I think it may really be the worst movie ever, Bill. That's saying a lot, going out on a limb here...but I think it just might be.

Most of the user reviews on IMDB.COM give it one star. But there's one review that raves about it. As follows:

This film is one of the most complex films in the history of cinema. There are many subtle yet overflowing layers to this film inter-weaved articulately yet not interfering with one another, only bolstering around the present story of a man changed and monster-like. There is a tip of the iceberg on social commentary to this film, the man in the helicopter shooting the other man tells us the danger of technology, how it dehumanizes situations without feeling, only augmented in the fact that the shooter was in the armed forces, just a slave to orders, the machine-like orders of life. And very deep philosophical elements to humanity such as the continuous mention of the word "progress" especially on the boys who enjoy life and aren't caught up in the world of working. As well current events to the film of the Cold War situation at its hottest point in '61 with the Cuban missile crisis which Coleman would later flesh out even further in Red Zone Cuba and the spiraling dangers of the heating conflict matched to the dangerous escaping spree of the convicts (but that's another analysis for the other film), "flag on the moon" and the peering question of how it appeared, only through progress and conflict could it happen. The scene with the man succumbing and a rabbit appearing has multiple dimensions to it. The only non-human thing doesn't fear the "monster" which was created by humans themselves and feared by them, only acceptable by nature, animals just see another creature in our world of life. And how technology continues to do more harm than good on humanity overriding the one factor that makes humans, humans, they are able to feel not only learn like cold-calculating machines. There's countless Freudian elements like the mother's hopeless search for her sons and Platoic and Lockian ones too on the message of the capitalistic government of ours run by as shown sheriffs brought up as the holders of it though their war and transformed home version of the sheriff upholding their view with force oblivious to the darker aspects of their sociology. A cinematic masterpiece.

Hmmm! Food for thought there, eh? ;-) Either we have a reviewer with incredible powers of insight writing the above...or it's a fine piece of tongue-in-cheek satire. But the possibility exists that "The Beast of Yucca Flats" is actually an artistic masterpiece subtly masquerading as a hopeless pile of valueless dreck.