The Snow Creature (1954)

Sadly Over-hyped

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

We're off to Tibet for a Himalayan expedition in search of THE SNOW CREATURE. Within minutes, the American scientists and their Sherpa guides are attacked by the beast (aka: a grown man upholstered in faux fur seat covers)! A Sherpa wife is abducted, and the team is on the monster's trail. Destination: Yeti-ville. Horrible death ensues, since the killer carpet sample prefers his privacy. Events unfold, the creature is rendered unconscious, and transported back to the States in a refrigeration unit (aka: a combination outhouse / phone booth). Shockingly, once in Los Angeles, the abominable snow-dude escapes and goes on a rampage. This is mostly shown by using the same footage of the Fuzzy One, backing away. Or, by reversing the shot, he's coming at us! This "technique" is used about a dozen times! The whole mess leads to the big, non-exciting, sewer system finale. Interminably dull and slllowww, This movie never quite pulls out of its own lackadaisical nosedive, but a single viewing should cause a minimum of cranial scarring...

Dismally made sci-fi yarn of a trek to the Himalayas to search for rare flora and fauna which (in addition to have been a more interesting plot possibility than this one) leads to the discovery of a Yeti seen in the constantly repeated same shot with a bad edit as it is continuously repeated every time this solitary creature appears. When the Yeti is captured (and kept in something that looks like an antique phone booth), it is flown to civilization, and escapes with nowhere to hide. Since they obviously didn't give the poor creature a credit card, I guess he/it couldn't check into a hotel. This is another example of human beings going where they shouldn't be and thinking that they have the right to capture a creature like this, take it away from the only home it has ever known, and bring it back to what we call civilization in order to further research it. Lousy photography makes this one almost impossible to watch at any rate, with the acting ludicrously amateurish and the script so bad it feels like it was written in crayon. Filmmakers should be given a list in cinema school of "What not to do" and ordered to watch them. This would be near the top of the list.

Here is another low-budget B movie for the snow pile. Brought to you by W. Lee Wilder who gave use such films as Phantom from Space(1953) and the Killers from Space(1954). The movie starts out with an expedition to the Himalayas, but they find and capture a yeti and bring it back to civilization.I am very interested into cryptozoological(study of hidden animals) creatures such as the Yeti, Bigfoot, Nessie and many others. Although this is the first movie about the Yeti it is also one of the worst. There's no science offered to either explain the monster's existence or to deal with him. It is more or less a rip-off of King Kong(1933) and the Los Angeles sewer scene from Them(1954). The ending is very anti-climatic too. We are not given any reason to feel sorry for the Yeti and he is just netted and shot dead, movie over.

Inexpensive does not have to mean bad, but it does mean being resourceful and clever. You want those qualities? Look elsewhere. W Lee Wilder makes the first modern Yeti movie and, there are a few good scenes. One of the expedition hears a strange noise at night and goes outside to investigate with a flashlight, and just misses seeing the creature. Fear and intensity make an appearance, and are then squandered by endlessly dull stock type shots of the expedition trudging through the snow. The lead guides "woman" is captured and he hijacks the expedition to find her. They find the Yeti, he tries to kill them, instead he accidentally kills his own mate and child, knocking himself out in the process. Forgetting the woman they came to rescue, they ship the creature to America in a Frigidaire. A customs official holds them up to investigate, and the thing escapes. They should have waited 40 years and had him come across the border as an undocumented worker! Of course the Police have to track him down, as he is killing folks in LA. To me the creature looks like a man wearing clothes who stuck some substance resembling fur on them. He is the worst 'Monster' I can recall, resembling not so much a poodle, but a mangy dog wearing levi's. Of course they kill him. So much opportunity to make a good movie gone to waste. Music was good, dialog weak and script pretty cornball. Has its moments, but they are few.