during a raucous Wild West celebration. Checking the video box again, yep, it reads "GODMONSTER of Indian Flats." Still more rural political intrigue. Finally, the whole town goes ape poopie and the sheep monster lumbers out of the lab toward freedom. This eight-foot mass of wool waddles on two legs across fields, terrorizes small children and does the Electric Slide with a hippie chick named Mariposa (Karen Ingenthron). Weird stuff. CineSchlockers should note that the creator of the super-sized killer plant in Please Don’t Eat My Mother actually ADMITS to having a role in constructing the godmonster.
Notables: No breasts. Four corpses. Hot slots. Steer-horn hood ornament. Banjo playing. Horse whipping. Six-gun shootout. Exploding sheep. Boozing. Pie munching. Bottle to the skull. Civil unrest. Exploding Chevron station. Aborted lynching.
Quotables: Elbow Johnson loves a good time, "It’s gettin’ on into drinkin’ time. It’s the golden hour, boy. Full of starry-eyed broads looking for a good time." Mariposa admires Eddie’s dedication, "You care about your flock, don’t you? I mean, they’re like your children." An ode to Himey the Homosexual Hound, "He was only a dog, but he filled our lives with joy and gayety." Mariposa tells the creature, "Don’t be frightened. I’ve been following you all the way from the Glory Hole." Mayor Silverdale (Stuart Lancaster) emotes, "LIES! LIES! LIES!!!"
Time codes: Virginia City’s Bonanza Days parade (34:22). Funeral for a fallen canine (38:00). The mutant sheep escapes (1:06:15). Mariposa dances with the beast (1:08:45). Silverdale County goes nutzoid (1:23:00).
Final thought: Judicious use of the fast-forward button keeps the mutton flying as it should. Too insane to resist and its generous supplements only sweeten this goof fest.