The Snow Creature

Rating:
Summary: Adventures in Bipedal Locomotion!
Review: 'The Snow Creature' is one of the most boring movies that I have ever seen. The film has a terrible script, incredibly inept editing (and the print itself is in rough shape), horrible acting, and a Yeti with an obvious case of mange. The first 45 minutes or so of the film you see a couple of American scientists and their guides wandering around the Himalayas, and when I say wandering, that is almost all you see...men walking around. They walk up hills! They walk down hills! They walk on level terrain! It is quite an adventure, indeed.

They finally find the Yeti, which will make you laugh with his ferocious muttonchop sideburns and afro. Of course they decide to take a cue from every escaped monkey movie ever made and transport him (in a custom made refrigerator!) back to Los Angeles, where he terrorizes the greater Los Angeles sewer system for the last twenty or so minutes of the movie. Returning to his earlier thematic device, Director W. Lee Wilder takes tedium and boldly mixes it with unscariness by featuring, yes, you guessed it, MORE walking around, this time in the sewers. I am curious how much of the 69 minute running time of the film is shots of guys walking around. I thought about re-watching it and timing this, but that would be too insufferable, so I offer this estimate: 55 minutes or so are exciting walking around shots. Comically, the Yeti escapes while it is detained at LAX by an alert INS official (!) who is trying to correctly ascertain his immigration status! If only the INS was so thorough today!

I gave this thing two stars, but it probably deserves about one and a half stars. There are a few amusing campy moments in here, but not enough to make the pain worthwhile.

Rating:
Summary: See men with hats drink coffee and smoke cigarettes!
Review: There's something oddly comical about the "snow beast", upon its capture, being placed in something resembling a refrigerated
phone booth, and in observing his impatient, standing silouette behind the fogged-up door window, he appears as bored as the rest of us, as the main characters gab on and on and on...

Thankfully, he breaks loose (of course), but unfortunately, this doesn't contribute any momentum to the story. Rather, we're treated to more scenes of men with hats hanging out at the police station drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, pointing at maps, answering phone calls, smoking more cigarettes, drinking coffee, pointing at more maps...and to the same shot of the snow beast emerging to and fro the shadows, the same shot played over and over again, forwards and in reverse. Talk about a budget flick -this film makes "The Curse of Bigfoot" look and feel like a epic masterpiece by comparison.

But what the heck - it was a budget dvd, and it's good for a couple of laughs and campy moments.
The print used for the dvd is in rather poor condition, but I doubt even an immaculate print would lend much toward any improvement to the story.

Rating:
Summary: See men with hats drink coffee and smoke cigarettes!
Review: There's something oddly comical about the "snow beast", upon its capture, being placed in something resembling a refrigerated
phone booth, and in observing his impatient, standing silouette behind the fogged-up door window, he appears as bored as the rest of us, as the main characters gab on and on and on...

Thankfully, he breaks loose (of course), but unfortunately, this doesn't contribute any momentum to the story. Rather, we're treated to more scenes of men with hats hanging out at the police station drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, pointing at maps, answering phone calls, smoking more cigarettes, drinking coffee, pointing at more maps...and to the same shot of the snow beast emerging to and fro the shadows, the same shot played over and over again, forwards and in reverse. Talk about a budget flick -this film makes "The Curse of Bigfoot" look and feel like a epic masterpiece by comparison.

But what the heck - it was a budget dvd, and it's good for a couple of laughs and campy moments.
The print used for the dvd is in rather poor condition, but I doubt even an immaculate print would lend much toward any improvement to the story.

Rating:
Summary: The Slow Creature...
Review: To call this movie "boring" would be like calling Sadam Hussein "cranky". Words pale in the face of such horror! THE SNOW CREATURE is a sub-zero budget "monster" movie with a tall guy in fuzzy clothes standing in for the monster. He's supposed to be a yeti / bigfoot / abominable snowman, but is more like a wookie / teddy-man in need of a good long bath. Yes, he kills someone (in a boring way), which leads a group into the mountains to track him down. We get to see the creature dance back and forth, in and out of the shadows, over and over, until our heads want to spin off! Wilder used the same shot of the beast coming at us some 13-14 times! Somehow, the creature ends up back in LA (I fell asleep during it's transport), escapes, and roams around aimlessly. My advice? Stay away! For God's sake, stay away...

Rating:
Summary: The Slow Creature...
Review: To call this movie "boring" would be like calling Sadam Hussein "cranky". Words pale in the face of such horror! THE SNOW CREATURE is a sub-zero budget "monster" movie with a tall guy in fuzzy clothes standing in for the monster. He's supposed to be a yeti / bigfoot / abominable snowman, but is more like a wookie / teddy-man in need of a good long bath. Yes, he kills someone (in a boring way), which leads a group into the mountains to track him down. We get to see the creature dance back and forth, in and out of the shadows, over and over, until our heads want to spin off! Wilder used the same shot of the beast coming at us some 13-14 times! Somehow, the creature ends up back in LA (I fell asleep during it's transport), escapes, and roams around aimlessly. My advice? Stay away! For God's sake, stay away...

Rating:
Summary: Awful but fun monster flick!
Review: W. Lee Wilder, the considerably less-gifted brother of Billy Wilder, is the director responsible for this tacky abominable-snowman non-epic from 1954 that manages, every once in a while, to look like an actual movie, but which mostly serves as a model of the least-interesting-approach school of filmmaking. I would cite the mundane camera set-ups, the inadequate lighting, the nonfunctional dialogue that goes on forever, and the ill-fitting, fuzzy long-underwear snowman suit as prime examples of this school. Bad-cinema buffs might point to other morsels of ineptitude, such as the monster rampage that resembles a run-of-the-mill nighttime "Cops" sequence played in very slow motion, or the Chaplinesque monster-in-the-tent scene near the beginning. Whatever the case, this is very enjoyable bad cinema, funny in nearly every detail, even if it does manage, somehow, to maintain a certain level of suspense. Be warned, though--one person's camp is another person's exercise in boredom. "The Snow Creature" functions very well on both levels.

Rating:
Summary: A Gem From Billy Wilder's Less Talented Brother
Review: When your name is Billy Wilder, the movies associated with you are "Sunset Boulevard" and "Stalag 17." However, when you're his less talented brother, W. Lee Wilder, movies such as this are what constitutes your legacy.

Made right after two previous attempts at science-fiction ("Phantom From Space" and "Killers From Space"), "Snow Creature" is actually the best of the three, and that's not saying much considering the other two.

Given the title, the plot shouldn't be hard to guess. Yep, it's about the Abominable Snowman. He's captured alive and taken to Los Angeles, where (naturally) he escapes and proceeds to run amok until the final minutes when he and the audience are put out of their misery.

Given the plodding direction and routine B-movie acting (Billy Wilder was said to have referred to his brother as a "dull s.o.b."), the only interest becomes the creature itself. And the great thing about the creature is that it looks nothing like we would expect a Yeti to look. Instead, it looks like one of the mutants from "Invaders From Mars" wearing a flannel costume but replete with mask.

If you enjoy psychotronic movies, then this is for you, especially considering the price. And at this price, don't expect a remastered picture. Not that the picture quality is bad, but what you see is what you get.

And if you're not a psychotronic film fan . . . dial on, if only to save yourself the boredom..