User Reviews

After a young boy, Herbie Hunnicut (Jim Sullivan), discovers a giant yeti frozen in a block of ice, scientists thaw out the creature (using flamethrowers!) and bring it back to life. The boy's grandfather, businessman Morgan (Edoardo Faieta), sees an opportunity to use the creature to promote his companies, but controlling the yeti proves tricky, even after Herbie and his older sister Jane (Antonella Interlenghi) befriend the beast.

A really lame Italian monster movie designed to ride the coat-tails of the '76 King Kong remake, Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century is cheap and trashy nonsense, providing zero in the way of genuine thrills, but quite a few unintentional laughs. The yeti itself, played by Mimmo Crao, looks like a massive Dave Lee Travis, roars like Godzilla when angered, and changes size significantly from scene to scene. Herbie is extremely irritating despite not being able to talk. His intelligent friend Indio is also annoying despite being a dog. I will cut Jane some slack for being very easy on the eye (although her propensity for rubbing yeti nipple is more than a little disturbing).

The crappy plot sees the ape-man go on a minor rampage after being frightened by photographers' flashes, escaping from the police despite being huge and hard to hide, and opening a can of yeti whoop-ass when some nasty men kill the kindly scientist who has been caring for the creature.

Clearly aimed at the whole family (although the sight of Indio being stabbed by the baddies might disturb some kiddies), the film foregoes a King Kong-style tragic ending for a much happier one: the yeti gets to disappear into the wilderness, and Indio appears, running into Herbie's arms having miraculously recovered from his seemingly fatal wound.

With a giant monster movie, you really only need a good-looking monster and some fun action sequences to make me happy. Yet, not many of the movies I've seen in this genre ended up being much fun. Here is one that I enjoyed for the most part. It is cheaply made and has laughable acting, dialog, and special effects. It would be one of the worst movies ever for someone expecting a straight up adventure film. For fans of b-movies and camp classics, it has its moments.

The movie starts out with some routine exposition, but once the monster gets going, it delivers. The look of the monster is pretty goofy, but I couldn't take my eyes off of it. The facial expressions the actor uses are just so crazy, especially his often-used sad puppy dog face. He becomes protective of two children, but gets tangled in the crossfire of two companies battling for supremacy (I forget which industry the companies are involved in, but obviously something with a stake in 50-foot cavemen). The movie is most fun when the Yeti is allowed to be destructive. It's hard to imagine a movie getting made today in which a giant monster would be showed stepping on the bad guys. There was also a good tease at the end that looked like the Yeti would meet a tragic end as a result of not belonging in the modern world. I liked the fact that the movie didn't end predictably and the Yeti was allowed to return to nature. The final shot of the Yeti superimposed over images of giant ice flows falling apart was an appropriately crazy was to end this out-of-control mess. Except for several stretches that were fairly slow, the movie was worth the watch. Although it is not a well made movie, as many IMDb reviewers have pointed out, there are those of us who will find it entertaining.

I guess every country has to have their KING KONG rip-off at one stage or another. Thus the Danish gave us REPTILICUS, the Japanese GODZILLA, the British KONGA, the Chinese THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN, and finally the Italians with their wacky family movie YETI, THE GIANT OF THE 20TH CENTURY. Yes, this movie - made a year after the Hollywood KING KONG remake of '76, to cash in no doubt - is as bizarre as any Italian production you will see, with plenty of tacky special effects and far too much time spent on mundane characters chatting and discussing predictable stuff we've heard a million times before in creature features. It's also highly silly, silly enough to offer a scene of a villain having his neck broken between two of the Yeti's toes, and to rip off a Lassie movie with the slow-motion shot of a dog - previously knifed in an earlier scene but here returned to full health - running through a cornfield to be enveloped in the arms of a cute young boy. It's enough to make you retch.

The Yeti itself is an impressively big beastie (wait, I'm not sure that the real-life "abominable snowmen" are supposed to be THAT big), his size achieved via some okayish back-projection work. It's certainly better than the atrocious back-projection in the second instalment of THE UNCANNY, a British horror anthology made in the same year, anyway. Unfortunately, as the shaggy creature is just an actor with a wig and an ape costume, he isn't quite so impressive, and Mimmo Crao plays it all wide-eyed and wondrous to pretty much disastrous effect. The destructive sequences in which the Yeti wrecks toy cars and plays yo-yo with a lift are poorly done and only enjoyable in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way.

