Not only did I love monster movies when I was a kid, I also loved reading about them, which is how I learned about most of them to begin with. Monster movie books were my bread and butter and there was this one book (wish I could remember its title) that mentioned this movie about a monster sheep called, Godmonster Of Indian Flats. The exact photo they ran is the photo I have posted at top, except in that book it was black and white and grainy. I never forgot that photo, the title, or the plot—especially the title! Back then I would occasionally come across a movie I’ve never heard of in the TV guide I would just want to see based on the title alone (i.e. Creature From Black Lake, Island Of The Burning Doomed, Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors, Horror Express), and you have to admit ‘Godmonster’ is very catchy.
I never saw got to see this film when I was a kid, because they just never aired it anywhere in my area, and so that flick went down in infamy in my mind, a flick I would have never thought about unless it was brought up somewhere in the various corners of Facebook I inhabit where genre flicks of all kind are discussed and dissected. Cue the news from AGFA (American Genre Film Archive), a boutique distributor that specializes in weird and off beat movies on disc, a few months ago that they were actually bluing this film!
Bluing Godmonster?!?!
Ever since Troll 2 got blued, I knew right then no film was off limits to high definition remastering and since then many boutique labels have proven me right. There’s something you have to know about me, if you’ve read my reviews you already know it, but I love “bad movies,” obviously not all bad movies. The term “bad movie” seems subjective at the best of times. I mean one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, so . . . just to give you a few examples what I consider “good-bad movies,” — The Vulture (1967), The Alien Factor (1978), The Strangeness (1985), Equniox (1970), and Octaman (1971). Most of those I consider “comfort food” even. All of them are ‘memory movies,’ and I’m throwing Godmonster into that category based solely on how that photo affected me when I saw it in that book.
I suppose I come to the part where I have to define what I mean by a ‘memory movie.’ It’s a personal term I came up with one night back in the early 2000s when I opened up one of my DVD towers and thought, ‘look at all those memory movies!’ Ever since then it stuck, and it’s what I call all those movies I saw during the informative years of my life, which encompasses childhood, teens, and early-to-mid 20s. That’s not to say you can’t have a memory movie from any stage of life, but most of the potent ones, the ones that burn themselves into your brain, come during those aforementioned chapters of growing up. Everybody’s got ‘em, and with the most potent ones you’ll be able to recall where you saw it, who you saw it with (if anyone), and what general state of mind you were in, not to mention whether it was day or night, etc. But there are those “weird ones” that are just as potent, but have no concrete memory, just a solid feeling you saw it. I have a few of those that for some reason my memory refuses to color in, only telling me I saw it, and here’s the general “vibe” of how you saw it.
With that done, now, let’s dive deep into Godmonster, for starters this movie wasn’t at all what I expected it would be. I was also mildly disappointed in it, because the Godmonster of the title is relegated to being a supporting character in its own movie. The subplot concerning it is a sobering display of weird cinema at its finest, or worst, depending on what your tolerance level is, and mine was pretty high, since I was able to watch it all the way through while enjoying it. Now, is it going at the top of my list of the best bad movies I can watch? Unfortunately not, but I can see myself being in the mood to see it again, so into my collection it shall go.
This dude named Eddie (Richard Marion) heads to Reno for some gambling, he hits it big on a slot machine, gets his cash and is targeted by some residents of nearby Silverdale. They take the now drunk man to their town, take his money and beat him up. He crosses path with a Professor Clemens (E. Kerrigan Prescott) who takes him on as an assistant at his Indian Flats laboratory. He has another assistant, Mariposa (Karen Ingenthron), whom Eddie takes a shine too, and ends up being the film’s love interest. During that first night at Clemens place he falls asleep with sheep, but not before a strange psychedelic event occurs that heralds in the birth of a strange creature by one of animals.
