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(1976) *

A newscaster informs us that an asteroid is on a collision course with the moon, which will cause a huge meteor shower. He goes on to say that the meteor shower will produce a beautiful, but harmless lightshow and he encourages all to watch. Soon we’re introduced to graduate student Paul, his friend and former professor Johnny Long-Bow, Long-Bow’s friend, Kathy, who is “a photographer from New York City”, and two of Long-Bow’s students who don’t matter given their scant screen time and terrible dialogue.

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Paul and Kathy immediately hit it off and hook up (it never works that way in real life unless one of them is a psychopath). Late one night the two sit atop a mountain to watch the “light show”. The meteor shower is apparently moving slow enough that Paul is able to shove Kathy out of the way in time only to be struck by a fragment, which lodges itself into Paul’s skull. Now I don’t know about you, but I would expect a moon fragment ejected from the moon and hitting me in the head to do more damage than that. I mean, shit, when I was 9-years old Kyle Brumbaugh dropped a rock on my head from approximately 1 foot above me and it damn near cracked my skull open. Oh wait, Kyle might have been the one who gave me a Hostess Cupcake and then proudly stated, “I put a boogie in it” after I had already excitedly chomped it down. No, now that I think about it, it was Michael Bancroft who did the cupcake thing. Stupid junior high years.

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Paul and Kathy make out as an errant meteor is about to loge itself into Paul’s skull.

Following this incident Paul begins to have terrible migraines and at times he passes out. At night he turns into a “Moon Beast”, which is to say that he turns into a man wearing a Sleestack costume. Here’s a Sleestack for reference,

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and here’s the moon beast,

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Paul goes on killing sprees during his nocturnal travels. These killings are fairly lame save one scene where the Moon Beast rips the arm off some poor fella. Eventually John Long-Bow figures out what’s going on by linking Paul’s bizarre werewolf, er, I mean, Moon Beast transformations to some ancient Navajo cave paintings (isn’t that always the case?).

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The paintings depict a story of a man who is struck by a light from the sky, and then turned into a "demon-lizard-monster". Later Paul overhears two doctors discussing his case and to his horror he hears, "The particle in that young man's brain has disintegrated, and energy factors are spreading through his entire system!" Paul is screwed. Rather than remain as a study subject for a group of doctors/scientists, Paul flees to deal with his affliction on his own. I won’t go over the climax but let’s just say that it involves Indian wisdom and some moon rock arrowheads. I’ve said too much.

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At some point this dude sings a song.

Track of the Moon Beast is horrible 70’s fare. There’s enough “bad” stuff in it to make it slightly fun, but not enough to ever recommend non MST3K people from checking it out.