The Abominable Snowman Of The Himalayas!

I don't remember when it was exactly during my boyhood, but some Halloween or other during one of those luscious all-night film fests they used to have I stayed up, clinging to wakefulness and watched this Hammer movie through. It scared the bejeezus out of me then, and still unsettles me a little today. It plays neatly against expectations, setting up a somewhat chatty and somber story about the usual gaggle of Western types (a hunter, a huckster, a scientist, a sensitive) and throws them up on a mountain to find the elusive myth. Whether they will find anything at all is kept at bay for a good long time, and then only in masterfully controlled bits and pieces.

It turns out the Abominable Snowman is real, but he isn't all that "abominable" after all. These are wisemen of the mountains, incredibly long-lived giants with thoughtful eyes and gentle ways who don't harm people directly, but sadly do act as catalysts that cause men to bring harm to themselves. It's that Val Guest chose consciously to hide the creatures, giving only glimpses that makes them such powerful images in my mind. I've seen scuds of bigfoot and yeti movies, but none are so moving or memorable as this one which shows us almost nothing. Guest knew quite well that my mind could conjure a creature far more awesome than anything possible by special effects of the time. He was right.

 

There is a curious commentary on the DVD, offering up both the comments of both Val Guest the director and Nigel Kneale the writer. It seems that these two have squabbled a bit about this movie in the past, or at least done interviews expressing contrary views. The two are interviewed separately but the interviews are run concurrently. This creates some duplication in information, but does offer up some interesting counterpoints as well. Both men seem to respect one another's talent, or express that anyway, but clearly they differed on how this movie should've worked. Guest defends his decision to keep the creatures off camera and Kneale clearly thinks though it was a brave decision it undermines the final effect. Kneale seems in particular to want to say nicer things about the movie than he has perhaps in the past, and is in the unique position to contrast the film version with the BBC TV version first done. He ultimately says that changes in the film version help the story.

One thing I did learn is that the Himalayas shown in the movie are actually the Pyrenees and finally getting to see the movie in widescreen, it's possible to really enjoy the setting completely. Peter Cushing and Forrest Tucker star in this B&W Hammer movie, and they form a neat contrast. Cushing offers a quiet if nimble screen presence while Tucker is bombast personified. The other actors, typical of Hammer films, are solid pros and the movie though a bit stagey in places nonetheless delivers a pointed morality tale of man looking for the unknown, and as most often is the case, finding only the truth about himself.

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