Loner mineralogist Paul Carlson (drably played by the singularly dry and uncharismatic Chase Cordell, who alas never acted in another film) gets a piece of moon rock lodged in his skull during a meteorite shower. The decidedly lethal chunk of green cheese has a severely bad effect on Paul come nightfall: He transforms into a hilariously cruddy-looking humanoid lunar lizard that ravages the dark, desolate New Mexico countryside, leaving a trail of bloody, mutilated corpses in its deadly wake. It's up to Paul's wise old Native American buddy Johnny Longbow (poker-faced, more-wooden-than-a-giant-oak stiff Gregorio Sala, who gets to say all this funky mystical prophecy mumbo jumbo about how the murderous reptilian creature is really an ancient Indian god come to life so it can bring about the end of the world), aided by Paul's leggy bimbo photographer squeeze Cathy Noland and clueless, stolid local yokel Sheriff Mack (glumly essayed by Patrick Wright, a beefy, curly-haired perennial co-star in numerous 70's exploitation films who played similar dippy cop roles in "Caged Heat," "Revenge of the Cheerleaders," and "Roller Boogie"), to stop the scaly, sanguinary, nefarious nocturnal were-lizard beast.
Thanks to such tried'n'true so-bad-that-they're-perversely-beautiful ingredients as rank community theater level acting (although Donna Leigh Drake as Cathy almost compensates for her woeful lack of thespic prowess by wearing these drastically cut blue denim hot pants which show off a lot of her long, shapely, well-tanned stems throughout the entire picture), Joe ("Ilsa") Blasco's horrendously chintzy and unconvincing make-up f/x (Joe also plays the titular butt-ugly critter), Bob ("Ginger") Orpin's corny score, a memorably ridiculous creature that was designed by a young, unknown, just starting out up-and-coming Rick Baker (I'm sure he still lists this baby on his resume), a horrifically bad aspiring folkie singer/songwriter who briefly appears on-screen to bleat out the unforgettably insipid folk-pop ditty "California Lady" in a dreadfully slight, nasal, off-key tenor voice, uproariously godawful dialogue (favorite line: "If I'm gonna die, I wanna die looking like a man -- NOT like a monster!"), painfully gradual molasses going uphill in the wintertime sluggish pacing, several very amusing, dimly lit nighttime attack scenes (the best-ever assault occurs when Moonie rips open a tent so he can make grisly hash out of a bunch of redneck card players; one poor guy has his arm torn clean out of its socket and not a single drop of blood gushes forth from the gaping wound!), and poor (mis)direction by Dick Ashe (who oddly enough never helmed another feature), "Track of the Moonbeast" makes for an unsparingly ludicrous, often risible and hence quite entertaining so-shoddy-it's-strangely-sublime low-budget horror flick howler.
Thanks to such tried'n'true so-bad-that-they're-perversely-beautiful ingredients as rank community theater level acting (although Donna Leigh Drake as Cathy almost compensates for her woeful lack of thespic prowess by wearing these drastically cut blue denim hot pants which show off a lot of her long, shapely, well-tanned stems throughout the entire picture), Joe ("Ilsa") Blasco's horrendously chintzy and unconvincing make-up f/x (Joe also plays the titular butt-ugly critter), Bob ("Ginger") Orpin's corny score, a memorably ridiculous creature that was designed by a young, unknown, just starting out up-and-coming Rick Baker (I'm sure he still lists this baby on his resume), a horrifically bad aspiring folkie singer/songwriter who briefly appears on-screen to bleat out the unforgettably insipid folk-pop ditty "California Lady" in a dreadfully slight, nasal, off-key tenor voice, uproariously godawful dialogue (favorite line: "If I'm gonna die, I wanna die looking like a man -- NOT like a monster!"), painfully gradual molasses going uphill in the wintertime sluggish pacing, several very amusing, dimly lit nighttime attack scenes (the best-ever assault occurs when Moonie rips open a tent so he can make grisly hash out of a bunch of redneck card players; one poor guy has his arm torn clean out of its socket and not a single drop of blood gushes forth from the gaping wound!), and poor (mis)direction by Dick Ashe (who oddly enough never helmed another feature), "Track of the Moonbeast" makes for an unsparingly ludicrous, often risible and hence quite entertaining so-shoddy-it's-strangely-sublime low-budget horror flick howler.