When someone mentions South Dakota, I always think of George McGovern, and Wall Drug, with its outstanding selection of fruit pies and iceberg lettuce salads. And of course there's Mount Rushmore, dried elk meat, The Brooklyn Dodgers and the Great Pyramids. Then, after thinking about how South Dakota reminds me of my seventh grade gym class, and the girls whose breasts had developed fully enough to warrant the purchase of a brassiere, my thoughts turn to cinema. And really, who doesn't think of cinema when South Dakota is mentioned? I can't think of anyone who doesn't, but if there are people like that, they are almost assuredly a bunch of assholes.
Sometime between the production of North by Northwest and Dances With Wolves, Monte Hellman dragged a cast and crew into South Dakota to film Beast From Haunted Cave. The cast included Richard Sinatra, who must be some relative of Frank Sinatra, since he was also in Ocean's Eleven and Robin and the Seven Hoods. Sinatra provides comic relief as Marty Jones, one of a group of mumbling, boring dimwits who have arrived in South Dakota to rob gold from a bank. To do this, they use a cave explosion to lure police out of town long enough for them to steal the gold, then toddle off to pretend they've been cross country skiing the whole time. They succeed without a hitch, then inexplicably decide to become confrontational with their ski guide, in the process revealing that they've robbed the bank. It's kind of like if O. J. Simpson had gone to eat breakfast at the Brown Derby after leaving Ronald Goldman's house, and then smeared his bloody knife all over some wheat toast just as the waitress was refilling his coffee. And might I add, that coffee would have been hotter and more flavorful at Wall Drug, a South Dakota institution since 1931.
After the bank robbery story line has been beaten like an Abu Ghraib detainee, the beast in the haunted cave is almost an afterthought. But eventually enough plot contrivances emerge to send some people into a cave that shelters a big paper mache box with arms that suspicisouly resemble hairy, rigid pipe insulation. But this is no ordinary paper mache box with hairy pipe insulation arms, au contraire. This one has a dust bunny for a head that looks like Jeanne Kirkpatrick after about a year of decomposition.
Jeanne Kirkpatrick moves as quickly as you can expect a guy standing under a paper mache box to move, but not surprisingly, no one is capable of outrunning her. She grabs people and embeds them in walls and trees with spider webs, and then they moan feebly until she returns to suck blood out of their necks. But it's never really shown how Jeanne Kirkpatrick can grab anyone with hairy pipe insulation for arms. I suppose pipe insulation could be prehensile if you were to soften it with a mild acid and then fill it with muscles and tendons that happen to be connected to a central nervous system. But even then, you might need to cut a hole near the elbow. Has anyone tried this? I'd be curious.
There's also a lot of smoking, with the ski instructor guy always lighting up a pipe, and the evil bank robber guy opting for a cigarette holder, plus a completely uninteresting romantic angle between the ski guide and the cigarette holder guy's girlfriend. There's no nudity, car chases, or limbs ripped from their sockets, but there is more cross country skiing than you can shake a stick at, which could be endlessly fascinating if you give a fuck about cross country skiing, or stick shaking.
It's nothing special, but it might be worth a watch if you're interested in South Dakota, smoking, relatives of Frank Sinatra, cross country skiing, or Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and if nobody has invited you to go hang out at an auto parts store for a few hours.
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