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The Abominable Snowman

The Abominable Snowman (1957)

October. 01,1957
|
6.4
| Adventure Horror

A kindly English botanist and a gruff American promoter lead an expedition to the Himalayas in search of the legendary Yeti.

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GurlyIamBeach
1957/10/01

Instant Favorite.

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Comwayon
1957/10/02

A Disappointing Continuation

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Rexanne
1957/10/03

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

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Kimball
1957/10/04

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

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GL84
1957/10/05

Visiting a Tibetan monastery, a British botanist and his assistant gathering information on the plant life of the area leaves with a friend on an expedition to capture an Abominable Snowman, but as a series of pitfalls plague the crew they all try to escape off the mountain alive.This wasn't all that bad of a film. One of the best features is the wonderful mood in this film as snow is featured often and has a powerful effect on the environment. The mountain scenes are very well done, and the high altitudes, driving thunderstorm and the blinding snow lends a really impressive aura to the feeling throughout. This also helps with it's brilliant, masterful job of building terror and suspense early on and maintaining it through to the climax. Among the key ingredients to this is the fact that it never shows the Yeti in its entirety. All we ever see of the creature are its hairy and wickedly clawed hands and large footprints, and when the whole thing is shown, it is always in shadow or obscured by driving snow. Instead of looking cheap, this technique goes a long way in making this movie scarier than it would have otherwise been as the descriptions given by the characters in their dialog, the glimpses we see, and the haunting, chilling cry of the Yeti are incredibly effective. By also keeping them off-screen for most of the film and only showing them vaguely before that, it is able to make a series of scenes that pull off it's scariness without actually showing it, from the scene where we see the creature's hand creeping under a tent to the later attack on the camp on the highest peaks of the mountain during the driving snowstorm. These here are what work for the film as there isn't a lot wrong with this one. The main issue is that creature itself is rarely even in the film as it's almost an hour into the film before we even see any hint of the famed snowman. It's fun to watch at times, but that's almost an unbearable amount of time before the creature even appears for the main factor in this is the adventure storyline rather than a horror one. Far too much of the film plays out with them trying to climb the mountain rather than deal with the creatures so it takes a while to even get going. The script here, while tightly built and well characterized, unfortunately disappoints in the ending. The whole film is built to an expected confrontation with the Yeti, but at this very point the film then enigmatically fades out with the meeting at the end, which contains only a brief glimpse of the Yeti. While not a cop-out, it's a little hard to swallow and gets some real head-scratching moments. The biggest flaw in the film, though, is the behavior in relation to their environment which is unbelievable. Every time spent in the snowy mountaintops is full of moments where someone would run around without coat or gloves in a blizzard and not seem to notice the cold. If they were really in the Himalayas, they'd be far more reluctant to take off their gloves. These are pretty minor problems, though.Today's Rating/PG: Violence.

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Prismark10
1957/10/06

Despite the title this is really not a monster on the rampage horror movie that you might expect from Hammer. Writer Nigel Kneale goes for quirky science and director Val Guest adds atmospheric direction on a low budget in this spooky thriller.Peter Cushing is principled botanist John Rollason searching for evidence of the Yeti in the Himalayas with an expedition team that includes dodgy Forrest Tucker who is more like a sinister Barnum type showman looking for monetary gain by capturing a Yeti.The creature is very much kept off screen for a lot of the time as Kneale explores humanity's darker side as represented by the likes of Tucker. It is suggested that the Yeti are gentle, intelligent beings from a superior civilisation that one day will take over from humans and Rollason does not view them as monsters.The film has a moral message aimed at perils of human greed and its penchant for destruction.

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GusF
1957/10/07

Although this is neither one of Nigel Kneale nor Hammer's better regarded works, it was one of my favourite on both counts. It was based on a sadly now lost BBC play called "The Creature" broadcast in 1955 and the always brilliant Peter Cushing reprises his role as a botanist named John Rollason who is searching for evidence that Yetis exist in the Himalayas. I don't think that the first credited star Forrest Tucker could act, frankly, but he and Cushing are nevertheless ably supported by the likes of Maureen Connell (the only woman in the film), Richard Wattis, Michael Brill and Arnold Malé. However, Robert Brown is a bit over the top as the obnoxious Ed Shelley.I think that the reason that this film is often unfairly overlooked by Hammer fans is that it's not standard Hammer fare. While it's atmospheric, spooky and claustrophobic like many Hammer films, the villain of the piece is not a supernatural or alien force but us. In fact, that is the reason that the original version of the story was called "The Creature" as Kneale wanted the title to be ambiguous, a subtlety that is lost in the film version. This is a morality play in which Kneale explores the darker side of human nature by suggesting that the Yeti are a superior civilisation in the sense that they're less inherently destructive than humans. They're actually gentle giants who are waiting for the opportunity to succeed humanity as the dominant species when we ultimately destroy ourselves. While other Hammer films keep Dracula or Frankenstein's Monster, etc., off-screen for much of the film, the Yetis are never seen in full at any point. When we do finally see their eyes towards the end of the film, it is clear that they are indeed the gentle creatures that Rollason believes them to be. It predates both series by several years but the film's storyline would have easily fit into either "The Twilight Zone" or "The Outer Limits".

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bob-790-196018
1957/10/08

I enjoy most Hammer pictures for their skillful storytelling and good production values, but this is that rare Hammer film that seems to me incompetently made.We wait and wait for a glimpse of the Yeti--even after one has been killed and is lying there in the pursuers' camp, we do not see what it looks like. Finally two live Yeti show up for a brief "cameo," and they look like two guys in gorilla suits.The Yeti hunters include Forrest Tucker as a pushy, loud-mouthed American and Peter Cushing, an English gentleman who by comparison seems rather prissy. (No stereotypes in this film!) These two and their three sidekicks climb a mountain with enough equipment for an army--guns, oxygen canisters, steel traps, a cage, and much else. There follows a series of foolish or stupid actions, with people raging at each other and at the mountain in general, firing off rifles, and so forth. One Yeti hunter sets what amounts to a bear trap and catches a member of his party instead. Forrest Tucker hunts for a missing member of the group by firing of round after round with his pistol, thereby killing himself by means of an avalanche.Meanwhile, Cushing's wife realizes that the hunting party is in trouble and simply rushes off to climb the glaciated mountain to find her husband. She did take time to put on a coat.Tucker intends to capture a Yeti alive and bring it back home to exhibit it and make a lot of money. I kept wondering how he planned to climb back down the mountain with a live Yeti. Perhaps they would loan him some of their gear.It was as if the movie were really "Laurel and Hardy Hunt the Yeti," only without the laughs.

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