The Northern Arizona Field Guide to Bigfoot: Special Lance Henriksen Edition

Now Playing: Devil on the Mountain (aka Sasquatch Mountain, 2006)

Pros: A quartet of grizzled character actors led by Lance Henriksen steals the show from the younger cast members; Features a clever reveal at the end
Cons: Due to budget limitations, the production doesn’t take full advantage of the shooting location; Much of the film looks like an 80s-vintage MTV music video; Rife with characters doing stupid things for the convenience of the plot

This post is part of The Seen on the Screen blogathon hosted by Rebecca at Taking Up Room. Rebecca's challenge: Review a film or TV show that is set in your hometown or some other very familiar place -- what does it get right (or wrong) about the place you know so well? See her site for more great locales!

Lance Henriksen, the great, gruff, gravelly-voiced actor with over 260 acting credits to his name and counting, has blazed quite a trail over the years in the deep woods of horror and sci-fi.

By the end of the ‘80s, Henriksen had made indelible, unsettling impressions in such cult favorites as Aliens (1986), playing an android science officer, Near Dark (1987), as the leader of a band of itinerant vampires, and Pumpkinhead (1988), as a grieving father who unleashes a mythic monster on the teens who accidentally killed his son.

By the end of the ‘90s, he’d wrapped up three seasons of the award winning series Millennium (1996-99) portraying Frank Blank, a haunted former FBI profiler who has a knack for getting into the minds of serial killers and assorted lunatics (another cult hit from X-Files creator Chris Carter).

In the early 2000s, the shadow of Bigfoot began looming over his career. In 2002’s The Untold (aka Sasquatch), Henriksen appeared as a wealthy entrepreneur who leads a search for a company plane that has gone missing in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, along with his daughter. After finding the plane and the mutilated remains of the crew, the search party has to battle a homicidal Sasquatch to get out alive.

2006 was the year of the Bigfoot for Henriksen. In Abominable, he had a supporting role as a local who joins a hunting party to track down a mysterious creature that is killing cattle, and finds more than he bargained for. But it would be in Devil on the Mountain (aka Sasquatch Mountain) that the actor would score a more affecting and sympathetic role as a Bigfoot hunter.

Lance takes a moment to reflect on making two Sasquatch movies in one year.

Henriksen plays Chase Jackson, an auto mechanic living in rural Northern Arizona, who, as we see in the film’s prologue, lost his wife to a freak auto accident the same night that Bigfoot decided to make a dramatic appearance.

Cut to the present, where we see Chase living modestly with his 20-something daughter Raquel (Melanie Monroe) in the same little town. For years he has been carrying guilt and regret over the accident, not to mention the community’s suspicions about the strange circumstances of the tragedy. Raquel, who is lively and intelligent, is reluctant to leave the nest because the old man is so lonely and pitiful. But Fate is about to arrange a second encounter between Chase and Bigfoot, and a chance for redemption.

Erin Price (Cerina Vincent) has recently broken up with her longtime boyfriend, packed up her car, and headed out on the open road for a new start. She makes a pit stop in town, and chats with Raquel before resuming her journey.

Unfortunately, her shortcut through the Northern Arizona forest takes her right into the path of a van full of desperate criminals who have just pulled off a bank robbery in town. Their vehicles collide, and both are totaled. When Sheriff Zeff (Rance Howard) and his deputies show up, a gunfight breaks out, after which the robbers take off into the deep woods with Erin in tow.

Northern Arizona travel tip #1: Be sure to brake for Bigfoot, but don't brake too hard.

With the state police and their helicopters already committed to another emergency, the sheriff enlists the aid of a friend and expert tracker Eli (Tim Thomerson) to flush out the miscreants. When Eli mysteriously disappears, Chase, who years before had applied for a deputy position and been turned down, comes to the rescue.

But before long Chase, the cops, the gang and their hostage will be banding together to fight off a common enemy -- Bigfoot, who is aggressively defending his territory from the human incursion.

And now for a personal note:

In the mid-2000s I was living in Flagstaff, Arizona, a beautiful mountain town sitting at the base of the majestic San Francisco Peaks some 7000 feet above sea level, and surrounded by the Coconino National Forest, home to one of the country’s largest stands of towering ponderosa pines.

