Customer Reviews
some monster movies are so bad that not even I can like them 
2008-02-14
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.
It's a dead radio machine 
2006-11-12
Dr. Frank Parrish (Paul Langton) goes on an expedition to the Himalayas. There he recruits native bearers. The natives look surprisingly with language and garb as WWII Japanese.
Half way to his goal he is informed that the mythical yeti has pilfered the head Sherpa, Subra's (Teru Shimada), wife. Of course Dr. Parrish laughs it off. This sets Subra on a course of revenge, including stealing the guns and whisky. In the process using his phony sounding stilted English and a rifle, shoots the radio machine.
Sure enough they stumble upon a yeti family that tries to self destruct. The male yeti (Lock Martin) is saved and like King Kong is drugged and flown by way of TWA prop plane to Los Angeles. When he naturally escapes there is no Empire state building and he does not think of L.A. City Hall, so he take a clue from another well know 1945 minus "Them!" and finds a secret way of getting around. (Not like we did not think of it first).
Every time he finds a victim there is a white arrow on the street.
This is one cool yeti. So the question is does he get away? Will the authorities going after him get eaten by giant ants? I am sort of half hoping that he meets up with Dr. Frank Parrish's wife.
The filming location is the same as "Robot Monster", Bronson Caves, Bronson Canyon, Griffith Park - 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, Los Angeles, California, USA
That was only 69 minutes????!!!!! 2006-10-29
Wow. It seemed like three hours. The beginning was nearly interesting but it turned into a real snorefest. One of these reviews said the movie was so bad it was good. No. It's so bad, it's just awful.
Lee Wilder turns in a borefest this time around 2006-07-10
I kind of dig the other two Lee Wilder movies I've seen, Killers From Space with Peter Graves, and Phantom From Outer Space. The actor who played the professor in PFOS has a small role here. Snow Creature, however, is a pretty boring King Kong rip about a botanical expedition in the Himalayas that turns into a Yeti hunt when the wife of the American's guide is whisked off by one of them. A Yeti is captured after a cave in that kills his mate and cub, and gets shipped back to the good 'ol USA for exhibition. Amusingly, things get held up at customs by immigration when it can't be determined wether Yeti is man or beast. The creature escapes to the sewers of Los Angeles, occasionally popping out of a manhole to kill or terrify someone. Wouldn't you be agitated if your family was murdered and you were kidnapped, held in a refrigerator, and dumped in a strange city? Pity the Yeti, children, pity the Yeti. Not much to waste your time on here.
The Dull Yeti... 2006-06-24
Paul Langton stars as Frank Parrish, who with photo journalist Peter Wells played by Leslie Denison leads a expedition into the Himalayas to discover new plant life. Tera Shimada plays Subra the lead guide whose wife is kidnapped by a Yeti which takes the guys off their plans. Langton doesnt believe that there are Yeti's but eventually goes on a hunting party with his guide and the Sherpas. They find a cave with a bunch of Yeti's inside of it and kill most of them but bring one of them back with them to the USA for a little bit of research. It's like King Kong only with a Yeti. But King Kong was way better then this one. True it's a bad cheesy movie but I wasnt into it at all. The Yeti was laughable and it looked like it had fuzzy oven mitts for hands. Arggh.
Another good bad movie 
2006-05-04
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.
Attack of the Guy in the Moth Eaten Fur! 2006-02-05
When you are seeking exciting adventures in botany in the Himalayas, I bet you never thought you would run into a Yeti. Become a botanist, see the world, and be attacked by imaginary creatures! You will find all this excitement and more in this movie.
Dr. Frank Parrish (Paul Langton, who saw much better days in movies such as "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" and "They Were Expendable") leads an expedition into the Himalayas to collect samples of possibly undiscovered plants. Veteran photographer and alcoholic Peter Wells (Leslie Denison) accompanies Dr. Parrish. Things seem to be going well until a guy in a costume that appears to have seen better days kidnaps the young, beautiful wife of Sherpa guide Subra (Teru Shimada). As you can probably understand, neither Parrish nor Wells believes that the Yeti exists, and they insist the expedition continue as originally planned. However, Subra has other plans, and takes over the expedition. The excitement really mounts now!
