'The Being' aka 'The Pottsville Horror' is a low budget monster movie filmed in the greater Boise area during the early 80's. While the movie is pretty bad it is currently available for free on Amazon Prime (be aware film contains some nudity and gore) and I found it fun to look for recognizable locations. Main Street in Meridian is prominently featured and I think the restaurant in the picture may be The Sunshine Cafe. I also think I recognized both the Epworth Chapel on the Green and the Grandview Hotel, the latter appearing on a movie within the movie. Said movie within the movie is shown on the screen of a no longer extent drive-in near the Karcher mall.
The directorial debut of Jackie Kong, a rare-ish example of a female horror director, she is perhaps best known for the cult film 'Blood Diner'. Despite a clearly small budget, and one of the worst scripts I've ever seen put to screen, the film boasts two previous (Jose Ferrer, Dorothy Malone) and one future (Martin Landau) Oscar winner. As well as Ruth Buzzi and her husband Kent Perkins. The films producer Bill Osco is the films lead, a small town sheriff who looks kind of like Alan Arkin. Then Mrs. Kenny Roger's of the time Marianne Gordon is the love interest.
Plot involves a monster, who might be an alien, or might be a mutant product of nuclear waste, or might be an alien mutated by nuclear waste, or possibly Dorothy Malone's lost son Michael praying on the denizens of a small town over the Easter weekend. Sheriff Osco teams up with a reluctant government scientist played by Landau to defeat the creature, who is played by former munchkin actor Jerry Maren.
Though shot in Idaho the filmmakers don't seem highly versed in the layout of the state, Pottsville is supposed to a potato growing community, yet Landau's character is said to be an employee of Ada county, which is the wrong side of the state of potato's.
Again this movie is really horrible, an only occasionally funny horrible. Still might be worth seeing out of a warped sense of civic pride. *
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