Flagstaff, located just 80 miles south of the Grand Canyon and 30 miles north of the beautiful red rocks of Sedona, and with Interstate 40, historic Route 66 and the Amtrak Southwest Chief rail line running through the center of town, is a busy hub for visitors from all over the world wishing to partake of Northern Arizona’s scenic wonders.

Some people who’ve never been to the state, and have mental pictures of a mostly featureless desert sprinkled with saguaro cacti, get discombobulated when they see miles of dense woods and snow capped mountain peaks. While the Pacific Northwest may be Bigfoot’s natural home, it’s not hard to imagine one or two of the creatures tromping around the Coconino Forest, scratching their backs on the tall ponderosas.

Now that's a sight for sore Sasquatch eyes! Alas, no scenery like this made it into the movie.

Michael Worth, who wrote Devil on the Mountain and starred as one of the robbers, was one of those taken by surprise by the Northern Arizona scenery. In an interview in Flagstaff’s Arizona Daily Sun newspaper published around the time of the movie’s premiere on the (then) Sci-Fi Channel, Worth explained how they settled on the location:

“I drove up just before we shot and I was just like, ‘Holy mackerel, I didn't know there were so many pine trees in Arizona!’ Because I'm used to shooting in Tucson and Mescal and used to the desert. It was just so great, but first as a joke, on the way back south, I was sending photos back to the director of the landscape right where the forest starts to dwindle and it starts to get more deserty, with like three or four trees in a picture. I'd just say, ‘Here it is, here's where we're gonna shoot the bigfoot movie!’ And he'd be like, ‘Well, it looks OK but…’ and I'd say ‘No, it'll be great! There's like five trees in this section, we'll shoot around it.’ But no, we looked around at all the locations, and sometimes it's just a question of getting the vehicles out there. And even in Flagstaff, there were a lot of great sites that we liked but we just couldn't get everyone in and out of there.” [Jeff Reeves, “Sasquatch Flick Filmed in Area Debuts this Saturday,” Arizona Daily Sun, September 8, 2006.]

Months before, the newspaper had published a blurb about a Sasquatch movie starring Lance Henriksen that was about to be filmed in Flagstaff. The city being relatively small, I thought there was an off chance I’d spot the crew and possibly Lance himself, but no cigar. Then I thought, “At least scenic Flagstaff will be featured in a major (sort of) TV movie, and it will be fun to pick out the landmarks when it premieres.”

Also no dice. Apparently there were problems getting permits for shooting in town, or the logistics were problematic, because the bank robbery scenes were filmed in Williams, AZ, 35 miles west of Flagstaff. The crew did stay in Flagstaff for much of the shoot, but my beloved town was MIA in the final cut.

Northern Arizona travel tip #2: If you see something like this, it's probably not Bigfoot.
The creatures rarely travel in groups, and they have no need for banking services.

Well, at least there’s the Coconino forest. Except that, as Worth indicated in the interview, the logistics and the limited budget dictated that they film at the edge of the forest, the end result being that much of the awesomeness of the ponderosa pine-rich backcountry is also missing.

Some nice establishing shots of the majestic San Francisco Peaks would also have been nice, but no luck there either. It also doesn’t help that they chose to shoot the film like a music video, complete with shaky cam and a purple-tinged color palette.

However, there is some redemption. The quartet of scruffy old farts led by Henriksen steal the show. Lance gets some genuinely affecting scenes with his dying wife in the prologue and later, his daughter (although for some reason they set up the engaging daughter character only to shove her off-screen mid-way through).

Rance Howard as the sheriff is dependably laconic and stoic through harrowing gunfights and Bigfoot attacks to the point of being almost comical; he’s the classic western Everyman who’s hard to get a rise out of, but implacable when finally motivated.

Northern Arizona Bigfoot hunting tip #1: Wear layers, bring plenty of water,
and never hold your gun like the gentleman in this photo.

Fans of ‘80s and ‘90s B sci-fi will likely recognize Tim Thomerson. Among Thomerson’s multitudinous credits, he appeared in Full Moon’s Dollman movies and five (count ‘em) Trancers flicks in which he plays Jack Deth, a futuristic bounty hunter. Thomerson’s role in Sasquatch Mountain is a small but wryly amusing one, playing a mountain man who can take a licking and keep on ticking.

