El terror del Himalaya

I went on Wilder bender and watched three of his movies in a row, but the bender stopped here. The yeti suit is bad and to make matters worse most of the footage of the yeti is the same shot used over and over again and run backwards and forwards to make him step in and out of the light and then sometimes freeze frame him in place. The copy I saw was so poor it was at times hard to tell if it was the Yeti or just one of the other characters wearing a furry hat.

In some wide shots, the Yeti at least looks really tall and they seem to have designed some kind of a monkey butt type butt. Then again most Yeti suits are bad, this one is of a kind.

But wow this movie is certainly among the worst of the pre-Sci-Fi channel bigfoot movies, all of which are the worst of a lousy genre and unfairly treated monster. One of the riddles of film. Why is it there are virtually no good bigfoot movies?

The movie turns into sort of The Third Man with the police chasing the Yeti around in the Sewers, here boring shots get repeated and some lighting gear gets into one shot.

Acting from the leads is OK and the opening Tibet section is slow but kind of decent, when the Yeti gets to America it's all over though.

Scene in the meat locker is one of the few effective scenes. Director of photography Crosby who shot Corman's good films can't do much with this one. It's not good, then gets bad when Yeti hits the streets. The suit does look like a poodle and it seems like they forgot to shoot any footage of it then had to reuse stuff to be able to edit the scenes together properly.

Big Wilder mis-step this go round.

The Snow Creature (1954)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Two American explores are tracking up the mountains near Tibet when their guides decide they'd rather chase the mythical Yeti. At first the Americans think that the locals are just being silly but once they have proof of the creature they decide to capture it. Once captured, the two bring it back to America where it escapes so the hunt is on.

THE SNOW CREATURE was the first film dealing with a Yeti so that might get some people curious enough to check it out but sadly this film is pretty darn bad. Director W. Lee Wilder really had zero to work with here because it appears the budget was so low that they couldn't actually shoot on location, which is expected but what makes this film so bad is the fact that the budget appears to be so low that they did nothing but add dialogue scenes.

The majority of the 71 minute running time simply has characters sitting around in fake looking caves or silly looking offices talking about the snow creature. They talk about whether it's real or fake. Whether they should kill or capture it. Whether it's man or beast. They've got so much dialogue packed into this thing I really do wonder how big the screenplay was. What's worse is the fact that none of these conversations are interesting and they're certainly shot in a poor way. There's no energy or power to be found in any of these scenes.

The costume of the snow creature certainly isn't anything great but it at least looks decent in the few scenes that we see it. Since they did have a costume, all the dialogue scenes are even more shocking. I mean, I'd understand a monster movie not having too much of the monster because they couldn't afford the effect but THE SNOW CREATURE has a costume yet instead of more monster footage it's just all dialogue. THE SNOW CREATURE could have been much better than what it is.

Some of the Himalayan scenes are interesting. There is a conflict as to who is running the show. It's typical of Westerners to try to run roughshod over their "inferiors." Anyway, the Yeti is out there and if we bring him (or her) back, we can make a bundle. Everything works out pretty well and they order his refrigerated box. The problem is the customs guys don't know whether he's human or not. In most respects he is. He lives in a family setting. He has tools. He walks upright and is built pretty much like most homo sapiens. What are his rights? Nobody says anything about just barging into his domain and killing off his family. So, like every good monster movie (or bad one), the "guy" gets loose in the city and wastes a couple of people. What should he do? He's trying to survive. While there are issues that keep this interesting, it doesn't sustain itself very well. There are unanswered questions that are forgotten as soon as the Yeti escapes from his box. A film with some courage might have gone beyond what it does, but money or talent got in the way. The monster looks pretty much like a man with a beard (we never get a good look at him in daylight). Pretty poor with a few perks.

I suppose you should approach this stuff with an open mind, but I have difficulty doing that. Those words written, my expectations for this were, quite frankly, pretty low. I knew that it was a 1954, low-budget production. Therefore, I was prepared to tolerate the cheap old costumes and over-abundance of no-action dialogue. I wanted to subject myself to this fillage of time. Sure, some of the responses were totally unrealistic. But, looking past all the negatives, I still found some pros that, in my opinion, offset the anticipated cons. Some of that dialogue, to me, actually represented a try. Maybe I give it a (barely) passing grade because even this simpleton could follow the extremely UNcomplex plot: Scientist captures living snow creature in Himalayas and is able to return it to LA, where it escapes. Perhaps I would feel ripped off if I spent too much money to purchase a tape of this movie. But having seen it on satellite TV - which I think of as a more-INdirect flow of my dollars - my concern was mostly for my time, which I did not find totally wasted.

"The Snow Creature" (1954) is a black & white picture notable as the first film to address the topic of Bigfoot or, in this case, Yeti. The atmospheric beginning segues into a relatively dull story about a fake-looking Yeti brought to America from the Himilayas, which ends up languishing in customs while officials debate whether or not the creature is a passenger or cargo, i.e. animal or human. I'm not making this up. Then the creature gets loose in the city a la "King Kong."

"The Snow Creature" is worthwhile only for historical reasons or as an interesting period piece and people smitten with the Sasquatch legend.

The film runs 71 minutes and was shot in Bronson Caves, Bronson Canyon, Griffith Park, Los Angeles, California, USA

GRADE: D+