a.k.a. Yeti – il Gigante del 20 Secolo
Stefano Film [1977] 118′ / 96′
country: Italy
director: GIANFRANCO PAROLINI [as Frank Kramer]
cast: ANTONELLA INTERLENGHI, MIMMO CRAIG,
cast: JIM SULLIVAN, TONY KENDALL, EDOARDO FAIETA
Oh Dino de Laurentiis, what hath ye wrought? Throughout 1976, the world was bombarded with pre-release advertising for his multi-million dollar remake of KING KONG – so much so that exploitation entrepreneurs couldn’t help but try and take advantage of it. The results were mostly boring and terrible affairs, as exemplified by the U.S / Korean co-production A*P*E [which beat the de Laurentiis production to theaters by nearly three months, and in 3-D no less]. Not to be upstaged, a small consortium of Italian producers / screenwriters concocted this bizarre yarn, which is the only true giant monster film ever to have been produced in the country as far as I am aware.
YETI begins with several shots of ice exploding, a glimpse of a boat in the Arctic, and a fly-over of Toronto, all while a musical derivation on the John Barry theme to KING KONG and [more oddly] Carl Orf’s “O Fortuna” blurps in the background. This can only mean one thing – that an absolutely gigantic yeti has been discovered by a greedy corporate head in the icy north of Canada. That greedy corporate head is Hunnicut [Faieta], and he tasks his ‘paleonthonologist’ [gotta love those English dubs!] buddy Wassermann with waking the beast up for reasons unknown. Wasserman, with the aid of a helicopter, a huge gas chamber, and an armory’s worth of flamethrowers, does just that while Hunnicut’s grandchildren – the mute Herbie [Sullivan] and hottie Jane [Interlenghi] – look on.
The yeti, having been frozen for millions of years, is none too pleased to have been so rudely awakened and goes on the expected rampage. After scaring the living daylights out of scads of curious passers by, he absconds with young Herbie and Jane and heads off into the wilds of Canada. There he proves himself to be not such a bad guy after all, treating his hostages to a meal of freshly caught fish and getting a hard-on thanks to the unfortunate placement of Jane’s hand on his nipple [pictured below]. Wasserman and a group of Hunnicut’s men eventually discover the group and, convinced that the yeti poses no threat to humanity, talk it into following them. Hunnicut announces its discovery and, in no time, yeti fever has gripped the youth of Canada.
But one of Hunnicut’s men, the enterprising Cliff [Kendall], isn’t satisfied with the paychecks he’s getting and decides to secretly involve himself with Hunnicut’s competitors. Before that can amount to anything the yeti receives his grand public unveiling [on the roof of a hotel] with the expected disastrous results. Just a few flash bulbs are enough to send him on a rampage through the streets of Toronto with his beloved Jane in hand. The yeti starts to feel more than a little guilty once he realizes that he’s scaring the populace and, not wanting to do anymore harm, follows Jane’s directions to the presumed safety of a warehouse. Hunnicut sends Wasserman and Cliff [d'oh!] in to help, only to discover that the yeti is dying from being forced out of its natural high-altitude habitat.
Wasserman tries to help, putting the yeti on oxygen, but Cliff’s men sabotage the effort and beat the doctor to death – blaming the carnage on the well-intentioned yeti. Not yet satisfied with the results of his scheming, Cliff calls the cops out to the warehouse so that they can kill the beast. But the yeti is smarter than Cliff could ever have imagined and, after witnessing Wasserman’s death, goes on the offensive – killing Cliff’s goons in appropriately nasty ways. Believed by the police to be little more than a monstrous killing machine, the yeti goes on the lam. Can Herbie and Jane uncover Cliff’s plot to ruin Hunnicut and kill the yeti before it’s too late for all of them?
I think I can say without spoiling too much that yes, they can. YETI’s ultimately positive conclusion is one of the few ways in which it improves upon its predecessors, refusing to to parlay to the cliche cynicism present in the majority of ‘misunderstood monster on-the-run’ films. It’s not much, but it’s something – I certainly appreciated it.
Otherwise, YETI is a horribly made affair from start to finish. The dead-serious scripting of Mario di Nardo [FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON], Marcello Coscia [THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE] and director Parolini is a ludicrous blend of material ripped from the pages of the de Laurentiis production ["put a yeti in your tank!" a gas station ad proclaims] and the sort of random bizarreness typical for an Italian exploitationer of the time. Direction is likewise awful, and I consider it a blessing that Parolini would only direct one other motion picture in the years after YETI. Sandro Mancori’s cinematography is as uninspired as Sante Maria Romitelli’s repetitive score [the highlight of which is an awful pop take on the main theme credited to The Yetians].
Then there are the special effects by Ermando Biamonte [of THE PUMA MAN fame], which don’t fare any better than the film that surrounds them. Biamonte’s band of technicians barrage the audience with some of the most consistently terrible process photography I’ve encountered to date. The yeti is forever surrounded by a thick fuzzy white matte line and, worse, is almost always semi-transparent. The sparse miniature effects, amounting to a set of a rooftop, a few collapsible walls, and one car, are better but still far from perfect. Life-size mock-ups of the yeti’s feet and hands are reasonably constructed but almost entirely immobile, greatly reducing their efficacy.
The cast is an unremarkable lot, headed by Antonella Interlenghi [perhaps best known for playing Emily in Lucio Fulci's CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD three years later]. It’s difficult to gauge performances with such an awful dubbing accompanying them, but no one looks to be doing a very memorable job. The standout is definitely Mimmo Craig, a small-time actor who went directly from the epic miniseries JESUS OF NAZARETH to playing the yeti in this. Craig’s performance is impassioned and emotive in the extreme, but is seriously let down by the sound design [his vocalisations are realized through the mixing of various poorly chosen animal calls]. Amusingly, his costume looks to have been based less on any of the numerous Kong types than on Jeff Bridges’ character in the de Laurentiis film.
Even with a mountain of technical faults piled up against it, I didn’t hate YETI – quite the contrary. I found myself enjoying its bizarre breed of low budget hi-jinks a great deal as they played out with ridiculous earnest. Official video releases of this one are pretty scarce, though it looks to have seen release in Germany, France and Great Britain on VHS. No legitimate DVD exists to my knowledge, but the score has somehow made its way to CD in Italy [I can't imagine anyone pining to add that one to their collection]. There appear to be two versions [at least] of YETI floating around, a 96 minute international cut and the original 118 minute Italian. If anyone has access to the latter, I’d love to know – as of yet I’ve only seen the shorter cut.
This is a difficult recommendation – I enjoyed it, but that’s not saying much. If you’re a fan of comparable cinema then a screening of YETI can’t due much harm, but others are encouraged to seek greener pastures.
