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...
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...