bear trap laid by Shelley to catch the Yeti.
When a Yeti is seen up-close by Kusang, he cries that he has "Seen what man must not see..." and flees down the mountain at double-speed back to the monastery, from where Helen and Fox decide to mount a rescue mission. McNee is also psychically sensitive to the Yeti's proximity, which finally leads to Shelley shooting and killing a Yeti. The next day, McNee, hearing the haunting calls of the Yeti, hobbles from his tent and falls off a cliff.
Friend now hatches a plan to trap a live Yeti by having a steel net rigged to the ceiling of a cave, with Shelley waiting, as bait, to spring the trap. Friend has given him a rifle, but unbeknownst to Shelley, it's loaded with rounds that do not fire. A Yeti does show up, ostensibly to retrieve its fallen comrade's body, and as it tangles with the net, Shelley tries firing the rifle, but dies of acute terror.
Friend finally decides to cut his losses and leave with the body of the dead Yeti. However, the Yeti telepathically plant thoughts in Rollason's mind, and then make Friend hear the dead Shelley's voice calling for help. Friend rushes outside, firing his gun and dies in a crushing
avalanche
An avalanche is a rapid flow of snow down a slope, such as a hill or mountain.
Avalanches can be set off spontaneously, by such factors as increased precipitation or snowpack weakening, or by external means such as humans, animals, and eart ...
that he caused.
Rollason takes refuge in the cave and watches in amazement as two Yeti arrive to take away the body of their fallen compatriot. He realizes the Yeti are an intelligent species biding their time to claim the Earth for themselves after humanity has destroyed itself.
The rescue party finds Rollason outside a halfway-point hut, where the Yeti have actually brought him. At the monastery Rollason asserts to the Lama that "What I was searching for, does not exist."
Cast
*
Forrest Tucker
Forrest Meredith Tucker (February 12, 1919 – October 25, 1986) was an American actor in both movies and television who appeared in nearly a hundred films. Tucker worked as a vaudeville straight man at the age of fifteen. A mentor provided fund ...
as Tom Friend
*
Peter Cushing
Peter Wilton Cushing (26 May 1913 – 11 August 1994) was an English actor. His acting career spanned over six decades and included appearances in more than 100 films, as well as many television, stage, and radio roles. He achieved recognition ...
as Dr, John Rollason
*
Maureen Connell as Helen Rollason
*
Richard Wattis
Richard Wattis (25 February 1912 – 1 February 1975) was an English actor, co-starring in many popular British comedies of the 1950s and 1960s.
Early life
Richard Cameron Wattis was born on 25 February 1912 in Wednesbury, Staffordshire, the ...
as Peter Fox
*
Robert Brown as Ed Shelley
* Michael Brill as Andrew McNee
*
Arnold Marlé
Arnold Marlé (15 September 1887 – 21 February 1970) was a German actor who appeared largely in British films and television programmes.
Stage work
His theatre work included appearances on the London stage, and a year-and-a-half-long run on B ...
as The Lama
*
Wolfe Morris
Wolfe Morris (born Woolf Steinberg, 5 January 1925 – 21 July 1996) was an English actor, who played character roles on stage, television and in feature films from the 1950s until the 1990s. He made his film debut in ''Ill Met by Moonlight''. ...
as Kusang
Production
Development
Writer
Nigel Kneale
Thomas Nigel Kneale (28 April 1922 – 29 October 2006) was a Manx screenwriter who wrote professionally for more than 50 years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and was twice nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British S ...
and television director/producer
Rudolph Cartier
Rudolph Cartier (born Rudolph Kacser, renamed himself in Germany to Rudolph Katscher;
17 April 1904 – 7 June 1994) was an Austrian television director, filmmaker, screenwriter and producer who worked predominantly in British television, exc ...
had collaborated on several BBC dramas, including ''
The Quatermass Experiment
''The Quatermass Experiment'' is a British science fiction serial broadcast by BBC Television during the summer of 1953 and re-staged by BBC Four in 2005. Set in the near future against the background of a British space programme, it tells th ...
'' (1953) and ''
Nineteen Eighty-Four
''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also stylised as ''1984'') is a dystopian social science fiction novel and cautionary tale written by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and fina ...
