Man Beast (1956)

... aka: El hombre bestia (The Beast Man)

Directed by:

Jerry Warren

One person's filmography I was decidedly not in a big rush to get back to was Jerry Warren's. He holds the distinction here of being one of the only directors to make multiple NO STAR-rated films not even fit for bad movie connoisseur consumption. Furthermore, Warren himself flat out admitted he had zero interest in making good or entertaining films, which I guess makes him a cinematic charlatan of sorts. He was in the business solely to make money, which required cheap as possible investments on what he hoped would be big returns. That's his entire dispassionate career in a nutshell. While I'll never begrudge anyone trying to make an honest living, what Warren was doing ventured more into the realm of hucksterism. Any filmmaker who's worth a damn is either an artist or someone at least attempting to make enjoyable product for consumers. Warren was neither. His usual routine consisted of buying the distribution rights to unreleased-in-the-U.S. foreign films, having them hacked up and re-dubbed (or simply narrated over) and adding cheap, talky scenes featuring American actors so he had names to put on the poster to lure in unsuspecting genre fans. In doing so, he simultaneously destroyed the original director's work, showed genuine contempt for his target audience and became quite possibly the laziest director to have ever walked the face of the Earth.

Though most of his work was pilfered material, Warren did make a handful of his own films. These included the God awful bore TEENAGE ZOMBIES (1959), the almost tolerable THE INCREDIBLE PETRIFIED WORLD (1959), Frankenstein Island (1981), which I've not yet seen, and this one, which was also his directorial debut. Still, even most of these "original" works depended strongly on recycled stock footage to fill in the budget gaps and boost the running time, and this barely hour-long effort is no exception.

 

After a strenuous hike through the Himalayan mountains, determined blonde Connie Hayward (Virginia [Asa] Maynor) and her sourpuss friend Trevor Hudson (Lloyd "Cameron" / Nelson) arrive at a remote outpost. They're there because Connie is searching for her missing brother, Dr. James Hayward, who'd taken an "experimental injection" back in the states and now may die due to a side effect caused by high altitudes. Along with a small team, James had set out to explore the area ten days earlier and hasn't been seen or heard from since.

In the same area, there've been occasional Yeti sightings going back decades. More recent Yeti footprints have been discovered, which merit further investigation. Four previous expeditions to find the fabled creature have turned up nothing though, and every expedition had lost at least one man. Connie manages to sweet talk reluctant expert climber Steve Cameron (Tom Maruzzi) into escorting them to where he believes the brother has set up camp.

From there, it's a dangerous ascent up the mountainside and then a long trek through the snow-covered, rocky terrain. They finally catch up to famous anthropologist and evolutionary scientist Professor Erickson (George Wells Lewis) and his two local guides, who are on their way to meet up with Connie's brother at base camp. Everyone decides to do the rest of the journey together. Like the brother, Erickson's ultimate goal is to try to locate and capture a live Yeti, which he believes to be the missing link. Coming across the previous expedition's camp, they find it wrecked, abandoned and in total disarray. Setting up there for the night, they awaken the next morning to find Erickson's hired help have run off and left them.

Eventually turning up at the camp is the "half-Mongolian" Varga (George Skaff), one of the best and most requested local guides in the area, who's so experienced at what he does that he never runs out of breath and seems almost immune to the freezing temperatures. Varga had brought Connie's brother up to the mountain and claims to have been out scouting for tracks when whatever happened back at the camp went down. Still, Connie and the others are skeptical of his story and find him to be shady. There's a ludicrous, though amusing and, I must admit, original, plot twist here involving the species of Yeti attempting to incorporate themselves into our society. That involves killing human men so they can kidnap and then knock up human women to produce human/Yeti hybrids. Naturally, we never actually get to see anything of the sort in the film itself!

All of the impressive mountain climbing footage and aerial shots seen here have been snatched from an unfinished film of unknown origin (some sources claim it's Mexican). Having that footage in his possession, Warren then had a script fashioned specifically around it, attempting to match up his new footage, using the same amount of characters, trying to dress them all similarly to the climbers, etc. Surprisingly enough, he actually does do fairly good job of splicing it all together! If one were to nitpick specific details they can certainly find discrepancies between wardrobe, gear, locations, cast appearance, etc., but very few things really leap out as being extremely obvious either. And, in a way, this approach is really not all that dissimilar to how major studios work, where they'll send a 2nd unit director and crew off to shoot location footage with stunt doubles while the primary director handles all of the close-ups and actor stuff.

