Directed by:
W. Lee Wilder
Botanist Dr. Frank
Parrish (Paul Langton), along with boozy photographer Peter Wells (Leslie
Denison), travel to Shekar, a small village at the base of the
Himalaya Mountains. There, they hope to discover and study rare plants
growing in the rugged terrain for The Corey Foundation. They enlist the
aid of Subra (Teru Shimada); the only English-speaker in the area,
as their guide, and hire ten other locals, referred to by our narrator as
"human mules" (!), to carry the heavy equipment. The expedition then
scales the Himalayas and a base camp on flat ground is established.
Meanwhile, back in the village, Subra's wife is scooped up and carried off
by a Yeti; which we're told means "Creature of Snow" in the native
dialect. Subra's brother Leva (Rollin Moriyama) organizes his own
group to scale the mountain and find the expedition. Once he does, he
informs Subra of his wife's abduction, but neither Dr. Parrish nor Peter
believe them. Irregardless, both men are stripped of ammo and pretty much
forced to move higher up the mountain in search of the fearsome beast.
Subra shoots the radio machine so our heroes cannot call in for help, as
the group follows Yeti tracks to a higher elevation. Soon, one of the men
is found dead outside their camp and the Yeti shows up again to cause an
avalanche. After many long walks, the men finally find a huge cave system
and set up camp there. Subra discovers his wife's necklace inside and
orders a thorough search, which uncovers a male Yeti, a female Yeti and a
baby Yeti. A cave-in accidentally caused by the male kills the female and
baby, but the male manages to survive. Frank gets control of the gun,
gives the injured creature a shot of sedatives and orders Subra and his
men to help haul the creature out of the cave and back down the mountain.
He then leads the party directly to the police and has them take care of
the Yeti ("And, uh, can you give him an injection every six hours?") while
he's away in Bombay making further arrangements.
Soon, Frank and Peter are in a heated disagreement about what to do with
their find. Frank wants it to go to the Corey Foundation, while Peter
would rather make money off of it. Frank gets his way and the beast is put
in a telephone-booth-sized refrigerator unit and shipped to California.
Upon arrival, Frank is greeted by his wife Joyce (Darlene Fields),
his boss Mr. Corey (George Douglas), a grand total of two reporters
and an immigration officer (Robert Bice) who asks for the beasts'
papers (!!) After all, is it really a man or is it a beast? And besides,
the last thing this country needs is yet another illegal immigreti running
loose. They call in anthropologist Dr. Louis Dupont (Rudolph Anders)
to run tests to find out more, but he doesn't have a chance. Put under the
watchful eye of just one security guard, the beast manages to tip its unit
over by rocking it back and forth, punches the guard over the head in a
hilarious scene and then escapes.
One woman is killed (off-screen), so police Lieutenant Dunbar (William
Phipps) is put on the case. He sends out a radio bulletin ("A
dangerous killer beast is at large!") warning citizens not to leave their
homes at night. The Yeti scares another woman, heads to a meat packing
plant to cool off and get a bite to eat and has been hiding out in the
sewers, where the big finale takes place. All of the scenes taking place
in America are very reminiscent of MONSTER A GO-GO (1965) and if
you've ever seen the inept yet excruciatingly boring Monster you
know that's a very bad thing indeed. Despite endless scenes of people
walking around and scaling a mountain, poor matte work, lame narration and
our leads behaving like arrogant douche bags with an obnoxious Western
superiority complex throughout, the first half is slightly better than the
second, which plumbs depths of dull and inept not too often seen.
Though this may be historically important as the first ever Yeti
movie (Jerry Warren's Man-Beast and Val Guest's The Abominable
Snowman soon followed), the editing is terrible, the acting's poor, the dialogue's even worse and
there's poor use of stock footage used throughout. The
plane shown transporting Frank and the precious cargo to Tibet from
American and back is a silver military jet but when it finally arrives to
its destination it's suddenly a white TWA passenger plane. As far as the
monster is concerned, it barely gets to do anything and is impossible to
make out in the extremely dark light in which
it is always cast. They apparently didn't shoot enough footage of it, so
the same exact shot of the beast walking toward the camera is repeated
endlessly. When they needed the creature to stop they simply froze the
same shot mid-motion and when they needed the creature to retreat they
simply reversed the shot. This is done dozens of times.
Director W. Lee Wilder (using a script from his son Myles Wilder) shot this
the same year his brother Billy made the hit romantic comedy Sabrina
(1954) starring Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. The less-famous Wilder
brother also made PHANTOM FROM SPACE (1953), KILLERS FROM SPACE (1954), Fright (1956), THE MAN WITHOUT A BODY (1957), BLUEBEARD'S TEN HONEYMOONS (1960) and The Omegans (1968).
Snow Creature is by far the worst thing I've seen from him.
★