'' (1954), an adaptation of the
George Orwell novel. Their next production had been ''The Creature'', a
morality play
The morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor drama. The term is used by scholars of literary and dramatic history to refer to a genre of play texts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries that feature personified concepts ( ...
written by Kneale about a search for the mysterious Yeti in the Himalayas. Kneale wished to write a story about the Yeti that would "not make him a monster but put a twist on it that really he was better than us". He was influenced by numerous reports of the Yeti that had appeared in the news at the time, including discoveries of footprints by explorer
Eric Shipton in 1951 and by
Edmund Hillary
Sir Edmund Percival Hillary (20 July 1919 – 11 January 2008) was a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist. On 29 May 1953, Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed to have reache ...
and
Tenzing Norgay
Tenzing Norgay (; ''tendzin norgyé''; perhaps 29 May 1914 – 9 May 1986), born Namgyal Wangdi, and also referred to as Sherpa Tenzing, was a Nepali-Indian Sherpa mountaineer. He was one of the first two people known to reach the su ...
on the first complete ascent of
Mount Everest
Mount Everest (; Tibetic languages, Tibetan: ''Chomolungma'' ; ) is List of highest mountains on Earth, Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border ru ...
in 1953. In particular, he was influenced by an unsuccessful 1954 expedition to find the Yeti sponsored by the ''
Daily Mail'' newspaper. The play starred
Stanley Baker
Sir William Stanley Baker (28 February 192828 June 1976) was a Welsh actor and film producer. Known for his rugged appearance and intense, grounded screen persona, he was one of the top British male film stars of the late 1950s, and later a pro ...
as Tom Friend and Peter Cushing as John Rollason with
Arnold Marlé
Arnold Marlé (15 September 1887 – 21 February 1970) was a German actor who appeared largely in British films and television programmes.
Stage work
His theatre work included appearances on the London stage, and a year-and-a-half-long run on B ...
as the Lama,
Eric Pohlmann
Eric Pohlmann (german: Erich Pohlmann; born Erich Pollak; 18 July 1913 – 25 July 1979) was an Austrian theatre, film and television character actor who worked mostly in the United Kingdom. He is known for voicing Ernst Stavro Blofeld, th ...
as trapper Pierre Brosset,
Simon Lack
Simon Lack (19 December 19138 August 1980) was a Scottish actor.
He was born Alexander MacAlpine, in Cleland, North Lanarkshire, Scotland. Known locally as Alec, he was the youngest child and only son of his father, Alexander McAlpine (known ...
as photographer Andrew McPhee and
Wolfe Morris
Wolfe Morris (born Woolf Steinberg, 5 January 1925 – 21 July 1996) was an English actor, who played character roles on stage, television and in feature films from the 1950s until the 1990s. He made his film debut in ''Ill Met by Moonlight''. ...
as Nima Kusang. It was broadcast
live from
Lime Grove Studios on Sunday, 30 January 1955 and a repeat performance was broadcast live the following Wednesday, 2 February. The broadcast was not recorded and the only record of the production that survives is a series of screen images, known as
tele-snaps
Tele-snaps (often known as telesnaps) were off-screen photographs of British television broadcasts, taken and sold commercially by John Cura (born Alberto Giovanni Cura in Clapham, South London, England; 9 April 1902 – 21 April 1969). From 1947 ...
, taken by photographer John Cura.
The play received mixed reviews: the critic in ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'' found it unrealistic and dull. Similarly, Philip Hope-Wallace of ''
The Listener'' found it “a Boy's Fiction standard with a conversational cut and thrust to the dialogue which sounded as dry and powdery as the snows of the film inserts”. On a more positive note, Peter Black in the ''Daily Mail'' found the play to be a “rousing, outdoor adventure story” while Clifford Davis in the ''
Daily Mirror
The ''Daily Mirror'' is a British national daily tabloid. Founded in 1903, it is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its masthead was simply ''The Mirror''. It had an average daily print c ...
'' described it as “gripping stuff and, for this viewer, packed with terror”. The play was spoofed by ''
The Goon Show
''The Goon Show'' is a British radio comedy programme, originally produced and broadcast by the BBC Home Service from 1951 to 1960, with occasional repeats on the BBC Light Programme. The first series, broadcast from 28 May to 20 September 19 ...
'' in the episode "Yehti", broadcast on 8 March 1955. Hammer Films purchased the rights to ''The Creature'' on 2 November 1956. They had enjoyed success with ''
The Quatermass Xperiment
''The Quatermass Xperiment'' (a.k.a. ''The Creeping Unknown'' in the United States) is a 1955 British science fiction horror film from Hammer Film Productions, based on the 1953 BBC Television serial '' The Quatermass Experiment'' written by ...
