The small town of Pottsville, Idaho boasts about its potatoes and about its very own nuclear waste dump. Dr. Garson Jones (Martin Landau) is a chemist and advisor to the state of Idaho concerning regional and environmental safety. It is his job to monitor the local water system to ensure that the water does not get contaminated. According to Garson the aquifer is fine and everything is hunky dory.
Marge Smith (Dorothy Malone) lives in Pottsville. Her son Michael has gone missing. Marge knows that Michael likes to spend time at the dump site. Soon people begin to disappear around town. A young man is decapitated. Teens at the local drive-in are attacked and killed. Anywhere someone is either killed or disappears, a puddle of some kind of green slimy substance is found.
With all the disappearances in the area, the citizens become concerned about the waste site. Mayor Gordon Lane (Jose Ferrer) instructs Jones to investigate the site and ensure that the site has nothing to do with the disappearances or the green slime. Meanwhile, Sheriff Mortimer Lutz (Bill Osco) has a close encounter with a creature he has never seen before. Lutz just barely manages to escape it.
Eventually Jones comes to believe that a radioactive creature was created from repeated exposure to the toxic site. The creature, that may have at one time been Michael Smith, escapes by burrowing underground and leaving a trail of slime behind. The creature is sensitive to light and only hunts at night. Jones reveals that there are some 2,000 similar dump sites all over the United States. Before they can even think about the repercussions of so many possible problems, Jones and Lutz must work together to try to track down and destroy the menace.
“The Being” was released in 1983 and was directed by Jackie Kong. It is a low budget American horror film. The film was completed in 1980 and was originally called “Easter Sunday”. It then sat on a shelf for a few years. It was then retitled “The Being” and finally given a small theatrical distribution in 1983 where it bombed. Eventually the movie garnered a small cult following.
The film suffers from most low budget problems. Most of the action happens at night, so the setting is rather dark and murky making everything difficult to see. The monster, what you do see of it, is not great, but certainly not the worst monster out there. In addition, some of the acting isn’t very good. Landau does a good job of playing a wacky scientist, but Osco is better off behind the camera in some capacity instead of in front of it. Director Kong does an admirable job considering it was her first film and women weren’t usually thought of as directors.
Kent Perkins, who played Officer Dudley, and Ruth Buzz, who played Virginia Lane, were married in real life. Producer Bill Osco, who also played Mortimer Lutz, was married to director Kong at the time. Osco also produced the film and gave his wife 4.5 million dollars to write and direct it even though she never directed a film before. Osco is better known for his exploitation films.