Brief Thoughts - THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN (1957)

I revisited THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN (1957) last night for the first time in years. My memories of the film were that it was a solid effort but that it was slow and dry at times. This viewing proved I was wrong on both counts.

I’ve not done a full survey but this might be the best Yeti film of all time. The script is literate, involving and clever in its narrative. Nigel Kneale was always a brilliant writer of speculative fiction and my feelings that this story was one of his weakest were ridiculous. This story shows all the hallmarks of his better-known works such as the Quatermass tales and his 1989 adapted screenplay for The Woman in Black. He creates well defined characters quickly and with the kind of details that build over the course of the film. This approach is complimented by the usual intelligent direction by the great Val Guest.

Guest is one of the under sung heroes of British fantastic cinema. Responsible for a long list of classics including the first two Hammer Quatermass films, THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE (1961) and WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH (1970) he was always good at getting the right moments onscreen in an exciting way. His crime and war films show his immense skill as well and I highly recommend his lesser-known pandemic drama 80,000 SUSPECTS (1963) to see how talented he was as a writer too. With these two men leading this production it should be no surprise that the quality is very high and the resulting picture is excellent. Maybe the last time I watched THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN I was distracted or in a foul mood. Regardless, it is a fine movie and worth many future viewings.

MAN BEAST (1956)

Because we got snowed in today I felt the overwhelming urge to watch a yeti movie. And because I wanted to see one that I have not yet seen I pushed play on a film I expected to be bad. I was not disappointed. For fans of ‘men in yeti costumes’ it is a must and I am (sadly) a member of that group.

 I knew that this was Jerry Warren’s first feature and since I’ve watched several of his later efforts, I knew this had to be both low budget and fairly inept. This usually makes for some painfully amusing viewing and this was no exception. Warren was able to combine a lot of mountain climbing footage from another film with matching scenes that he shot to almost make a plausible series of events play out. It doesn’t always work but in the spirit of enjoying a silly monster movie I was happy enough. It is not a good movie but my odd desire to see movies of this type from this period made it worth working my way through the short running time. But the most interesting thing about this movie is what I found out on its Wikipedia page and I’ll just quote it below –

 

“Although a "Rock Madison" was given top billing in the credits for playing the part of "Lon Raynon," there is no such character anywhere in the film. Modern sources state that "Rock Madison" was just a fake name made up by Jerry Warren to make his cast seem larger. Older sources used to state that Rock Madison may have been the man in the Yeti costume, but Warren's ex-wife Brianne Murphy said years later in an interview that she played the man-beast herself. She said Warren met her in Hollywood around this time and offered her a $50-a-week job handling props, makeup, hair, wardrobe, script and stills on "Man Beast." She said she wore the furry Snowman costume in a couple of scenes, but she was too short for the suffocating rubber suit.”

 

So – it was a ‘woman in yeti costume’ film which is pretty cool to know. But just adding a fictional actor to the cast list to bulk up the perceived scale of your movie is amazing. My hat is off to Mr. Warren.