'' (1955), an adaptation of the first Quatermass serial and would achieve similar success with ''
Quatermass 2
''Quatermass 2'' (retitled ''Enemy From Space'' in the United States and Canada) is a 1957 black-and-white British science fiction horror film drama from Hammer Film Productions. It was originally released in the UK as ''Quatermass II'' and was ...
'' (1957), an adaptation of
the television sequel.
Val Guest
Val Guest (born Valmond Maurice Grossman; 11 December 1911 – 10 May 2006) was an English film director and screenwriter. Beginning as a writer (and later director) of comedy films, he is best known for his work for Hammer, for whom he direct ...
, who had directed the two ''Quatermass'' films, was assigned to direct; this would be his third, and last, collaboration with Nigel Kneale.
Writing
Nigel Kneale wrote the screenplay, which is a generally faithful adaptation of his original television script, both of which run to approximately 90 minutes. It was initially titled ''The Snow Creature'' until it was discovered there was a 1954 film
of the same name. According to Kneale, Hammer wanted a title more literal than ''The Creature'', which played on the ambiguity as to whether the real monster of the piece was the Yeti or its human pursuers, and settled on ''The Abominable Snowman''. The screenplay adds two characters: Rollason's wife Helen and his assistant Peter Fox. The addition of the character of Helen, who is named after Cushing's wife, was prompted by Cushing's desire to flesh out Rollason's character by representing a woman's point of view of his obsession with the Yeti. Kneale was able to modify the ending of the story by using the characters of Mrs Rollason and Peter Fox to develop a subplot in which they mount a rescue mission for the expedition. The characters of Pierre Brosset and Andrew McPhee are renamed as Ed Shelley and Andrew McNee respectively; these names were used by Kneale in early drafts of ''The Creature''. Although Kneale is the only credited screenwriter, Guest performed his own rewrite of the script in advance of the production, removing a lot of dialogue he felt to be unnecessary. Guest said, “You can't have long speeches with people on the screen unless it's a closing argument in a court case or something”.
Casting
The American producer
Robert L. Lippert co-produced many of Hammer's films in the early 1950s, including ''The Abominable Snowman''. Under these co-production deals, Lippert provided an American star in return for the rights to distribute Hammer's films in the United States. For ''The Abominable Snowman'', Lippert approached Forrest Tucker, who had previously appeared for Hammer in ''
Break in the Circle'' (1954), also directed by Val Guest. Nigel Kneale considered Tucker's performance to be on a par with Stanley Baker, who had played the part in ''The Creature'', saying, “Baker played it as a subtle, mean person, Forrest Tucker as more an extroverted bully but they were both good performances and I found very little to choose. Tucker was, I think, an underrated and very good actor”. According to make-up artist Phil Leakey, Val Guest was disappointed with the casting of Tucker; he recalled, "Forrest Tucker might have been very good at some things but, to many people's minds, acting wasn't one of them and I think he rather spoilt the picture". ''The Abominable Snowman'' was the first of three horror films Tucker made in Britain around this time; the other two being ''
The Strange World of Planet X
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
'' (1958) and ''
The Trollenberg Terror'' (1958).
Cushing reprised the role of John Rollason that he had played in ''The Creature''. At this point in his career, he was best known as a television actor, having starred in productions of ''
Pride and Prejudice'' (1952) and ''
Beau Brummell'' (1954) as well as the Cartier/Kneale production of ''
Nineteen Eighty-Four
''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also stylised as ''1984'') is a dystopian social science fiction novel and cautionary tale written by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and fina ...
''. ''The Abominable Snowman'' was his second picture for Hammer; the first had been ''
The Curse of Frankenstein
''The Curse of Frankenstein'' is a 1957 British horror film by Hammer Film Productions, loosely based on the 1818 novel '' Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus '' by Mary Shelley. It was Hammer's first colour horror film, and the first of t ...
'' (1957), the film that would bring him international fame and establish his long association with the Hammer horror brand. Recalling how the cast and crew were entertained by Cushing's improvisation with props, Val Guest said, “We used to call him 'Props Cushing' because he was forever coming out with props. When he was examining the Yeti tooth, he was pulling these things out totally unrehearsed and we found it very difficult keeping quiet”.
Like Cushing, Arnold Marlé and Wolfe Morris reprised their roles from ''The Creature'' as the Lama and Kusang, respectively.