And then there’s Craig Wasson, whose biggest claim to fame was appearing in Brian De Palma’s Body Double (1984) as the claustrophobic protagonist and intended fall guy. In Sasquatch Mountain, his last film credit, Wasson makes the most of one of the film’s quirkier roles -- that of Travis, leader of the misfit bank robbers and would-be get-rich-quick day-trader. With a bluetooth headset stuck in his ear, Travis keeps interrupting the bank heist planning, barking out orders to his stockbroker. Then, after the Bigfoot scat has hit the fan, he seems more irritated with the lack of cell service than the fact that the cops are shooting at them and a hairy humanoid is tossing his cohorts around like rag dolls.

Lastly, as the movie builds to the climax, there’s a clever reveal that explains why Bigfoot is so pissed off (other than the tired premise that he’s just a monster that likes to kill for the heck of it). The final confrontation humanizes everyone, cops, robbers and Sasquatch included. It might just bring a tear to your eye. And, as if that isn't enough, in the epilogue there’s an exchange between the sheriff and one of the robbers that ends the film on just the right note. 

Northern Arizona Bigfoot hunting tip #2: Before you shoot, make sure it's really
Bigfoot and not some hairy mountain man with questionable hygiene.

Where to find it: Streaming

And now for an important message:

Happy Halloween from the house where Films From Beyond dwells!

Don't Go in the Snow!

Now Playing: Snowbeast (1977)

Pros: Interesting veteran cast; Good outdoor photography
Cons: Flat direction and script; Fleeting shots of the monster not enough of a pay-off

After an unseasonably warm and dry November and first part of December, glorious and copious snow has returned to my little neck of the woods, the northern Arizona high country. We've had about a foot and half of the stuff in the past 48 hours, which should make the skiers and assorted winter sports enthusiasts here giddy with delight. (Yes Virginia, there is skiing in Arizona -- nothing to compare with the better resorts in Colorado and Utah -- but it exists nonetheless.)

Even with such robust winter storms, this part of northern Arizona -- an area that experiences all four seasons, and that in a good winter will get upwards of 120" of snow -- has been in a serious drought for over a decade. The folks who run the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort, which mainly attracts skiers from the Phoenix area, are moving ahead with a system to make snow from reclaimed wastewater in order to survive the dry winters that have become so common of late. Getting the go-ahead from the Forest Service and a commitment from the city of Flagstaff for the wastewater was the easy part. After years of legal opposition from local Native American tribes (who consider the San Francisco Peaks where the resort is located to be sacred), in 2009 the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a lower court's ruling that the project did not infringe on the tribes' religious freedom, allowing it to proceed.

Undeterred, opponents have filed a new lawsuit that, among other things, argues that the snowmaking threatens an endangered native plant. For its part, the resort is ready to start utilizing "recycled poop water" this year if necessary.  The snowmaking controversy seems to me to be a smaller act in the larger, bitter, "take no prisoners" running melodrama that has come to define U.S. politics and society at large. After years of expensive legal wrangling and acrimony, neither side will relent. The moment the Supreme Court turned the tribes away, the Snowbowl people started right in laying pipes. And of course opponents responded by filing the new lawsuit and chaining themselves to trees and construction equipment to prevent the work from going forward.

It's probably for the best that I'm not a skier, since sloshing down the slopes in frozen poop water does not sound like a good time to me. Heck, let's just be honest -- I'm something of a wimp. Back in the day, when we were new to the area and Mother Nature was still blanketing it with enough of the white stuff to sustain a ski resort, I enthusiastically signed up the whole family for beginner's ski lessons. The sun was shining, the snow was fresh, the lessons were free -- and we lasted maybe an hour. While snotty-nosed little 5-year-olds in the group were taking to it like they had been born on skis, I was finding that no matter how enthusiastic I was or how carefully I observed, I could not for the life of me stop without falling over, and I could not possibly get back up without help once I was down. It was one of the supremely humbling experiences of my life, and to this day I can't bring myself to make fun of the Life Alert "I've fallen and I can't get up!" (TM) commercials.

