L'Abominable Homme des neiges

The opening titles credit the direction of this very obscure film (originally released in Japan in 1955 as 'Monster Snowman') to someone called Kenneth G. Crane; but then promptly declare it a Toho production. The names of the original cast & crew actually appear at the end, informing us that it was really the work of our old friend Ishiro Honda between Godzilla films.

Originally clocking in at 98 minutes. Since this version is only 70 minutes long - including scenes with John Carradine as Dr. John Rayburn chain-smoking as he informs a couple of guys in big suits that a scrap of human-seeming hair the Yeti left behind means he was probably the Missing Link (after which Morris Ankrum briefly drops by to perform an autopsy on a Yeti cadaver) - only about half the original film can have made it into this American version; and not a word of Japanese is heard throughout the entire film.

What remains anticipates the Dyatlav Pass incident of 1959; but that already makes it sound more interesting than it actually is. The original is hard to see since Toho shelved the film following protests from the Ainu (the native residents of the northernmost Japanese island) at the way they were portrayed in it; but if these are the highlights that doesn't bode well. The original photography and decor - especially of the village were the locals worship the Yeti as a god - are quite interesting; but the yeti itself - which resembles a cross between the Moon Monster in 'Doctor X' and the Cowardly Lion in 'The Wizard of Oz' - isn't onscreen for very long. So the missing footage is probabably exposition and expedition.

The legendary Toho Studios unleashed another sinisterly soul-slashing cinematic sensation in the far-flung, fear-bitten, diabolically deep-frozen 1950s fear-fest Half-Human! An avalanche of hirsute mountain-sized horror haunts some weekend skiers who have the grave misfortune of transgressing the subzero territory of some Half-Human horror beyond their ken! No abomination is too grisly for this howlingly maniacal alpine assassin! This 9ft tall, 1800 living pounds of crushing bone-shattering horror is TOO much monster for any puny human to handle!!! Beloved horror icon John Carradine narrates 'The Abominable Snowman' in his own inimitable spine-chilling fashion. And not since the lurid legend of the Peking Man has there EVER been such a perfidiously perambulating horror as witnessed in 'Half-Human'!

Could the missing link in this malevolent chain of eerie events be...'The Abominable Snowman'???. So, don't monkey about!!! Get your B-Movie bicuspids deep into a thick hairy slice of blissful Big Foot-Stomping Mayhem! Snowman has ever seen such towering, tooth-chattering terror as this glacier-dwelling, blood-thirsty behemoth! While the text is leaden and largely expository in nature, this curiously engaging midnight movie nonetheless engenders a great pathos for the plight of the beleaguered yeti and his no less hirsute, button-cute progeny! The quality analogue effects remain quite delightful to behold and the man-tormented cryptid has a weird animal magnetism sorely lacking in CGI-rendered beasties!

Half Human (1957)

** (out of 4)

Scientist John Carradine tells the story of how an abominable snowman was killed in Japan. As was the case with Godzilla, the producer's of this film bought the rights to the Japanese film Ju jin Yuki Otoko (1955), cut out around an hour and then added some twenty minutes worth of footage dealing with Carradine. This is certainly a cut and paste hack job but sadly Toho pulled the original film so it's nearly impossible to see outside of this movie. The American footage is all rather silly but it's always fun seeing Carradine and he has a good voice for narration. The Japanese segment of the film makes me really want to see the original movie because there's some nice, intense moments including the first encounter with the Yeti. I've seen countless films on the Yeti but the costumes here are the greatest I've ever seen. The monster actually looks real, which makes this entertaining enough.

Not bad programmer, but lousy, cheap. It is however entertaining, full of stock shots, footage stuff, with an off voice to explain situations. I expected far worse, I confess. Some good suspense and in a way it can hold comparison with Val Guest's THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN, produced by Hammer films, comparison in terms not quality of course, but I repeat entertainment. I guess it is because of the fast paced and short length of this film. No useless talkative sequences, more excetly not that much, just the necessary. Good acting for this kind of movie.

HALF HUMAN was originally a Japanese monster flick from Toho before US distributors got their hands on it and proceeded to mutilate it. In doing so, they exercised about half of the original footage, added in a sappy voice-over narration, and included lots of extraneous scenes with American actors.

I'm a fan of John Carradine but he has a nothing role as the desk-bound professor. Obviously this kind of cut-and-paste nonsense had worked with GODZILLA - another film directed by Ishiro Honda - but it's a waste of time here, because the viewer only gets the occasional glimpse of goodness from the original Japanese footage. I won't attempt to review that here, only to say that there's a lot of action and incident, and the Yeti costume looks great; I hope to track down the original film at some point to check it out properly.