Warren has also lucked out that the footage he acquired is actually excellent and features some thrilling moments, imaginative camera shots and beautiful locations. That said, most of what Warren himself brings to the table is, as expected, not very good. He's shot mostly dialogue scenes here but, unlike some of his other films, at least he put some effort into finding snowy / rocky outdoor locations to use instead of filming scenes of people sitting around on some porn-grade set talking to each other as he'd later do. The Yeti suit, which is (supposedly) the same costume used for White Pongo and The White Gorilla (both 1945 releases), also isn't too bad.

Most of the performances are pretty lousy, with the actors sometimes randomly looking off to the side as if searching for cue cards, stumbling over lines or even looking directly at the camera as others are speaking. The sole standout here is Skaff, who puts in a good campy turn as the mysterious guide. His hilarious facial expressions alone almost make this one worthwhile all by themselves. Skaff would go on to a decent career as a character actor and later appeared in some good movies, like Michael Ritchie's Smile (1975) and John Carpenter's Someone's Watching Me! (1978). Warren's soon-to-be wife Brianne Murphy, who'd go on to a respected career as a cinematographer, plays the Yeti in some scenes and was also the script supervisor. 

Top billed above everyone else in the cast is one "Rock Madison," who plays, well, nobody! This was a fake name added to the credits for some reason, though I'm not exactly sure what that reason was. Perhaps attempting to confuse fans of Rock Hudson and Guy Madison?

This was, I believe, only the third genre movie made about the Yeti / Abominable Snowman. It was preceded by the dreadful THE SNOW CREATURE (1954) and the decent Japanese BEAST MAN SNOW MAN (1955), which later became the basis for an "Americanized" version called Half Human (released in 1957). Amusingly, Man Beast wasn't even Warren's only Yeti movie. He also purchased the rights to a 1959 Swedish / American co-production called Rymdinvasion i Lappland (given many English titles like TERROR IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN), did his usual butcher routine on it (adding boring new scenes and narration from John Carradine) and released it as Invasion of the Animal People in 1962.

 

In theaters, this played on a double bill with Prehistoric Women (1950). There were numerous VHS releases here in America, two from Rhino in 1985 (paired with 1948's Human Gorilla / Behind Locked Doors for their release "Saturday Night Shockers: Volume 2") and 1988, and another from Acme (a subdivision of Rhino) in 1996. Rhino also released a DVD in 2002. In 2013, Kit Parker Films released three multi-disc DVD sets of Warren's work. Man Beast is included on the first volume along with Curse of the Stone Hand (1965), which was mostly bastardized footage from several 1940s Chilean films, and The Wild World of Batwoman (1966).

★★

Gate II (1990)

... aka: A túlvilág kapuja (Gate to the Afterlife)

... aka: Gate II: Return to the Nightmare

... aka: Gate 2: Trespassers, The

... aka: La puerta II (The Door II)

... aka: Non aprite quel cancello 2 (Don't Open the Gate 2)

Directed by:

Tibor Takács

You'd think almost helping to facilitate the end of mankind would make one swear off Satanism for life. Not if you're Terry Chandler (Louis Tripp). "It's the most exciting thing that ever happened to me!" he says in the opening voice-over staring at his former neighbor's wrecked home and reflecting on summoning hellish miniature creatures called "minions" and a giant "demon lord" and thus nearly destroying us all in the process. But hey, man, it was all just... So. Damn. Exciting. "It's hard to believe the world almost ended right here on our own block!," he continues with a chuckle. This kid is trying my patience already.

In case you'd forgotten about the original THE GATE, let's briefly catch up. It featured a boy named Glenn (played by Stephen Dorff) discovering the gateway to hell in his own backyard and, along with his aforementioned friend Terry, doing about twenty or so really dumb things that resulted in the conjuration of evil creatures and almost brought about the apocalypse. Now Glen's former home is abandoned and the yard where the gateway was discovered is overgrown with brush and has a chain length fence around it. One may consider that inadequate security all things considered.

Despite the horrors that have already befallen him, Terry's even more into the devil stuff now, except he insists it's not devil stuff ("Satanism's for pussies!"), but instead demonology. Potato, potahto, but sounds so much more scientific and academic, eh? He's convinced that he and his buddy simply went about things the wrong way the first time but, now that he's studied up on it more, he knows exactly what he's doing. Terry does not, in fact, know what he's doing. Yet again. While his depressed, unemployed, alcoholic father (Neil Munro) is asleep, Terry sneaks over to Glen's former home. There, he has everything he needs to call forth "the unholy trinity," including a switchboard, computer, candles, a headset, a sacred dagger, a hamster sacrifice, some lasers and other gadgets. However, he's merely hoping to "touch the infinity" to ask for a special favor, not conjure up demons.

