Snowbeast
Let me start out strong and tell you this: I HATE made-for-TV movies. I didn’t realize this until Snowbeast showed me how much time I’ve been wasting that I could’ve spent with something actually fun to watch instead. Maybe ski or snowmobile fans would like this, because that’s at least a third of the movie right there, people skiing or snowmobiling around. Whoopedy.
Maybe vacationing on Hoth was not the wisest choice.
Premise – 3/5
You would think, how can this not be a winner? A yeti starts snacking on tourists at a winter skiing festival in a tiny Colorado mountain town. One girl goes missing on the first day, and her friend keeps ranting about a monster. Obviously, Tony Rill, the ski resort management, is not crazy about hearing this sort of a tale on the restort’s big weekend, so he goes out basically alone to find this girl and debunk her hysteric friend. Of course, that’s not exactly how it plays out when he finds her ripped and bloody jacket and catches a glimpse of the beast wandering about. Then, one of his own guys gets munched on, and things sorta spiral out of control from there.
But, primarily, this movie is about lots of footage of people skiing and snowmobiling as I said above. One third of the movie is the setup for all the action that takes place later, which is fine. Another third is scenes of people skiing and snowmobiling, which is not fine. And the final third is where any sense of logical script-writing or rational character behavior completely dissolves and the actors move from set to set doing stuff I’m sure the director thought would be cool, though it’s aggravating, aimless, and nonsensical to the rest of us.
I bet you didn't know Chewbacca comes from a long family line of peeping toms, did you?
Cast – 2/5
Nothing real standout here. Workingman actor Bo Svenson is the only name or face I really recognize, but what do you expect from a made-for-TV flick? They may be universally more competent than the Don’t Look in the Basement crew, but that still doesn’t mean I care any more.
Bo Svensen plays Gar Seberg, an ex-Olympic gold medal skier who “never wanted to be a has-been” so he quit skiing or really doing anything after winning the medal. His wife, Ellen, is played by Yvette Mimieux, a news reporter who has pretty much lost respect for her self-paralytic husband, and is falling out of love with him. Robert Logan plays Tony Rill, the guy who runs the ski resort and wants to gun down this naughty little yeti. The last guy who really matters, I guess, is Clint Walker, who plays town sheriff Paraday. There are other people in this movie who get introduced and you would almost think are going to be part of the action of the movie, but then they basically vanish and leave you confused about who they ever were when they show up later screaming because the yeti’s attacking the town.
So, I guess you could do worse, but I’m positive you could do better. And too many townsfolk who don’t die water down the crew even more.
R.I.P. Late Show Bear, we hardly knew ye.
Technical Bells and Whistles – 2/5
I have to admit, unless you get a real good look at the yeti (which you do get at the end), it looks pretty cool. The yeti certainly seems ripped, and I think I’d hate to ever come across it. Once you do get those long shots, though, maybe the suit still looks decent, but it’s pretty much just a guy in a puffy hooded winter coat shambling around with an awkward mask on. The shots of the Colorado mountains are nice, and there’s a good eye for scenery in the movie, but when it comes to the actual action in the movie, they mostly occur in only maybe two or three areas on those mountains. A world of possibility for cool scenes, and this movie stays locked in its own closet. Sure, it’s on a TV movie budget, but don’t tease me with cool scenes that could’ve been!
Also, as I mentioned above, the last third of the movie loses its focus, if not its mind. The reporter/main character’s wife goes out looking for the yeti, and then somehow gets herself lost instead of backtracking and yet STILL ends up back at the farmhouse she began at, by which time, evidently, it’s too late to turn back to the resort. While she’s sacking out at this farmhouse, the yeti wanders over into town, smashes a window where a whole group of people is preparing for the “Snow Queen” coronation, shrieks at them, and then wanders away to go rip some random woman’s face off. Why? I have no damn clue, but apparently, that’s enough fun for the yeti, and so it wanders off again ignoring what might’ve been a movie climax in a world that sorta made sense. And THEN, Gar happens to think, hey, I haven’t seen my wife in like twelve hours, maybe I should go out and find her. On skis. Late at night. After he saw a yeti come into town and rip a woman’s face off. Sure! And somehow, instead of getting mauled on his way out of town by a surly yeti, he makes it to the farmhouse where his wife is, magically taking less than an hour—although maybe he knows a shortcut his wife didn’t to this damn farmhouse. Anyways, he gets there, and his wife is immediately back in love with him, which is fine, but they stay the night. In the morning, yeti decides he wants in on their snugglefest, and tries smashing his way through the front door. Uh-oh! Terror! So our lovebirds decide to smash open a window, giving the yeti a larger entrance to come in and claw their faces off through, so naturally the yeti is drawn to this, so THEN the duo decide, maybe we should use the door after all. Then the yeti wanders off before they can leave. Uh-huh. I could go on, but the next half-hour or so of yeti hunting is so full of stupid backtracking and gun-dropping in the name of “plot” that I feel my brain cells dying just by thinking about it.
Set to receive a charge, ski poles do times two damage against lumbering yeti.
Popcorn Factor – 2/5
No. Forget about it. Although I’ll admit I’ve never seen another movie about yeti murdering people and eating their faces, I’m sure there’s a better one out there. This movie tries to be character-driven, which almost works, but this movie is probably at least twenty minutes too long and has too many filler scenes that waste their own time. Coupled with shoddy editing and an apparent lack of decision-making skills from the writer and director, you get a drab uninteresting affair, with a lot of pretty mountainside shots, but nothing more. Come on, it’s a yeti eating people! How could they have blown it? Oh well…I’d avoid this movie on the basis of “blah.”