The Abominable Snowman
May contain spoilers
Classic Hammer season on The Horror Channel began with 1957’s The Abominable Snowman. Starring Peter Cushing as Doctor Rollason, the black and white movie casts him as a botanist studying rare mountain herbs whilst at a remote lamasery in the Himalayas. He is waiting for an American, Tom Friend, with whom he intends to go on an expedition to find the elusive Yeti, much to the chagrin of Rollason’s wife, Helen, because Rollason had injured himself during a climbing accident several years previous.
The ambition of the film has to be admired. It’s refreshing to see something other than the back streets of ole London town or an eastern European castle and the scope of the snowy expanse must have been difficult to pull off even for 1957, but I think the film managed it and the sense of isolation in the Himalayan mountains was achieved.
The production did have an old school feel to it, not because it was black and white, but in the dialogue and its delivery. The script was very wordy with a lot of telling and not enough showing (“look, there’s a tent.” “It’s snowing”.) and, at times, it seemed very clunky with emotions ranging from anger to the point of attacking someone, to apologising and being friends again within the space of twenty seconds. The delivery of the dialogue was rapid fire with the actors blurting out their lines with little in the way of dramatic pauses, but this, I’ve noticed, is a style of 1950s cinema. The Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Thing from Another World suffer from a similar machine gun acting style.
The plot was a little predictable especially when our scientist hero, Rollason, finds out his colleagues are only there to hunt the Yeti and take him back to civilisation for profit. Although we see very little of the Yeti, in fact, it doesn’t even turn up until after the half way mark, we soon realise the real monster of this tale is our greed and lust for power over others. The Yeti holds very little threat in the film and only acts as a catalyst to see how a group of men survive in the oxygen starved atmosphere of the Himalayas. It was an interesting concept as was the third strain of evolution theory put forward by Rollason and I wish the film had explored this angle rather than having a bunch of grown men squabbling in the snow.
It was a decent Hammer romp but marred by some wooden performances, especially from the lead, Forrest Tucker and a truly awful wise-cracking side kick, Ed Shelley. For me, there were too many spoilers in the set up meaning there weren’t any stakes to raise later in the film because we knew what to expect. We also found out that Brandy can fix almost all ailments. 67/100
For some reason I thought I had already seen this Hammer Horror classic and maybe I had when I was younger but I could not recall the opening scenes suggesting I had not. I recognised imagery from the film thanks to trailers, clips and segments in Iron Maiden videos; perhaps this was the cause of my mistake. My expectations were high when hitting play as some, especially in the British Horror Group I am a member of, herald it as peak Hammer with the great Christopher Lee often siting The Devil Rides Out as his favourite Hammer film. It had a lot to live up to, however, invariably such films fail to deliver due to unmeetable expectations, but Christopher Lee, Devil worship, Charles Gray, directed by the great Terence Fisher…what could go wrong?
First of all, it was lovely to see Christopher Lee starring as the protagonist, not the action type, that was the job of Leon Greene, but as the wise council and voice of reason, no wonder it was Lee’s favourite Hammer film, he got the chance to play a good guy for once.
The film doesn’t hang about, as soon as Leone Green lands his plane and is met by Christopher Lee. He asks about someone called Simon and within a few lines of dialogue we’re at Simon’s new house because they’re worried about him and hadn’t seen him for at least three months. My first thought was he’d met a girl or taken a new job but it turns out he’s having a dinner party and hob nobbing with a group of new friends from an astronomical society. Of course, Christopher Lee suspects they’re all devil worshippers ready to sacrifice chickens. For me, it was a stretch for him to conclude this within the first nine minutes of the film and I wish more time was given for his suspicions to embed. A general decline in Simon’s behaviour perhaps or more clues gathered to Simon’s new ‘hobby’, it all happened a little too quickly, especially as Simon’s behaviour is quite pleasant and not sinister at all. Simon’s bought a new house, I’ve not seen him in three months that means he’s dealing in black magic. Simon insists Greene and Lee leave (this would make more than thirteen at the party and thus unable to perform the ritual) but Lee punches Simon’s lights out instead before kidnapping him and slugging the butler at the same time, it was all a little clunky for me.
