Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973)

A monster movie from Frederic Hobbs, the eccentric and enigmatic artist and sometime film director, Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973) is as unorthodox as one might expect from the man who also brought us Alabama's Ghost (1973).  The film ostensibly follows the pattern of a typical fifties or sixties low-budget monster B-movie, with a local farmer discovering a mutated sheep embryo, which his scientist friend takes back to his lab, believing that it might have been caused by the phosphorous vapours given off by a local mine, which itself is associated with stories of a legendary monster.  Of course, after incubation in the lab, the embryo grows into a ten foot tall bipedal sheep monster, which eventually goes on a rampage.  But all of this is really secondary to the wider story it is embedded in, which involves the local town, which is effectively owned by its mayor, who wants to develop into an 'Old West' tourist attraction, which in turn involves barring the 'wrong types', (ie non-whites) from the town's facilities.  In the midst of the town's western-themed festival, a black, East Coast representative of a wealthy financier, approaches the mayor with a view to buying local land for a mining development.  The mayor's opposition to this schemes seems to have as much to do with the representative's race as it does his desire to historically preserve the town.  In order to foil the financier's scheme, the mayor, whilst inviting the representative to stay for the festival, sets his henchmen to work harassing him, eventually framing him for killing a dog (!), which nearly leads to him being lynched by an angry mob.  He is subsequently framed for wounding the chief henchman and held in jail, but escapes and is hunted down by an armed posse, seeking sanctuary at the scientist's lab.  The mob descends on the lab, resulting in the monster getting free.

In a final twist, the monster is captured by the mayor, who plans to exploit it as 'The Eighth Wonder of the World', in part to distract the townsfolk that he has done his own deal to sell their land claims.  A riot ensues, culminating in the monster in its cage being pushed over a cliff and perishing when the truck carrying the cage explodes.  The financier's representative flees under cover of the mayhem, while it seems that more mutated sheep are being born.  As to be expected from a film by Frederic Hobbs, Godmonster of Indian Flats is full of bizarre touches and scenes, the whole business with the dog for instance, which hasn't really been shot, it is just very good at playing dead, is spirited away after a funeral, to live with the mayor's nephew.  The monster itself is a truly shambolic creation, staggering around the countryside and looking decidedly non-menacing, with most of the destruction inadvertently caused by frightened would-be victims.  But, as indicated earlier, the whole monster business is really a sub-plot, with Hobbs seemingly more interested in exploring the issue of small town racism, which itself is the result of a community attempting to recreate and preserve a past that never really existed.  In this case, that past is the traditional 'Old West' derived from the imagery of films and dime novels, which all conveniently ignored the diversity of the historical west.  Whereas in the real west, black and Mexican cowboys were relatively commonplace, here they are perceived as representing a threat to the carefully constructed 'Old West' facade created by the mayor.  (The film opens with the farmer, who is of Hispanic heritage, being harassed by the police and thrown out of town).  

Like Alabama's Ghost, Godmonster of Indian Flats was clearly made on a very restricted budget, with a cast composed largely of unknowns, yet still looks surprisingly good, with some decent performances from the cast.  The Nevada locations are deployed to great effect, juxtaposing the 'Old West' theme of the town and the landscape which is largely unchanged since those times, with the encroachment of modernity, in the form of the laboratory, a scrap yard and dump that dominates the outskirts of the town.  The set-pieces are all surprisingly well staged and photographed by Hobbs, in spite of obviously limited resources.  The black business representative is played by Hobbs favourite Christopher Brooks - Alabama himself from Alabama's Ghost - whilst Russ Meyer regular Stuart Lancaster plays the mayor.  Perhaps the most recognisable face in the cast is Robert Hirschfield as the slovenly sheriff, who would later become a regular in Hill Street Blues, playing Leo, the admin officer.  Like Hobbs' other work, Godmonster of Indian Flats is agreeably off beat and eccentric in its approach, deploying familiar genre tropes to explore more complex social issues.  Not really a monster movie in the traditional sense, but still hugely entertaining.