A heads-up and a review

There are multiple movies coming up that I watched in order to do reviews on. One of them is currently on DVD while the other one is getting a release in the near future, so I decided to make today's post a review of the latter and just mention the first in passing, saving a full review for a later day. So with that in mind, I'll point out that not too long after running it in Noir Alley, TCM has another airing of This Gun For Hire, tonight at 10:15 PM as part of a double bill of Alan Ladd Movies.

The movie not yet out is The Abominable Snowman (of the Himalayas), which is going to be on FXM tomorrow morning at 9:35 AM, and is getting a Blu-ray release on December 10. This is a Hammer Films release, made in the UK and distributed in the US by Fox, which is why it's back on the FXM schedule after a long absence.

Peter Cushing plays Dr. Rollason, who has been studying botany in the Himalayas, with his wife Helen (Maureen Connell) and an assistant Fox (Richard Wattis) along. They're about to leave, much to Mrs. Rollason's relief, but there's still one more matter to take care of. An American named Tom Friend (Forrest Tucker) is interested in figuring out whether the legend of the Yeti is real, and if it is, get evidence to prove it. Dr. Rollason knows more about the area than anybody else, and has a good scientific mind, so since the personnel are going to be limited so as not to frighten any Yeti that exist, he's going along as the true scientist.

The expedition includes him, Friend, Friend's assistant Shelley (Robert Brown), a Scot named McNee (Michael Brill) who claims to have seen the Yeti, and one Sherpa guide Kusang (Wolfe Morris) who also claims to have seen it. Helen and Fox are both staying behind in the village, seeing the mysterious Lhama who seems to know more than he's letting on from time to time in cutaways that I didn't understand why they were in the movie.

Being as high up in the Himalayas as the expedition requires is always tough, but it seems as though winter is coming on which is going to make things only tougher. But that's not the real problem. Friend is in charge of the expedition since he's doing most of the funding, and he reveals not too far in that the real point of it is to take one of the Yeti alive for showing it off like Carl Denham did in the original King Kong; this is something that bothers Dr. Rollason to no end.

Friend has also done a lot of other things that bother Rollason, such as setting traps for the Yeti and not telling anybody else, so that McNee eventually gets caught in one of the traps. Friend is so obsessed with capturing a Yeti that he doesn't even want to let McNee go back to the village. The sledge is for carrying a Yeti, not for carrying McNee.

The Yeti -- or whatever is out there -- have no intention of being captured. Something exists out there, however, as there are tracks and we see one scene of a hairy gorilla-like hand trying to steal one of the party's guns. This only serves to make Friend even more determined to catch a Yeti.

Eventually, they do get a Yeti, but to Friend's horror, it's a dead Yeti. He doesn't want a museum specimen; he wants something he can show off. But there are other Yeti out there. And they don't want one of their own to be taken down the mountains....

The Abominable Snowman (as it was called in the UK and on the print FXM ran; the Blu-ray and the box guide both list it under the extended title The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas) is a movie with a perfectly suitable premis. But it's ultimately brought down by the fact that there's a heck of a lot less going on than the premise would suggest. There are shades of The Thing From Another World here, but this movie feels a lot more perfunctory; I think it's not helped out by the constant going back to the village down the mountain. The foreshadowing and ominous threat we don't see are also not handled as well in some other movies.

Still, I'm sure there are other people who are going to think this one doesn't fizzle out, so as always, watch and judge for yourself. You've got a chance tomorrow, possibly later chances on FXM (although I should point out that the FXM print is panned and scanned down to 16:9 outside of the opening and closing credits), or the pricey Blu-ray next month.