Filming
''The Abominable Snowman'' was the only film to be produced for Hammer by Aubrey Baring, who was a member of the
Barings banking family. Shooting began with a ten-day
second unit location shoot at
La Mongie in the
French Pyrenees
The Pyrenees (; es, Pirineos ; french: Pyrénées ; ca, Pirineu ; eu, Pirinioak ; oc, Pirenèus ; an, Pirineus) is a mountain range straddling the border of France and Spain. It extends nearly from its union with the Cantabrian Mountains to C ...
between 14 and 24 January 1957. Guest and Baring led a crew that included
cinematographer Arthur Grant,
camera operator Len Harris and
focus puller
A focus puller or first assistant camera (1st AC) is a member of a film crew's camera department whose primary responsibility is to maintain the camera lens's optical focus on whatever subject or action is being filmed.
"Pulling focus" refers t ...
Harry Oakes. Local trade union rules required that they were accompanied by a French crew. None of the principal performers were brought on location and doubles were used for the actors. Most of the filming was done in the vicinity of the
observatory at the summit of
Pic du Midi de Bigorre
The Pic du Midi de Bigorre or simply the Pic du Midi (elevation ) is a mountain in the French Pyrenees. It is the site of the Pic du Midi Observatory.
Pic du Midi Observatory
The Pic du Midi Observatory (french: Observatoire du Pic du Midi ...
, reached by
cable car from La Mongie. Although a helicopter was used for some of the panoramic shots of the mountains, many of them were shot from the cable car as it ascended the mountain. Cognisant of the conditions they would be working in, Harris used a
Newman-Sinclair clockwork
Clockwork refers to the inner workings of either mechanical devices called clocks and watches (where it is also called the movement) or other mechanisms that work similarly, using a series of gears driven by a spring or weight.
A clockwork mec ...
camera whereas the French crew used a conventional
Mitchell BFC camera, which failed numerous times on account of the cold.
The film was shot in an
anamorphic
Anamorphic format is the cinematography technique of shooting a widescreen picture on standard 35 mm film or other visual recording media with a non-widescreen native aspect ratio. It also refers to the projection format in which a distorted ...
wide screen format called
Regalscope, renamed "Hammerscope" by the company. Val Guest found it an unsatisfactory format to work in, which made getting in close to the actors difficult and required careful framing of scenes. This was the first film Arthur Grant worked on for Hammer as cinematographer and his reputation for being fast and cheap meant he soon replaced
Jack Asher
Jack Asher British Society of Cinematographers, B.S.C. (29 March 1916, London – 1991) was an England, English cinematographer. His brother Robert Asher (director), Robert Asher was a film and TV director with whom he worked on several occa ...
as Hammer's regular cinematographer. Just as he had done with the ''Quatermass'' films, Guest tried to give the film "an almost documentary approach of someone going on an expedition with a camera for ''
Panorama'' or something". To this effect, he made extensive use of
hand-held camera
Hand-held camera or hand-held shooting is a filmmaking and video production technique in which a camera is held in the camera operator's hands as opposed to being mounted on a tripod or other base. Hand-held cameras are used because they are conve ...
and overlapping dialogue.
Principal photography
Principal photography is the phase of producing a film or television show in which the bulk of shooting takes place, as distinct from the phases of pre-production and post-production.
Personnel
Besides the main film personnel, such as a ...
took place between 28 January and 5 March 1957 at
Bray and
Pinewood studios. The sets for the monastery were constructed at Bray by
production designer
In film and television, the production designer is the individual responsible for the overall aesthetic of the story. The production design gives the viewers a sense of the time period, the plot location, and character actions and feelings. Wo ...
Bernard Robinson, assisted by
art director Ted Marshall and
draughtsman Don Mingaye, and required detailed research in books and libraries. Nigel Kneale was particularly impressed by the monastery set, feeling that it acted not just as a background but as a participant in the story. These sets were later reused for the series of ''
Fu Manchu
Dr. Fu Manchu () is a supervillain who was introduced in a series of novels by the English author Sax Rohmer beginning shortly before World War I and continuing for another forty years. The character featured in cinema, television, radio, com ...
'' movies made in the 1960s, starring
Christopher Lee. Assistance was provided by members of a
Buddhist
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
temple in
Guildford to choreograph the monks chanting. Most of the extras were waiters in Chinese restaurants in London. It was realised early in production that there was insufficient space at Bray for the sets depicting the snowscapes of the Himalayas and so production shifted to Pinewood. Each element of the set was built on a wheeled rostrum so the set could be reconfigured to show many different panoramic backdrops. The set was decorated with artificial snow made of
polystyrene and salt. Matching the footage shot in the Pyrenees with the scenes filmed in Pinewood represented a major challenge for Guest and his editor
Bill Lenny. Guest had a
Moviola
A Moviola () is a device that allows a film editor to view a film while editing. It was the first machine for motion picture editing when it was invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924.