Clemens takes the fetus to his lab and begins studying it, this is when we get a history lesson on a prehistoric animal that used to roam these parts and lair in the local mine shafts. This creature gave off this “phosphorous yellow,” as he calls it, that affected the miners and made them hallucinate. At any rate when the mine exploded this “phosphorous yellow” seeped into the ground and here we are centuries later with the sheep having been contaminated by it and this particular one giving birth to a similar creature. The actual rampage of the full grown “Godmonster,” (a term that’s never used in the film at all) doesn’t come until an hour into the film, roughly, and lasting only ten short minutes, roughly. He’s captured and put on display at the end of the flick, with the corrupt Mayor Charles Silverdale (Stuart Lancaster) intent on selling tickets far and wide so the town can make money on it.
The main plot of the story follows this guy, Barnstable (Christopher Brooks), from a competing mining corporation eager to get the residents of Silverdale to sell their properties to him. Silverdale doesn’t want this to happen, so he has his head henchman, Philip Maldove (Steven Kent Browne), harass him, then frames him for attempted murder, and then throws him in jail, then tries to lynch him towards the end. This is where the main plot merges with the subplot as the “Godmonster” gets out and kills one of Maldove’s pack, a young kid, forcing him, Silverdale and the corrupt Sheriff to team up and capture the creature.
Barnstable (middle) having fun during Silverdale’s parade
The movie is set in modern times, but this small town of Silverdale loves to regale their populace with “tales of yore” that hark back to the old west (i.e. an Old West parade), so you get people walking around with guns in their holsters, dressed like cowboys, playing up the whole Old West thing, giving the film a western vibe every once in a while. The main plot is fairly conventional, the subplot isn’t, and I was hoping that whacked out weird cinema of the “Godmonster” was the entire film. Oh, well, maybe, next time.
The “Godmonster” itself is obviously a man-in-a-suit, and the final result is a rather pathetic looking beast. It doesn’t look that way during the moments we see it growing in the incubator in Clemen’s lab. It walks upright on two legs, because it never could on all fours; one leg is shorter than the other. It manages to blow up a gas station, which is impressive for any mutant in such an enfeebled condition.
The second flick on this blu is a “documentary” from 1975 called, The Legend Of Bigfoot, I don’t ever remember coming across it on TV at all back then. I watched it a few hours ago and, frankly, it did nothing for me. It follows the adventures of an animal tracker/cryptozoologist named, Ivan Marx, and his wife, Peggy. Ivan narrates the film; the supposed bigfoot footage looks “staged,” to me. Most of this doc is a nature documentary anyway.
Color me immensely surprised to learn Godmonster Of Indian Flats had made it to DVD back in 2001 from Something Weird Video. I never knew that. SWV teamed up with AGFA for this new disc that streets July 10th on blu-ray only! You can buy it here on Amazon!
Video/Audio/Subtitles (Godmonster Of Indian Flats): 1080p 1.33:1 full frame—English DTS-HD Master Audio (Stereo)—English subs only
Video/Audio/Subtitles (The Legend Of Bigfoot): 1080p 1.85:1 high definition widescreen—English DTS-HD Master Audio (Stereo)—English subs only
4K transfer from the only surviving 35mm theatrical print on Godmonster, and a 2K scan from an original theatrical print on Legend Of Bigfoot. There’s still obvious print damage on both films that crop up from time to time, more so on Bigfoot, with Godmonster looking to be the better looking one overall, colors pop nicely on that one too.
Extras included . . .
- Strange Sightings (Short Film) (36;15)
- School Bus Fires (Short Film) (25:00)
- White Gorilla (Short Film) (9:48)
- Rampaging monster trailers from the AGFA vaults (The Creature From Black Lake, Grizzly, The Mysterious Monsters, South Of Hell Mountain)
- Bonus Movie: The Legend Of Bigfoot (1975) (1:14:49)
- Reversible cover art with illustration by Shana Cleveland
PHYSICAL MEDIA LIVES AT . . . 