classicsoncall Right around the time this film came out, I would have been a kid voraciously reading anything I could get my hands on regarding fabled creatures like the Loch Ness Monster, The Abominable Snowman, and it's American cousin Bigfoot/Sasquatch. Their names still pop up from time to time, and Bigfoot even had his own TV series on Animal Planet. It must be some primordial urge in Man to keep these mythical beasts going from generation to generation, and if you ever see one, let me know.Considering the subject matter, this was a pretty decent flick from the Hammer folks, showing up on one of my cable channels as "The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas". More adventure film than horror, once the thing gets going most of the fear factor is supplied by the power of suggestion. One cool element in all this had to do with the idea that the remote mountain location where the Rong-Kuk Monastery was located gave it's head Lhama (Arnold Marle) some sort of clairvoyant power to see events in the future and warn Dr. John Rollason (Peter Cushing) not to venture forth for a creature that didn't exist, lest it lead to disaster.I was surprised to see Forrest Tucker top billed over Peter Cushing here since he wasn't a Hammer mainstay, but then again, Hammer Productions was just starting out. It turns out that Tom Friend (Tucker) had a prior reputation as a huckster, passing off mental defectives as Indian Wolf Children, so it didn't seem to matter much to him that the expedition's capture of a Himalayan langur monkey would have served his purpose well enough. That was a bit of a let down for me at that point in the story because other members of the team correctly identified it, and Friend should have realized he'd be harming his reputation once again.Director Val Guest did the right thing here to tease the appearance of the yeti creatures, revealing only an arm of the one shot by Ed Shelley (Robert Brown), and later when Rollason was confronted by two of the giants in the cave, their features were hidden in shadow. This is one picture where it was convenient to let the viewer's imagination take over instead of going for cheesy monster effects. Especially after the dead Yeti was described as ten and a half feet tall and weighing six hundred fifty pounds. There's a lot of room there for the imagination.If you go for this stuff, maybe you'd like to try a 1954 film with the same subject matter going by the name of "The Snow Creature". It's a lot goofier than this one, in fact, this picture plays almost scientifically plausible by comparison. It's only the grand Lhama who brings things back to reality at the end of the story when he tells Rollason - "It is not possible to bend the destiny of Man."

Leofwine_draca Hammer's first 'real' horror film – this one preceded THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN by a few months – is a quaint, quintessentially '50s monster movie, with a typical British slant: the focus is on the psychology of the characters involved, rather than pure action and thrills as you'd expect from the Hollywood equivalent. As a result, this film is quite slowly paced (although not leaden) and short on the actual adrenaline of man-vs-beast action, but nevertheless it proves to be an efficient exercise in increasing tension, helmed by the able Val Guest.Peter Cushing takes the lead role of the kindly scientist, whose idea is to capture and study the Yeti, rather than use it to make money through entertainment. Essentially, he plays the same type of dedicated good guy as in most of his Hammer horror films, and he's great as usual. Forrest Tucker is the American co-star, his presence here to draw in the overseas markets; he's the mountaineer with a ruthless secret and essentially the film's villain. The rest of the cast are made up of pretty women (Cushing's wife), scared natives (the Sherpas) and stuffy British types (get a load of that guy 'Foxy').The movie is well shot and has a fair few effects shots; all of them are cheap, and you can see how most were created, but they're nevertheless charming. The Yeti is wisely hidden for most of the film, only appearing in a brief shadowy instance at the climax, and is all the more thought-provoking and weirdly disturbing for it. The plot, when all is said and done, is little more than a threadbare mystery a la Agatha Christie, with the cast being picked off one by one whilst the Yetis lurk and howl in the background. The plus side is that Nigel Kneale's script is excellent and the human psychology of the key players is always true-to-life, just as in the QUATERMASS films; as a result, this low-budget movie is actually a lot better than it probably should be.

Theo Robertson This is the feature film adaptation of a 1955 BBC play called THE CREATURE that was made by the same production team who made THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT from 1953 . That ground breaking serial changed the face of British television and even today remains one of those rare examples of how cerebral science fiction television can be . You have to bare in mind that high concept thrills and spills aren't really the ethos of the QUATERMASS serials and despite the intelligence involved will seem very slow and talkative when compared to say DOCTOR WHO . In fact it might even be a mistake to compare the original BBC serials to their Hammer counterparts which are far more simplified versions of the originals . We will never know how effective THE CREATURE was as a drama because it was never recorded for prosperity but one thinks this film adaptation is relatively faithful to it and this might be the problem with THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN If you're going in to this film thinking you're going to be watching some creature feature B movie you're going to be very disappointed . I first saw this as a teen thinking it was total rubbish with a bunch of human characters spending nearly the entire running time walking up a mountain , stopping to talk , more walking , stopping to talk , more walking and the eponymous Snowman not appearing till the very end . It's not a horror film and it's not really an adventure film either though it does sometimes gives the pretence that this is what it wants to be at some points though it's not very well developed and none of this is helped by an obvious lack of budget with painfully obvious small studio exteriors . There does seem to be a strong subtext at the loss of empire . The British are portrayed as being open minded , scientific and fascinated by foreign cultures and people and always cool as a cucumber in dangerous situations . The Americans are vulgar, loud mouthed philistines always ready to shoot first and ask entirely dumb questions later and prone to hysterics when things get start getting tough , all which is typical of the British mentality of the time with the realisation that the pink bits on the map have nearly disappeared . Peter Cushing resurrecting his role from the original BBC play was always good at playing these gentlemanly professor types and he's likable here and is a nice foil to the Americans THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN suffers from the feeling that it doesn't know what it's trying to be . The little Englander politics are very well done but not much else is . The sedate pace is a bit too sedate then when the story does start taking off it more or less ends at this point which means you'll leave the film feeling rather disappointed . I know I was

malcolmgsw It is a strange thing about fans of horror films.The worse the film the more they praise it,particularly if it was made by Hammer.The first disappointing aspect of this film is the monster.Hammer who were so good with their monsters really seem to have no imagination in this case.A sort of large brown gorilla with a misshapen face.Why brown hair in a snowy waste?Then we have the deaths of the various characters,all very forced.After all how can someone with a bad foot go dancing off over the peaks.Peter Cushing gives his usual fine performance but Forrest Tucker is truly wooden and a feeble villain.All in all one for the Hammer fans alone everyone else better find a quieter mountain.