Coleman Francis's debut directorial/production/writing effort The Beast of Yucca Flats runs under an hour -- 53 minutes to be exact. But, oh, are those a long 53 minutes, especially if one is trapped in a theater watching it. Francis seems to have had a general idea for a story -- and not a terrible one -- and no talent at all for writing dialogue, directing actors, or working with a crew. The results is a delightfully, almost comically chaotic mess of a movie that feels a lot longer than its under-one-hour running time -- and not in a good way. The grotesque cheapness of the shooting and the overt amateurishness of the technique and technical values on display make this a movie almost an abuse of the audience -- but the shortcomings are so far over-the-line as to set a new standard for ineptitude; where Edward D. Wood, Jr., with whom Francis is frequently compared, would at least make mistakes within an explicable frame-work (that is, one usually could deduce what Wood was trying to do), Francis's movie is filled with impossible-to-explain dialogue, action, plotting, and directorial decisions. The result is that where watching a Wood movie like, say, Night of the Ghouls is akin to looking at a multiple car wreck in slow-motion, watching The Beast of Yucca Flats is closer to looking at an act of random natural disaster -- such as an avalanche -- in slow motion (very, very -- excruciatingly -- slow motion), with little but one's knowledge of natural law and physics to guide one's assumptions and expectations. And, assuming one has the patience, that, in itself, is a kind of achievement, if not the one that Francis was aiming for.