Customer Reviews

Snow Creature

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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...

Remember the movies, "Marty" "Cavalcade" or "Country Girl?" They all won Academy Awards in various main categories. Big forgotten movies. You will probably remember Snow Creature after you see it. It is cheap and the monster looks like a big man in a tailored fur suit. The monster's victims are children in little suits that are supposed to look like adults in the creature's grasp.

But there is something about this movie that is attractive. It is fun. It is not a laugh out loud type of fun but 72 minutes pass quickly with a good (simple) story. Somebody tried their hand at good camera work and it sort of pays off. I would have to list it as one of my favorites of the 1950's "B" movies. Remember B stands for Budget, not "Bad." I gave it 5 stars for entertainment value.

If you like, "The Indestructible Man," "She Demons," or "From Hell It Came" you will probably find the same type of goofy entertainment in Snow Creature.

So plug this tape in on a Friday night or a Saturday morning, put your brain on the shelf and enjoy a fun, simple, clean "B" movie.

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.

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.

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..

Incredibly bad 1950's fantasy/horror movie about an abominable snowman on the loose in Los Angeles. Everything about this one--writing, acting, production values--is strictly grade Z. It is beyond belief that a major studio like Paramount was associated in any way with this thing. What were they thinking of? Ed Wood would have been ashamed to have his name associated with it.

The promo on the dvd reads " HALF MAN! HALF MONSTER! ", I thought that was THE MANSTER's line! However, this manster resembles nothing more than some big guy in a furry costume who gets captured during a Himalayan expedition then taken back to LA where he escapes into the sewers. This is one of those no-budget fun to watch 1950's horror films that keeps you smiling from reel to reel. Certainly W. Lee Wilder's best film next to KILLERS FROM SPACE.

And as for the "noir" angle, in a couple scenes Paul Langton reminded me alot of William Holden in UNION STATION for some odd reason.

And when we get to LA and the police put out a dragnet ( they even bring a net! ) the movie takes on a decidedly noir look with it's night scenes and chase sequences. When the cops go down into the sewers I half expected them to encounter Richard Basehart from HE WALKED BY NIGHT rather than some goofy yeti monster!

So, maybe what we have here is another entry into the noir-horror genre alongside NIGHT OF THE DEMON, HANGOVER SQUARE, THE RED HOUSE and anything produced by Val Lewton. But then again, probably not.

Instead of getting the Alpha release of Snow Creature, I would recommend getting Retromedia's Sasquatch Horror Triple Feature instead. It's the same print as the Alpha and you get 2 more films besides. The Snow Creature print has a few splices, but not too bad overall.

It's 1954, a golden age in the monster movie genre, a time when foreign cultures existed only to be exploited and ridiculed, when botanists never left home without a syringe and an ample volume of heavy duty sedative, when the idea of capturing a monster on the other side of the world and transporting it back to the States still seemed like a good idea, and when you could put a fur hat with earmuffs on some bearded dude and cast him as a monster (heck, you could even put some scrawny guy in a bedraggled fur outfit and pass him off as the self-same monster, despite the fact that the two could not be more dissimilar in appearance).

Our story begins with Dr. Frank Parrish (Paul Langton) and photographer Peter Wells (Leslie Denison) rounding up a guide and a crew of Sherpas (whom they compare to pack mules), then heading up into the Himalayas in order for Parrish to study the area's plant life. Things are going fine until Subra (Teru Shimada), the only English-speaking guide they could find, receives word that his wife has been kidnapped by a Yeti. Naturally, Parrish laughs off such a preposterous story and insists that Subra stay and do his job. A small mutiny later, the two dumb Americans find themselves with no choice but to accompany Subra in his search for the creature. Once he's made to eat his condescending words, of course, Palmer - like all dedicated scientists - thinks about nothing but the fame and fortune that would surely come his way if he brought the Yeti back home with him. After all, what could possibly go wrong?

The Snow Creature does provide the viewer with a few memorable moments. Personally, I thought it was quite funny when a cop asked for a description of the snow creature, and you can't help but chuckle when the beast's immigration status is debated. My favorite stupid moment, though, comes courtesy of the remarkable logic demonstrated by the L.A. inspector responsible for tracking down the escaped creature. Once the Yeti is spotted in three different locations, he connects the dots on the map and insists that the exceedingly hairy fugitive has to be somewhere in the middle of that triangle. This guy makes Inspector Clouseau look like Sherlock Holmes.

The only thing that makes The Snow Creature stand out from the crowd of other highly forgettable 1950's science fiction/monster movies is the fact that it was produced and directed by W. Lee Wilder, who just happens to be the brother of Billy Wilder. Billy reportedly described his older brother as a boring son of a gun (well, something like that, anyway), and The Snow Creature makes it easy to see why.

This is a lousy formula film: scientists finds mysterious monster, it escapes, then, well, you can guess. This is so bad that it is not even good for laughs. The acting is wooden, and even the Tibetans are speaking in Japanese! There are no good characters, and plots twists are thrown in haphazardly for deus ex machina purposes. Not recommended. I am an old monster movie connoisseur, but some are so poor that nothing much good can be found in them.