The awesomely beautiful San Francisco Peaks
in Northern Arizona

Yes, I was a quitter. But then, knowing when to quit is a good thing. Take the tribes, for instance. Let's see, there's been skiing up on the "sacred" Peaks since 1938, and only now they've decided to fight to the bitter end over some wastewater snow? I shudder to think how much snot and spit and yes, pee, from all those skiers has been desecrating the area over the years. Note: when the animals are all gone, closing the barn door is not going to help. All that time, money and energy might have been better spent on jobs and health services for the Navajo and Hopi nations. And then there's the Snowbowl owners. Maybe it's just me, but if I had to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to stay in business, I think I'd find another line of business. I know for some people skiing is close to a religion, but this is ridiculous. (And frankly, with the Grand Canyon and other natural wonders within close proximity, skiing is really a minor part of northern Arizona's outdoor recreational scene.)

Both sides exemplify that time-honored saying, "If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!" But then, that's not the American way, is it? We'd rather exhaust and bankrupt ourselves and everyone around us rather than let the other guy win. The irony is, for all of humanity's fussing and fighting, ultimately Mother Nature holds all the cards. Blow enough frozen wastewater and carbon dioxide at her, and she might just turn your nice little ski resort into a high-altitude, rock-strewn desert. Even calling her works "sacred" is no guarantee that she'll grace them with life-giving rain and snow. She's large and in charge, and she just loves to mess with the best-laid plans of both tree-huggers and crass businessmen alike.

Speaking of best-laid plans, the owners of the ski resort in Snowbeast quickly learn there are even worse obstacles than disappointing snowfall totals or pissed-off environmentalists (how's that for a segue?). It seems a very large, shaggy creature has crashed the ski resort's 50th anniversary winter festival, and is dragging off skiers. When a frightened young woman reports that a huge, hairy creature kidnapped her friend, Tony Rill (Robert Logan), resort manager and grandson of owner Carrie (Sylvia Sidney), grapples with his own skepticism and concern that rumors of a monstrous creature will put a damper on the carnival. Tony and right-hand man Buster Smith (Thomas Babson) ski out to the area where the abduction took place. Tony finds a bloody ski vest, and spots a large humanoid thing skulking around the edge of the woods.

The Snowbeast is about to lend ski resort employee
Buster (Thomas Babson) a big, furry hand.

Back at the lodge, grandma seems more interested in preventing a panic that will spoil the carnival than finding out what happened to the girl. In spite of the bloody evidence and Tony's sighting, she tells him to keep mum and to put up "restricted area" signs where the creature was last seen. Tony's life suddenly gets even more complicated with the arrival another large humanoid-- Olympic gold medalist skier Gar Seberg (Bo Svenson) has shown up along with his beautiful wife (and TV reporter) Ellen (Yvette Mimieux). Long ago Tony and Gar had competed for Ellen's affections, but the blonde Nordic hunk ended up winning her. However, since his Olympic glory, Gar's had a run of bad luck, and he's come to ask for a job. Bygones being bygones, Tony hires him on the spot.

Just as avalanches roll down hill, Buster gets stuck with the sign duty. After completing the task, he inexplicably takes a header on the edge of a ravine. As he struggles to pull himself up, a giant, white-furred arm reaches out and grabs his head (no, it's not Zsa Zsa with her latest expensive fur coat). Cut to a remote mountain ranch, where a young boy stumbles on what remains of the missing woman in a ramshackle barn. Sheriff Paraday (Clint Walker) immediately realizes he's going to need help, so he summons Tony out to the murder scene. When Tony and Bo arrive, the Sheriff asks Tony if he can help identify the body. "Maybe if I see the girl's face," Tony responds. The Sheriff hesitates before saying, "She doesn't have one."

Ellen (Yvette Mimieux) hears the call of
the wild Snowbeast.