History
Iwan Serrurier's original 1917 concept for the Moviola ...
editing machine brought on set so he could view scenes from the location shoot and synchronise them up with the scenes being shot at Pinewood.
It was Val Guest's view that the Yeti should be kept largely off-screen, bar a few glimpses of hands and arms, leaving the rest to the audience's imagination. By contrast, Nigel Kneale felt that the creatures should be shown in their entirety to get across the message of the script that the Yeti are harmless, gentle creatures. In the climactic scene where Rollason comes face to face with the Yeti, only the eyes are seen: Guest used Fred Johnson to play the Yeti in this scene, relying on his "eyes of worldly understanding" to convey the benign nature of the Yeti.
Music
The musical score was provided by
Humphrey Searle
Humphrey Searle (26 August 1915 – 12 May 1982) was an English composer and writer on music. His music combines aspects of late Romanticism and modernist serialism, particularly reminiscent of his primary influences, Franz Liszt, Arnold Schoen ...
, his only score for Hammer. The score was heavily influenced by that of another film with the theme of exploration: ''
Scott of the Antarctic'' (1948), composed by
Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Reception
''The Abominable Snowman'' was released on 26 August 1957, with an
'A' Certificate from the
British Board of Film Censors
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC, previously the British Board of Film Censors) is a non-governmental organization, non-governmental organisation founded by the British film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national clas ...
, as part of a
double bill
The double feature is a motion picture industry phenomenon in which theatres would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which one feature film and various short subject reels would be shown.
Opera use
Opera ho ...
with ''
Untamed Youth
''Untamed Youth'' is a 1957 American teen film directed by Howard W. Koch, written by John C. Higgins and Stephen Longstreet, and starring Mamie Van Doren and Lori Nelson as two starstruck sisters who are sentenced to farm labor.
Plot
Sisters ...
'', starring
Mamie Van Doren. In the United States it was released under the title ''The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas''. Reviews were positive and it is now considered something of a minor classic. Derek Hill of the ''
Evening Standard
The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format.
In October 2009, after be ...
'' found it to be "among the best of British science-fiction thrillers".
The release of the film was overshadowed somewhat by the huge success of Hammer's ''The Curse of Frankenstein'', released the same year, and it was a relative financial failure, a fact Val Guest attributed to the intelligence of the script, saying, "It was too subtle and I also think it had too much to say. No one was expecting films from Hammer that said anything but this one did ... audiences didn't want that sort of thing from Hammer." This was the last film Hammer made in association with Robert L. Lippert; following the success of ''The Curse of Frankenstein'', Hammer was now in a position to be able to deal directly with the major American distributors.
Critical views of the film in the years since its release generally consider it to be one of the lesser films in the Hammer and Nigel Kneale canon. Critic
Bill Warren finds it to be "an intelligent but commonplace adventure thriller with the Yeti little more than background figures ... a little too ponderous and hence unexciting". Similarly,
John Baxter felt that "in recreating a peak in the Himalayas, the set designer had more control over the film than the director, and despite some tense action the story drags". Baxter acknowledged, however, that the film exercises "a certain eerie influence", a view echoed by Hammer historians Marcus Hearn and Alan Barnes that "the film conveys a taut, paranoid atmosphere; set largely in wide open spaces, it's remarkably claustrophobic in scale". Nigel Kneale's biographer, Andy Murray, finds the film "eerie and effective" and also suggests the scenes of the expedition members calling out to their lost colleagues across the wastelands influenced similar scenes in ''
The Blair Witch Project
''The Blair Witch Project'' is a 1999 American supernatural horror film written, directed and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. It is a fictional story of three student filmmakers—Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Josh ...
'' (1999).
Home media
In addition to standalone releases, the film can be found as part of the 3-DVD box set ''Superstars of Horror: Volume 1: Peter Cushing'' (Umbrella Entertainment, 2005).
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
The Abominable Snowmana
Hammer Films*
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Abominable Snowman, The
1957 horror films
1950s fantasy adventure films
1950s monster movies
Bigfoot films
British black-and-white films
British fantasy adventure films
British horror films
British monster movies
1950s English-language films
Films directed by Val Guest
Films scored by Humphrey Searle
Films set in the Himalayas
Films shot at Bray Studios
Films shot at Pinewood Studios
Films shot in France
Mountaineering films
Hammer Film Productions horror films
Warner Bros. films
20th Century Fox films
Films about Yeti
Avalanches in film
1950s British films