The human elements of the cast fare little better, and the predictable "ruthless businessmen" are here that pop up time and time again in giant monster films, instantly ready to exploit the creatures for their own purposes and always getting killed or discredited by the end of the movie. It's no different here, although to complicate matters there are two rival organisations, one of which has murder in mind. The chief villain is played by former heart-throb Tony Kendall, here aged a little and thus relegated to being the villain (there is no young male lead here, aside from the annoying kid). In fact he fits the bill rather well although he isn't nearly slimy enough as he should be. Antonella Interlenghi is "Jane" (har har), the object of the Yeti's affections, and is forced to gratingly emote a lot too, more's the pity. The only other familiar cast member - at least to this fan - is Donald O'Brian, who appears briefly as a butch policeman.

Yet YETI, THE GIANT OF THE 20TH CENTURY is worthwhile for a number of reasons. The toy helicopters and matchbox cars that make up the "special effects" element make this instantly watchable for bad movie lovers, so we have that field covered. The combination of bone-breaking violence and kiddie entertainment (lovey-dovey Lassie dog, Yeti-human bonding) doesn't exactly sit together well which is a little odd. It's like the film-makers tried to combine the action genre with the monster and family genres and the result is a very strange combination - even stranger still is the "Yeti Theme", as performed by the "Yetians", a simple rip-off of Carl Orff's music in THE OMEN if you listen carefully. Nothing I wouldn't expect from an Italian Z-movie, that's for sure...

Somewhere deep in the middle of the Canadian mountains, Professor Wassermann (played by John Stacy and voiced by Gregory Snegoff, who was Scott Bernard on Robotech and Golgo 13 in the translated American version of his cartoon) is looking for a giant iceberg that has a yeti (Mimmo Crao, the only actor that I know that is in a Jesus movie - Jesus of Nazareth - and an Edwige Fenech sex comedy - Sex With a Smile - and this monster movie).

Morgan Hunnicut (Eddie Faye, who is really Edoardo Faieta from Plot of Fear, and also voice by Snegoff) owns a multination oil company that funds the expedition to study him but he really wants the yeti to exploit. He's also brought along his orphaned grandchildren for some reason - what, a Fortune Six company doesn't have daycare for their CEOs? - named Jane (Phoenix Grant*, AKA Antonella Interlenghi, Emily from City of the Living Dead) and Herbie (Jim Sullivan), who had been mute since the death of his parents and only communicates with his dog Indio.

There's an astounding scene where the Yeti is fitted into what is basically a giant telephone booth and airlifted by helicopter to a height of 10,000 feet because the air up there is what he's used to and it'll be easier to thaw him out up there. This is bonkers Italian cinema science at its finest, dear reader.

The paparazzi wants to see more of the yeti and surrounds everyone, freaking him out as if he were in a Dino De Laurentiis movie from 1976 and sending him running with Jane, Emily and Indio in his hand. He gets so excited by Jane rubbing against his paw - and I'm not making this up - that he gets erect nipples. Later, as he combs her hair with a giant fishbone - again, not making anything up - they are found by the professor who claims that she has been adopted as his wife and Herbie as his son. Cliff Chandler (Tony Kendall**, AKA Luciano Stella, AKA Kommisar X!) is one of the company men who comes to their rescue and he comments that she'll have to put out soon for the ape man.

Speaking of putting out, the Yeti has been marked much like Kong was in the wake of Dino's remake. You can find Yeti shirts that say "Kiss Me Yeti" - a phrase that makes no sense - and a disco song and a commercial for the gas stations that ask you to put a Yeti instead of a tiger in your tank.

Then things get bad when the new leader of Hunnicut turns out to be the evil Cliff. He decides to kill anyone connected with the big lug.

How bad do things get?

The kind of bad where autistic children are threatened, Yetis break free over the Niagra Falls, where old kindly professors are killed by Aldo Canti, who was once Angel the acrobat from Return of Sabata and even cute dogs get stabbed.