Meanwhile, Ellen, in full TV reporter mode, gets wind of the story, skis out to the farm and discover's the creature's tracks. She finds the blood-stained site where Buster was grabbed, and hears the creature's chilling roar. As Tony and Bo try to convince the Sheriff that they've got more than a grumpy grizzly on their hands, out in the woods Ellen wipes out on her skis as the snowbeast lurks nearby…

Later, after another snowbeast attack, a couple of sheriff's deputies inadvertently echo the interior dialog that I imagine plays in many a reviewer's head when confronted with a less-than-stellar cinematic effort:

1st deputy: What a mess!
2nd deputy: How are we going to write this up?
1st deputy: I dunno.

While Snowbeast is not a mess per se, there's nothing particularly special about it, and it comes off rather flat. More than a couple of reviewers have noted the thematic similarity with Jaws, which came out just a couple of years earlier-- unsuspecting tourists start falling prey to an unseen creature, and the local businesspeople try to pretend that nothing's happening to keep the tourists and their money coming. (Even the snowbeast's low, menacing tonal music theme as he sneaks up on the ski tourists is reminiscent of Jaws.) Of course, this TV movie is no Jaws, and I doubt that anyone canceled their ski vacation plans after seeing it (on the other hand, who knows how many folks skipped the beach after seeing Bruce the shark?).

The snowbeast keeps busy through the movie's 86 minute running time -- picking off skiers and resort employees here and there; crashing the crowning ceremony of the winter carnival snow queen; trapping the protagonists first in a barn, then a camper -- but unfortunately generates little suspense or shivers. There are lots of POV shots of the creature stalking his prey through the snowy woods, and quick shots of its huge hairy arm and gnarled hand trying to grab someone. While I'm usually a "less-is-more" kind of guy and all for judicious use of special effects and letting the viewer's imagination fill in the blanks of what you don't show, Snowbeast could have benefited from a few more shots of the beast himself, and fewer shots from his perspective. The little we do see of him makes me think the producers were not very confident of the beast suit, so left most of him on the cutting room floor.

Gar (Bo Svenson) and Tony (Robert Logan) try to convince the
Sheriff (Clint Walker) that he's got more than just a grumpy
grizzly on his hands.

In between action sequences, the love triangle between Tony, Gar and Ellen also fizzles. Gar's self-esteem has hit a low point, and his marriage has nosedived along with it. Ellen confides in Tony that after winning the gold medal, Gar quit skiing altogether. "Marriage can survive many things," she tells him, "but it can't survive lack of respect." Ouch! Later, we learn that there's no particularly dramatic story or dark secret behind the the hero's fall. It's just that he was so afraid of becoming a has-been, he became a has-been. Okay, moving on…  (Hint: if you're thinking that hunting down bigfoot might be just the thing to restore the big guy's self-respect and save his marriage, then I'd say you've seen your fair share of TV movies!)

Although Snowbeast is no classic, it at least assembles an interesting, eclectic cast that gives it the good ol' college try. Yvette Mimieux's big break came in another sci-fi movie, George Pal's classic The Time Machine (1960). If anything, the intervening 17 years only added to her attractiveness and sex appeal.

Bo Svenson is one of those amiable big lugs who to this day keeps popping up in low-budget movies and TV (not to mention small parts in big movies like Inglourious Basterds and Kill Bill, Part 2.) With his doughy, everyman face and unassuming demeanor, he's like a Swedish John C. Reilly.

Early in Clint Walker's career, he starred in the hugely popular TV western Cheyenne (1955-1962). In the mid-'60s he tangled with another big, hairy beast in one of Disney's better man-against-nature pictures (and one of my personal favorites), The Night of the Grizzly (1966).

Glamorous Sylvia Sidney started acting in movies at the dawn of the sound era, and appeared in films and TV shows right up until her death in 1999. In the '30s, she shared screen time with such Hollywood tough guys as Bogart and George Raft. By the 1950s, almost all of her work was in television, where she appeared in such diverse series as Route 66, Starsky and Hutch, The Love Boat, and Fantasy Island.

The one big letdown in the acting department is Robert Logan (Tony), who appears out of his depth next to the other veteran cast members. But man, does he sport a big head of '70s hair!

The other interesting name in Snowbeast's credits is writer Joseph Stefano. Stefano's biggest claims to fame are his screenplay for Hitchcock's Psycho (1960; wherein he came up with the brilliant and disorienting idea of introducing the attractive Janet Leigh character and then suddenly killing her off), and as a producer and writer for the original The Outer Limits TV series (1963-64).

