Pros: The leads are colorless and their characters aloof and indifferent to the point of caricature.
Cons: The hunt for the creature in the shadowy streets of Los Angeles is reasonably suspenseful and the photography sets up a chilling, moody atmosphere.
For several years I've been contributing to the Halloween Horrors series hosted by Dustin over at his Horror and Sons website. This year, Dustin teased contributors with themes that they could claim, and once claimed, he revealed the true, underlying theme that they would write about. I chose "Hidden Horrors," which, to my delight, turned out to be cryptid movies. I briefly considered doing something fairly new, but decided to revisit an old B movie from the '50s that I hadn't watched in a long time. This October Horror and Sons has lined up a plethora of outstanding writers covering a very wide range of Halloween movies and topics, so if you haven't visited yet, get on over there.
Ever since I devoured Frank Edwards’ “Stranger than Science” books as a kid, I've had a soft spot for all kinds of paranormal subjects: UFOs, ghosts, inexplicable disappearances, and of course, cryptids.
Over the years, Bigfoot in particular has become a frequent and welcome guest at my house. My wife and I want to believe. We've watched dozens of bigfoot movies, and read dozens more books and articles about The Big Guy. We both saw the 1972 microbudget docudrama about a bigfoot-type creature, The Legend of Boggy Creek, and were creeped out in a big way.
But here's the thing - Bigfoot was not the preeminent bipedal, humanoid cryptid when I was growing up. At least in my neck of the woods, that honor went to the Abominable Snowman (or Yeti as he’s known in more fashionable circles).
Long before Bigfoot started taking big strides across movies, TV and every kind of merchandising item you can think of, his cousin the Yeti was invading the nightmares of Monster Kids and making it fashionable to wear white fur after Labor Day.
My first recollection of seeing a cryptid depiction was watching Hammer's The Abominable Snowman on a local creature feature. The 1958 film, starring Peter Cushing as a kindly botanist and Forrest Tucker as a brash American entrepreneur, is distinguished by showing the Yetis as a gentle, intelligent species who only resort to violence in self defense, and some of the humans as monsters in disguise.
Then there was Rankin-Bass’ animated holiday special Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, which in 1964 introduced Bumble the abominable snow monster to giddy American kids, and has been raising Yeti awareness over the holidays ever since.
 |
| Bumble is happily celebrating Christmas in September at his home in the big box store. |
Somewhere in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s Bigfoot emerged from his hidey-hole and made his run for media fame and fortune to the point that he’s now everywhere you want him to be. But before that, he managed to keep a low profile.
If you do an advanced keyword search in IMDb for “bigfoot” limited to the period 1950 - 1970, the handful of results return mostly movies and TV featuring Yetis, not the classic Bigfoot as we know and love him.
One of those misleading search hits is The Snow Creature, a low budget B picture about the capture of a Yeti, released by United Artists in 1954. Snow Creature is credited with being the first American film to depict the abominable snowman, but worldwide, a Finnish comedy, Pekka ja Pätkä lumimiehen jäljillä (1954), apparently has the bragging rights of being the very first.
While Snow Creature is no classic, at least it made a small step toward popularizing a subject that up to then had been confined to pulp magazines and the occasional news story. The film tells a simple tale: Man meets Yeti, man loses Yeti, man finds Yeti in the storm drains of Los Angeles, where it is moving around undetected.
The film opens with botanist and voiceover narrator Dr. Frank Parrish (Paul Langton) readying an expedition to study plant life (such as it is) in the Himalayas. In addition to rounding up the standard complement of locals and head Sherpa (Subra, played by Teru Shimada), Parrish has enlisted an English photographer, Peter Wells (Leslie Denison) to help document the findings.
Parrish is all business and kind of a killjoy, and Wells is… well, in addition to all the other supplies and equipment, he’s brought along a case of Scotch, because, why not? He sure as hell doesn’t have to lug it himself, and looking for plant life on frozen mountainsides is cold, thirsty work. On the other hand, Parrish admonishes him not to drink in front of the locals - bad for morale you know!
 |
| Parrish and Wells relax after a hard day of not looking for abominable snowmen. |
Morale plummets anyway when, in mid-expedition, Subra learns that his wife has been abducted from their home down in the lowlands by a Yeti on a midnight stroll. Subra is adamant that they have to drop everything and track the Yeti to rescue his wife, but Parrish, who is skeptical to the core, will have none of it.
Desperate, Subra steals Parrish’s and Wells’ rifle ammo while they’re sleeping. Without the rifle as a dispute resolver, the two can only helplessly look on as the Sherpa turns the expedition into a hunting party.
Parrish, the ultimate scientific drudge, seems to lack any sense of wonder or compassion for Subra, and gripes about getting back to his plants even as it becomes clear that the Yeti does indeed exist. Morale takes another hit when the Yeti conducts a surprise nighttime raid on the camp and kills one of the men.
Undeterred, the men continue to track the creature, who resorts to causing an avalanche in an attempt to escape. After the hunting party takes shelter in a large cave, Subra is excited to find his wife’s necklace on the cave floor. Before you can say “abominable,” the men spot the Yeti with his family -- a missus Yeti and a toddler. In a rage, the Yeti tries to hurl rocks at his tormentors, but only succeeds in bringing boulders down on his family and himself.
But, Eureka!, Wells got a picture of the cryptid family before the cave fell in, and the male Yeti is only stunned. Subra wants to kill the thing that carried off his wife, but Parrish stops him. The hunting party haul their prize back to civilization, where the local authorities are surprisingly accommodating in an “aw shucks, since you found him, I guess he’s all yours” sort of way.
Wells wants to sell his picture and the Yeti to the highest bidders, but Parrish insists that the Yeti be delivered to his employers at the scientific foundation. He orders a special refrigeration unit to transport the creature back to the States in chilly comfort. But stateside, the bureaucrats are not nearly as accommodating. They want to know if the thing is human or animal before allowing it into the good ol’ US of A, and in a head-scratching development, they hire an anthropologist to make the call. In the meantime, the creature has to bide his time in an LA warehouse.
 |
| Will the Snow Man melt in the heat and grime of LA? Inquiring minds want to know! |
That meantime is just enough time for the disgruntled snowman to start banging on the sides of the unit, whereupon he tips it over, breaks out, and attacks a security guard before hightailing it into the night (if this refrigeration unit is rockin’, don’t come a knockin’!)
Reports of snowman sightings and attacks (not to mention deaths) start coming in, and Parrish teams up with chief investigating officer Lt. Dunbar (William Phipps) to once again track the wayward creature. The reports suggest that the creature is ranging far and wide through the city streets, yet it’s getting around undetected by the scores of police units on alert. It can’t fly and it’s not invisible, so how?
Then, from Dunbar’s office window, Phipps’ gaze rests upon a large opening to the sewer system. Hmmmm…. Will Phipps and Dunbar be able to track the thing through the dark and the muck of LA’s sewers and capture it before it kills again?
For the complete review, see my post over at Horror and Sons!