Mid-ceremony, Terry is interrupted by a trio of punk teens from the neighborhood; sadistic ringleader John (James Villemaire), his cute girlfriend Liz (Pamela "Segall" / Adlon) and goofball pothead Moe (Simon Reynolds). The three reluctantly join in and contribute a personal belonging to the pot so they can each make a wish. The ceremony goes off without a hitch, unless you count things randomly exploding, them briefly traveling to "the other side", black ooze pouring out of the walls and a minion demon appearing, which John promptly shoots along with all of Terry's fancy equipment, a hitch. Terry takes the temporarily "dead" minion home and puts it in a liquid-filled glass jar.

As for the wishes... Moe suffers from a potentially deadly "hole in his heart" that requires daily, life-saving meds yet decides he'd rather be visited by aliens in a UFO and "get picked up, go into space, man." Liz, the only one of the three punks who believes the ceremony was "totally legit," wants true love, a cute sports car and to go on a shopping spree because obviously these are the primary concerns of all women. Being the insufferable cretin he is, John wishes to become the "King of the World." Terry, on the other hand, just wants to help out his failing dad by getting him a job.

The following day, everyone's dreams start coming true, except not in the way they imagined. Once an esteemed pilot for a major airline, Terry's father instead gets a job as a baggage expediter and continues drinking. The day after, he throws his liquor bottles out and claims he's flying to London. Something's obviously not quite right here. Terry and Liz then discover that they can wish for more than one thing since Terry is in possession of one of the minions, which has regenerated itself and is now being kept in a hamster cage. All one has to do is make the wish and burn a personal possession and, voila!

Naturally, there's a catch. The wishes only last temporarily and soon turn to shit. Literal shit. For instance, a cherry '62 Corvette is good for a night out on the town but the following day will be a car-sized pile of feces. Terry's dreams for his father come down in flames when dad doesn't turn into a dad-sized pile of feces and instead crashes a plane and ends up in a coma. Meanwhile, John and Moe ransack Terry's place, kidnap the minion and use it to get money, which ends up backfiring when the minion attacks and infects them. The two slowly transform into demon monsters (one normal-sized, scaly, purple and latex-y and the other huge, brown, bumpy and stop motion-y) that plot to sacrifice Liz and eventually do battle with Terry (who also transforms into some lumpy-faced latex creature just cuz) in the alternate dimension.

There's a real war going on here with trying to stay true to the tone of the original while also appealing to a wider adult audience, I think. The first Gate was able to stay relatively family friendly with its PG-13 horrors to appeal to kids and young teens. This R rated sequel tries to have it both ways by alternating sentimentality with more graphic gross-out fx and cruder, much more childish humor. It doesn't really work and, ironically, the tamer original film will probably play better to most adults.

Flinging around shit, someone erupting in puss-squirting zits, lots of over-the-top shouting / histrionics and the highly annoying John and Moe characters (who get far too much screen time) doing things like trying to get the minion high and making asses of themselves at a fancy restaurant really clash with some of the other, more serious content. There's the lead's family problems, mourning his deceased mother, etc. and also a promising romance developing between the unpopular, virginal suburban boy and the bad girl from the wrong side of the tracks with a heart of gold that has some genuine charm but ultimately gets short-changed to make room for the more juvenile content.

On the plus side, this was not quite as bad as I remember it being either. I went in thinking it was going to be way worse than the (somewhat overrated) original but it's actually on par as far as entertainment value is concerned. Both films are watchable, technically well-shot / produced, feature mostly passable performances and have some neat special effects work, this time from Craig Reardon, Randall William Cook and Frank Carere, but are otherwise bogged down by silly plotting and subpar writing. Not surprisingly, the same guy (Michael Nankin, who went on to a much more prolific career as a TV director) wrote both films.

Production began in Canada in late 1988, the copyright is 1989 and it was released to theaters in certain European countries in 1990 but was not given a U.S. theatrical release until 1992. A very strange release history indeed, considering they needed to push this out as soon as possible to capitalize on the surprise success of the first. That delay, caused by New Century Entertainment going under and the film having to be passed on to another distributor, resulted in the film bombing at the box office. It cost over twice as much to produce as the original but grossed less than a third of its budget in U.S. theaters.

After its brief theatrical run, it was then quietly ushered out onto home video in 1992 by SVS / Triumph and no one seemed to care by that point. Since then it's been the recipient or several DVD releases and then a Scream Factory Blu-ray in 2018. Does anyone care now?

★★