An alpine Bigfoot, a transplanted Yeti, or something else?
You make the call!

This beast is something of a lightweight as far as thrills and suspense are concerned, but let's face it, if you're a bigfoot fan (and you know you are), you have to check it out. With its convenient online availability (see below), at least it's not as hard to find as a real bigfoot. (Or, if you're interested in a more cerebral treatment of Bigfoot's cousin the Yeti, check out the write up of The Abominable Snowman elsewhere on this blog.)

And if you do track the Snowbeast down, maybe you can clear something up for me. Is he a Sasquatch that happened to adapt itself to an alpine climate, or a transplanted Yeti, or the offspring of a Sasquatch and a Yeti, or something else entirely? Feel free to use the comment box, that's what it's there for.

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Where to find it:

Oldies.com

Amazon Instant Video

Whatever you do, don't go in the snow!

All Creatures Great and Tall

The Abominable Snowman (1957)

Ever since seeing the creepy docudrama The Legend of Boggy Creek in the mid-70s, I've been intrigued with the idea of Bigfoot and other crypto-zoological mysteries. Considering that no "civilized" westerner set eyes on a live gorilla until the mid-nineteenth century, I'd like to think that there's at least a small chance that some bipedal remnant of an unknown evolutionary path still survives in the ever-dwindling, unexplored wild places of the globe.

I'm not alone, since interest in Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Yeti, and other legendary variations seems to be at an all-time high in spite of (or perhaps because of) the continuing lack of any credible evidence. It's hard to channel-surf these days without coming across some Bigfoot pseudo-documentary with fringe academics speculating about the distribution, diet, and habits of the elusive creatures, and men outfitted in camouflage, night-vision goggles, and other tech-toys tramping around the woods of the Pacific northwest desperately trying to record a sighting.

And then there's the hilarious Jack Link's Beef Jerky "Messin' With Sasquatch" series, where a poor, trusting reject from Harry and the Hendersons is the perpetual butt of 20-something hipsters' practical jokes (although the beast always gets the last "word" in various and hilarious ways). We might look at such humor as society's ultimate acceptance of a myth like Sasquatch. (Similarly, we might make a case that Frankenstein didn't truly become a household name and the prototypical poster child for the consequences of scientific arrogance until he met Abbott and Costello in 1948.)

Whatever the status of the Bigfoot myth in the 21st century, there's no denying the enduring popularity of shaggy, elusive, often homicidal hominids in popular film. The first wave of such films in the 1950s focused on the Yeti and his exotic locale of the Himalayas. Some credit W. Lee Wilder's Snow Creature (1954) as the first feature-length fictional account of the Yeti. Toho and Ishiro Honda (of Godzilla/Gojira fame) followed quickly with Jû jin yuki otoko in 1955. (It would be released in the U.S. a couple years later as Half Human, cut down to 63 minutes, with American scenes added. Sadly, the original highly-rated Japanese version was never released in the U.S., and Toho withdrew it from their catalog for legal reasons.) Schlockmeister Jerry Warren did his take, Man Beast in 1956. 1977's Snowbeast with Yvette Mimieux would transplant the Yeti to a Colorado ski resort.

Over the years, with the impact of unexpected low-budget hits like Boggy Creek, the film industry's interest in hairy hominids shifted to North America and Bigfoot/Sasquatch. One oddball measure of the enduring popularity of backwoods beasts is the presence of character actor-extraordinaire Lance Henriksen in three (count 'em!) Bigfoot flicks in the space of five years: The Untold (aka Sasquatch; 2002), Abominable (2006), and Sasquatch Mountain (2006). (The perfectly mediocre Sasquatch Mountain, a Sci-Fi channel original, started out life as Devil on the Mountain, and was slated for location shooting around my hometown, Flagstaff, Arizona. Regrettably, local red-tape pushed the production 40 miles to the west, to the small town of Williams. I would have loved to run into Lance in downtown Flagstaff!)

