The Snow Creature is a pretty typical bad mid-50's monster movie. Not a great story, bad looking monster, and boring scenes of people walking around to pad the film (here, you get treks through the Himalayan mountains as well as the sewer system of a big U.S. city). There's just enough laughable weirdness to not make it a total waste of time, but it's still a pretty rough one to sit through.
It's about an American scientist named Dr. Frank Parrish who is in the Himalayas to do research on some recently discovered plant life. He has brought a photographer named Peter Wells with him; these two, along with the Sherpa guide Subra, are the only English speaking characters in the first half of the film. Dr. Parrish has hired a team of sherpas (sensitively referred to a being "much like mules under the weight of our heavy supplies") to assist them in their trek up the mountain. But several days into it, word reaches the camp that a Yeti has kidnapped Subra's lady from the lowland village. Parrish and Wells don't care, and they threaten to shoot Subra if he takes the men to search for her (it's mutiny, they say). Real nice. But Subra steals their guns, and like it or not, they are tagging along in a quest to find the mythical beast. And (no surprise) they find him. And since you'll come across it in just about every synopsis you can find, they do the King Kong thing, capturing the Yeti and bringing him back to the U.S. for further study. Predictably, he gets out and runs amok.
This change of scenery actually helps The Snow Creature a bit. Had they just stayed in the mountains, or focused on the U.S. only, this would have likely been a dreadfully boring film. As it stands, it's more like a double feature of two kind of boring films.
The only connective tissue? Dr. Parrish and, of course, the Yeti. And what a Yeti! Like I said earlier, he looks pretty bad. I'm used to poor costumes in films from this era, but this might be the first time I've ever seen a monster's socks under his fur. His hands are just a step up from those novelty bear slippers, he clearly has a hat with furry earflaps on his head, and you can see where the animal pelts are attached to his body suit. The guy that plays him is really tall though, so at least he is slightly intimidating. And, if you like seeing a monster slowly walking backwards into the darkness, The Snow Creature has got you covered. I bet you see that shot a dozen times. But he's not a very intelligent creature. When Dr. Parrish finds him in his cave, he responds by bashing the cave walls until there is an avalanche. It does nothing to the humans, but it kills his (unseen) Yeti wife and daughter, and knocks him out cold. Real smooth. It's the unintentional highlight of the film. The Yeti in the refrigerator being a close second:
Also, the big problem Dr. Parrish has once they get to the U.S. is with the immigration department. They can't figure out if the Yeti is a man or not, so they don't know how they should process his papers. That's seriously the best conflict they could come up with.
I haven't really mentioned anything else, because there isn't much else worth discussing. The leads are the kind of bland heroes you've seen before in these types of things, and no one in the supporting cast gives any sort of performance that sticks out. But I guess there are two other small, but notable things:
(1) There seems to be an edict from the Wilder brothers (writer Miles and director W. Lee) that women shouldn't get any lines. Dr. Parrish is married, and his wife is waiting there to greet him on the runway when HE COMES BACK FROM TIBET WITH A YETI, but she just stands there smiling without saying a word while the men talk. (To add to it, a newspaper man yells "now Dr. Parrish, just stand there and smile with the pretty girl." It's a little demeaning.) Although a random woman (with the only female-spoken dialogue in the film) prompts the best line when she is fighting with some guy - she gets all angry and he goes "I'm sick of listening to your words!" It's pretty excellent.
(2) For some reason, the police chief helping Parrish catch the Yeti has a very pregnant wife, who is apparently in labor. But he doesn't really care - "the mother in law is there," and that's good enough for him. The baby is mentioned several times, and it's all in the name of two throwaway jokes at the end of the film. When the chief is radioed, the operator tells him there's a new "creature" for him to search for at the hospital. The other joke is to rip on Parrish's first name. Frank: how outlandish. And it's stupid - usually you'd name your kid after the person who saved your life. But the chief saves Frank's life, so whatever. And looking back on it, the "creature" joke is pretty funny...
Anyways, I've talked about mostly good things, but that's literally ALL of the good things in The Snow Creature. It has a few funny moments, but ultimately it's just drab and feels much longer than its short runtime (under 70 minutes). I guess if you *need* to see an old example of a Bigfoot movie, it'd be worth it - it's kind of amazing how weak he is here. But that dubious reason aside:
I would not recommend this film.
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