On 21 September 2024, my movie watch was a seriously oddball American sci fi/horror movie from the mid-1970s entitled Track of the Moon Beast, but it was rendered memorable for me by being the first film I can remember seeing that featured a were-lizard as its antagonist!
Directed by Richard Ashe, and produced in 1972 by Lizard Productions Inc, Track of the Moon Beast was originally intended for cinematic release, but was unable to secure a distributor. Instead, its eventual public debut took place on the small screen, when it premiered as a TV movie on 1 June 1976, but in a much-censored shorter version from which certain particularly gory, gruesome scenes featuring the monster killing people had been deleted (the original, uncensored version is apparently no longer available).
Track of the Moon Beast opens with a young mineralogist named Paul Carlson (played by Chase Cordell) in some Albuquerque mountains studying a lunar meteor shower taking place over New Mexico when he is struck in the head by a fragment from one of the meteorites. The fragment lodges in his brain, with wholly unexpected but decidedly dire consequences.
For now, every night when a full moon appears, Paul transforms into a human-sized bipedal lizard-like entity with rampaging, murderous tendencies – this movie's eponymous moon beast – leaving gory carnage as well as very large clawed tracks in its wake. Moreover, it turns out that this bizarre phenomenon has been happening in this region since time immemorial, as revealed in local Native American legends and ancient paintings subsequently made known to Paul by his Native American mentor, Prof. John 'Jonny Longbow' Salinas (Gregorio Sala).
While human, however, Paul has no knowledge of being a lizard and killing people, and for much of the movie no-one else has either, determined though they are to expose the identity of the elusive killer in their midst. Ultimately, however, as is always the case in films like this, Paul's sinister secret is indeed exposed – although to be fair, had it not eventually become public knowledge there wouldn't have been much of a movie!
Yet even worse was soon to come for Paul. After a top-notch NASA brain surgeon x-rays his head prior to a planned operation in order to remove the fragment, Paul is shattered to learn from the surgeon that the operation cannot proceed because the fragment has disintegrated, but with its toxic, unstable extraterrestrial essence having permeated his entire body. Not only could Paul not be cured by conventional medical means, therefore, but also the fragment's deadly legacy would be death – those of further innocent, randomly-selected victims of Paul's reptilian alter ego, but also Paul's own, the latter via sudden self-combustion in the not-too-distant future.
Knowing that he cannot continue like this, Paul flees to the mountains on his motorbike, having made a stark decision, but one that devastates his loyal girlfriend Kathy (Donna Leigh Drake), as well as his friends and colleagues. So, will they reluctantly accept the inevitable, or will they do everything in their power to prevent it? Watch this movie and find out for yourselves!
Silly sci fi is a movie passion of mine, so whereas it was panned by most film critics, I absolutely loved Track of the Moon Beast, even if the on-screen lunar-influenced lizardman looks nothing near as imposing as the spectacular version depicted in this low-budget creature feature's striking publicity posters and official Prism Pictures VHS video's front cover illustration, as included in this present Shuker In MovieLand review. Even so, the make-up for it took 5-6 hours for make-up artist Joe Blasco to create each time that the actor playing the lizardman (Blasco himself) wore it (Blasco was taller and therefore more visually imposing than Cordell – who only played it in one scene, when Paul transforms into the lizardman while strapped down for observation purposes in hospital).
If you'd like to watch an official trailer on YouTube for Track of the Moon Beast, please click here – or click here if you'd like to watch the entire movie free of charge on there.
Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
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