Somehow, however, Indoo shrugs off this 1d4 slashing damage and survives to come running across the field like Wuthering Heights at the end as the Yeti goes back home to the frozen Canadian tundra, leaving behind nothing but death, destruction and flipped over toy vehicles with dead industrialists trapped inside.

Oh yeah and Dr. Butcher himself, Donald O'Brien, is in this!

A lot of folks hate on this movie and for really poor reasons. This is the very best kind of trash, a movie blessed with great poster art and the worst in special effects. These people are morons that don't understand the wonder of a film that has high budget dreams and bottom basement budget realities.

Writer Mario di Nardo also wrote another astonishing film, the revenge picture by way of slasher grossout Ricco AKA Cauldron of Death and one of the best giallo films ever, The Fifth Cord, as well as Five Dolls for an August Moon. He was joined by Marcello Coscia on the screenplay, who also wrote Mission Bloody Mary, A Quiet Place to Kill, When Women Lost Their Tails, The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue and Tex and the Lords of the Deep. There was some talent here, at least in the script.

Director Gianfranco Parolini went from writing peblum films to the scripts for all three Sabata movies and God's Gun. His directing resume has some decent stuff on it as well, including several of the Kommisar X films, If You Meet Sartana...Pray for Your Death and The Fury of Hercules. He also produced this film. Again, he had a record of producing solid work, but I think they shot too high and paid the price.

And by paid the price, I mean made a movie that completely entertained me for its entire running time.

*According to Wikipedia, Jessica Harper (yes, from Suspiria) is the voice of Jane. This seems way too good to be true.

**Kendall and O'Brien are dubbed by Ted Rusoff, the son of screenwriter Lou Rusoff and nephew to B-movie titan Samuel Z. Arkoff. He relocated to Italy to dub movies - where he met and married Carolyn De Fonseca - and you can hear his voice in movies like Voyage Into Space, Deep Red and The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh.

Most yeti pictures are fatally undermined by a grave paucity of energy and enthusiasm. Not so this gloriously bent, batty and berserk over-the-top Italian-made shot-in-Canada kitsch gut-buster: It's a wildly ripe and vigorously moronic ghastly marvel which reaches a stunning apotheosis of righteously over-baked "what the hell's going on?" crackpot excess and inanity.

A freighter ship crew discovers the body of a 30-foot yeti that resembles a hirsute 70's disco stud (complete with jumbo wavy afro) perfectly preserved in a large chunk of ice. They dethaw the beast, jolt him back to life with electric charges, grossly mistreat him, and keep the poor hairy Goliath in an enormous glass booth. Before you can say "Hey, the filmmakers are obviously ripping off 'King Kong'," our titanic abominable snowdude breaks free of his cage, grabs the first luscious nubile blonde Euro vixen (the gorgeous Pheonix Grant) he lays lustful eyes on, and storms away with his new lady love. The yeti gets recaptured and flown to Toronto to be showed off to a gawking audience. Of course, he breaks free again, nabs the vixen, and goes on the expected stomping around the city rampage.

The sublimely stupid dialogue (sample line: "Philosophy has no place in science, professor"), cheesy (far from) special effects (the horrendous transparent blue screen work and cruddy Tonka toy miniatures are especially uproarious in their very jaw-dropping awfulness), clunky (mis)direction, and a heavy-handed script that even attempts a clumsily sincere "Is the yeti a man or a beast?" ethical debate all combine together to create one of the single most delightfully ridiculous giant monster flicks to ever roar its absurd way across the big screen. Better still, we also have a few funky offbeat touches to add extra shoddy spice to the already succulently schlocky cinematic brew: the vixen accidentally brushes against one of the yeti's nipples, which causes it to harden and elicits a big, leering grin of approval from the lecherous behemoth (!); the vixen nurses the yeti's wounded hand while he makes goo-goo eyes at her, the yeti smashes windows with his feet while climbing a towering office building, and the furry fellow even breaks a man's neck with his toes (!!). Overall, this singularly screwball and shamefully unheralded should-be camp classic stands tall as a remarkable monolith of infectiously asinine celluloid lunacy that's eminently worthy of a substantial hardcore underground cult following.