The expedition goes up hills. The expedition goes down hills. Sometimes the expedition goes up a hill for a while, and then goes down the same hill so that they can go up another hill. Occasionally the expedition stops so that the lead characters can utter chilling dialogue. You hope your eyes can remain unglazed long enough to get to the end of the movie.
After nearly being killed by a Yeti, the expedition finds a cave containing a Yeti family. In a moment of insanity, the male Yeti causes a cave-in that kills his Yeti wife and Yeti child, and leaves him stunned. Apparently Yeti are not any brighter than some people. The expedition captures the Yeti, and after a fierce struggle, Dr. Parrish regains control of the expedition from Subra.
Dr. Parrish has the Yeti shipped to Los Angeles in a refrigerated box about the size of a phone booth. The box includes a window that the Yeti is unable to break for some reason. Immigration has the Yeti held in storage while determining its classification (early Homeland Security types trying to figure out if the Yeti was a terrorist). The Yeti (can you see this coming?) escapes. After killing a girl for no apparent reason, the Yeti wanders around Los Angeles while the police are clueless. The police finally figure out that the Yeti is hiding in the sewers, much like the ants in "Them!" which was released months earlier the same year.
After an exciting and thrilling chase through the sewers of Los Angeles the climax of the movie is reached, and viewers are left with but one word to say: Huh?
This movie has so many problems that it is a comedy. The scenes of the Yeti are replayed over and over again. Seriously, the same identical scenes of the Yeti moving forward and backward are played again and again. Maintaining efficiency, other scenes are used over again as well. For example, the same scene of motor cycle police roaring by was used at least twice. Some of the up and down hill action by the expedition I thought might have been used twice, but I did not look. To keep from spending too much money on special effects, the director only showed the Yeti in low light or partially obscured. In a way we should be glad, because the Yeti costume looked like a fur coat that had seen better days. I will not mention the policeman shooting a gun with his middle finger in one scene and then holding his index finger on the trigger in the next scene. And what is up with all the Japanese characters in Nepal or China, or wherever the heck these people were?
This movie by W. Lee Wilder, older brother the famous director Billy Wilder, came on the heels of such classics as "Phantom from Space" and "Killers from Space." Sad to say, both those movies were better than this one, with each being progressively worse than the one just prior. I have to wonder how bad "Manfish (1956)" was.
This movie is pure schlock, and is better as fodder for one-liners than as representation of horror or science fiction. I am unable to figure out who would want to buy this movie for their collection. If you really have to have a W. Lee Wilder movie, try "Phantom from Space." At least that movie had some charm.
Abominable In More Ways Than One 2006-01-29
When Billy Wilder hit it big in Hollywood his brother Willie, a handbag manufacturer, went out west, traded on the family name, and proceeded to make bags of a slightly different kind. The most notorious of these is the 1954 SNOW CREATURE, a film that is occasionally said to rival THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS as the single worst sci-fi horror movie in the history of 20th Century cinema.
I'm not sure I'd go as far as that. But one thing is sure: this snow creature is indeed abominable. There is a plot of sorts. A scientific expedition to Tibet, where women apparently wear head scarfs of a Scottish design, is forced to search for the yeti when the wife of one their guides goes missing. This half of the movie entails lots of narration, lots of stock footage, and lots of walking. When the beast is located, it is captured and returned to America, where it proceeds to terrorize cheap-looking women who ignore police reports to stay indoors. This half of the movie consists of lots of bad dialogue and lots of walking through dark streets and sewers.
The monster costume here looks for all the world like some one rescued a throwaway from the silent film THE LOST WORLD. The costume has dark fir and you see it a lot against black backgrounds: the actor suckered into wearing it takes a few steps toward the camera and then they run the film backwards so he takes a few steps away. The cast is bad to the point of embarassment, there is no script to speak of, and as for the direction--well, the brothers Wilder didn't talk much and that pretty much says all you need to know.
It is true that unintentionally bad movies can be a lot of fun to watch, but frankly it seems to me that Willie Wilder's talent is such that he only aspires to the level of Ed Wood without ever actually reaching it. Yes, it really is that bad. I couldn't get a giggle out of it and I don't think you will either. This snow creature is so abominable that's it is best left in the deep freeze.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
The Slow Creature... 2004-03-28
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...
Adventures in Bipedal Locomotion! 2004-03-13
'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.
