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Greetings, and welcome to VIEWING THE CLASSICS. Here you'll find capsule reviews of vintage movies from the early days of cinema through the 1970s, with a special emphasis on sci-fi, horror, and mystery movies. Be sure to check out the Pages links, where you can find a Film Index of all my reviews, links to the reviews organized by cast members, directors, and other contributors, and links to my reviews of the films of talented young director Joshua Kennedy.

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Wednesday, February 28, 2018

The Snow Creature (1954)

Starring Paul Langton, Leslie Denison, Teru Shimada, Rudolph Anders, Bill Phipps
Directed by W. Lee Wilder
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A botanist exploring the mountains of Tibet manages to capture the Abominable Snowman, and takes him back to California for study, but the creature escapes and stalks human victims.

Another of director W. Lee Wilder's collaborations with his son, Myles, who wrote the screenplay, the  picture is probably the weakest of their films, despite a promising concept and setup.  The major problem is we never get a good look at the creature, who's only seen in long shots, or a clip of him stepping in and out of the shadows, that's repeated ad infinitum throughout the film.  Odds are this probably masked the inadequacies of the creature costume, but it results in a film without a major payoff for the audience.  The first half of the film in which we follow botanist Langton, whose expedition is taken over by his sherpa Shimada when the man's wife is abducted by the creature, is a bit more interesting than the second half, where authorities search for the creature in the sewers, but both halves suffer from a lack of atmosphere and imagination.  Having said all that, I somehow keep coming back to watch this film, so there must be something about it that intrigues me.

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