Half Human: The Story of the Abominable Snowman |
USA / Japan • 1958 • 63m •
   • Directed by: Kenneth G. Crane, Ishirô Honda. • Starring: John Carradine, Momoko Kôchi, Akira Takarada, Akemi Negishi, Russell Thorson, Robert Karnes, Sachio Sakai, Nobuo Nakamura, Kokuten Kôdô, Morris Ankrum, Kenji Kasahara..      Japanese villagers worship a monster and his son who live in an island cave. Some circus people hear about them, go to the island to capture the monster and wind up shooting its son. Then the trouble starts.
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Review:
Originally clocking in at 98 minutes. Since this version is only 70 minutes long - including scenes with John Carradine as Dr. John Rayburn chain-smoking as he informs a couple of guys in big suits that a scrap of human-seeming hair the Yeti left behind means he was probably the Missing Link (after which Morris Ankrum briefly drops by to perform an autopsy on a Yeti cadaver) - only about half the original film can have made it into this American version; and not a word of Japanese is heard throughout the entire film.
What remains anticipates the Dyatlav Pass incident of 1959; but that already makes it sound more interesting than it actually is. The original is hard to see since Toho shelved the film following protests from the Ainu (the native residents of the northernmost Japanese island) at the way they were portrayed in it; but if these are the highlights that doesn't bode well. The original photography and decor - especially of the village were the locals worship the Yeti as a god - are quite interesting; but the yeti itself - which resembles a cross between the Moon Monster in 'Doctor X' and the Cowardly Lion in 'The Wizard of Oz' - isn't onscreen for very long. So the missing footage is probabably exposition and expedition.
Review by richardchatten from the Internet Movie Database.
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