Predictably, recent Bigfoot film appearances have featured slavering, unthinking, homicidal beasts, instead of the shy, elusive, canny creatures that more thoughtful Bigfoot fans prefer to believe in. No gory special effects have been spared--  Bigfoot in 21st century film is Mother Nature's hit man, punishing city folk in all kinds of bloody ways for trespassing on her territory.

Thoughtful fictional treatments of Bigfoot and  the Yeti are as rare as sightings of the creatures themselves. The most thoughtful, intelligent treatment of all is Hammer's The Abominable Snowman (1957). This elegant black-and-white production was released around the same time as Hammer's wildly popular color hits Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula, and was promptly lost in the gothic horror wave.  While not perfect -- Snowman is talky and set bound -- it's worth a look for its unusually intelligent use of science fiction to comment on the human condition.

Botanist John Rollason (Peter Cushing), and his wife Helen (Maureen Connell) are staying at a remote monastery in the Himalayas to study native plants. A brash, ambitious American explorer, Tom Friend (Forrest Tucker) arrives with a group and seduces Rollason into accompanying him on his quest to track down the elusive Yeti. Rollason had been on an earlier ill-fated expedition looking for the snowman, but his scientific curiosity gets the better of him and he sets aside his reservations. Helen and the monastery's High Lama try to talk him out of joining Friend's expedition, to no avail. Another member of Friend's group, Andrew McNee (Michael Brill), is haunted by his previous experience of having actually seen the creature. As the expedition makes its way up the Himalayas, the high-strung McNee struggles with the ascent, but at the same time seems to almost sense the presence of the Yeti. At one point, he becomes convinced that he sees something among the rocks and crags. Chasing after it, he falls to his death.

In the midst of the chaos and tension, Rollason discovers that Friend's motives are less than pure or scientific-- he wants to be the first to bring back a Yeti, dead or alive, for exhibition. As luck would have it, the expedition stumbles upon one of the creatures and shoots it dead. As the group tries to take its prize back to civilization, they soon discover that the creature was not alone, and its companions want it back. With the exception of Rollason, the remaining expedition members fall prey to the cunning of the otherworldly creatures, and ultimately to their own fears.

Monster, or member of an ancient, wise race?

The screenplay by the brilliant Nigel Kneale (based on his teleplay "The Creature") inverts the typical Yeti story and makes Man into the unreasoning, monstrous brute. As the surviving expedition members hole up in a cave with the creature's body, Rollason remarks on the gentle, anciently-wise features of the snowman. He wonders aloud to the uncomprehending Tom Friend if perhaps the Yeti aren't the wiser, superior race waiting in the remote regions of the Himalayas for brutish mankind to die out.

Snowman marked the third (and last) Hammer film pairing of Kneale's thoughtful ideas with Val Guest's talented direction. The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) was a lean, effective adaptation of Kneale's BBC mini-series The Quatermass Experiment. It's success led quickly to Quatermass II: Enemy from Space in 1957. Kneale adapted the screenplay from his own teleplay. Much to the chagrin of Kneale, both featured American tough guy Brian Donlevy as Prof. Bernard Quatermass (Donlevy's participation was strictly to grease the wheels for American distribution). Years later, Kneale would be much happier with Scotsman Andrew Keir's portrayal of Quatermass in Five Million Years to Earth (aka Quatermass and the Pit; 1967).  Kneale's Hammer thrillers all share a theme: man as his own worst enemy in the face of forces he only dimly understands.

While the pairing of urbane Peter Cushing with rough Forrest Tucker of F-Troop fame might seem like casting decision made after a 4 martini lunch, the two very neatly represent Kneale's dichotomies of scientific curiosity vs. greed and empathy vs. fear. Tucker, like Donlevy, lent his modest talents and somewhat bankable name to a couple of other UK sci-fi thrillers: The Crawling Eye (aka The Trollenberg Terror; 1958), and The Strange World of Planet X (aka the Cosmic Monsters; 1958).

Nigel Kneale's thoughtful science fiction deserves a revival. America's leaders, committed to endless war and endless foreign quests in search of monsters to destroy, might do well to heed Kneale's admonition, voiced by the empathetic, rational Rollason:

It isn't what's out there that's dangerous, as much as what's in us.

"The world's most shocking monster! No one's ever lived who's seen him!"