“Desert of the Real: The Films of Coleman Francis”

By Laurence Todisco, Outer Order Media

In the cinematic wasteland of mid-century America—wedged between the neon optimism of postwar consumerism and the jagged disillusionment of Vietnam—there emerged an unlikely prophet. His name was Coleman Francis.

Francis did not make movies in the traditional sense. He captured ordeals. In his unholy trinity—The Beast of Yucca Flats (1961), The Skydivers (1963), and Red Zone Cuba (1966)—we find no arcs, no character development, and precious little logic. What we do find is a raw transmission of paranoia, degradation, and American despair, rendered in sun-blasted 16mm and post-dubbed murk.

In Beast, a radiation-mutated scientist (played by Tor Johnson) grunts his way through the Nevada badlands while a narrator solemnly mutters about progress and destruction. The Skydivers turns skydiving into an existential punishment, set against infidelity, sabotage, and aerial gunfire. Red Zone Cuba is the apex of nihilism: a murky black-and-white fever dream in which escaped convicts enlist in the Bay of Pigs invasion and return to wreak random violence.

Recurring actors (Tony Cardoza), recurring shots (planes, coffee, lifeless towns), and recurring obsessions (brutality, wandering, failed masculinity) unite these films into a haunted feedback loop. This is cinema that has given up. And in that surrender, it becomes something deeper: a cracked American oracle, muttering through its bloodied teeth.

Francis died with nothing. But in these cursed reels, he left us a broken mirror of the Cold War soul. These aren’t just bad movies. They are post-narrative shrines to failure itself.

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🤖 Coleman Francis: A MST3K Annotated Timeline

(featuring selected riffs, facts, and the tragic arc of a forgotten auteur)

• 1940s–1950s: Francis works in Hollywood in bit parts, including a small role in This Island Earth. Never quite makes it. Burns with bitterness.

• 1961 – The Beast of Yucca Flats

  • MST3K Riff: “Flag on the moon… how did it get there?”
  • Narrated with no sync sound. Plot? Possibly radioactive mutation. More certain: plane engines, shooting strangers, and dragging women into the desert.
  • Shot silent, dubbed over later in a motel room. It shows.

• 1963 – The Skydivers

  • MST3K Riff: “I was in a film noir once. Now I'm just in a film.”
  • Skydiving school + murder plot + espresso machine = Coleman’s take on sex and betrayal. Only more beige. Features aerial footage with all the excitement of filing taxes on an airplane.

• 1966 – Red Zone Cuba

  • MST3K Riff: “It's like someone filmed a hangover.”
  • Francis himself stars—gaunt, hollow-eyed—as a drifter turned mercenary. The pacing is glacial. The tone: haunted.
  • This is Francis unfiltered. The voice of a man whose dreams curdled into dust.

• Late 1960s–1970s: Career craters. Francis disappears from the industry. Alcohol and poverty define his final years.

• 1973: Found dead in the back of a station wagon. Cause of death unclear, possibly alcohol-related. A copy of Red Zone Cuba in his pocket.

• 1990s–2000s: MST3K revives his infamy. He becomes an icon of sublime cinematic failure. But also: an accidental poet of America's moral rot