The Snow Creature (1954) - Yeti schlock from the inferior Wilder

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Sensationalist, oblong poster for W. Lee Wilder's The Snow Creature

The Snow Creature is a low-budget-horror flick about a botanical expedition to the Himalayas that gets derailed by a snow creature's abduction of the wife of one of the Sherpas. The mission of the group alters, and they succeed in capturing the Yeti and bring it back to Los Angeles, where, of course, it breaks loose.
Crudely modeled over Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's classic King Kong (1933), - pretty obvious for instance on the poster above, in which the creature resembles Kong, (and is far larger than in the film, where it is merely a tall man in a furry costume), - Snow Creature is said to be the first film about a Yeti.
This is, however, not enough to lift it out of its secure position as a cinema turkey. None of the characters are established well, and the story is handled without much ability or importance. Instead, Creature features vast amounts of boring, long shots of people simply walking in the mountains. The creature is hidden from view for as long as possible, but when we do get glimpses of it, it is also a dud: The costume is very poorly accomplished and won't scare most audiences.
The film isn't terrible in its acting, merely boring. It features Paul Langton (The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)) as the botanist leader Frank Parrish. As the creature breaks out in the big city, it descends to the sewer system, shot in the LA drain system, and this proves an atmospheric, scary location. The scenes down there are the best thing about Snow Creature.
Its script is by Myles Wilder (The Dukes of Hazzard (1979-85)), the son of the director, and it poses - together with the poor monster - the biggest obstacle for the film: The Western leads are pretty unsympathetic: In the field, they ridicule the locale's belief in the Yeti, until enough evidence shows them that they are wrong, whereby they refuse the man of the abducted woman to shoot the monster. Instead they capture it and bring it back to civilization, where it breaks loose and kills more people, whereupon they finally SPOILER kill it themselves.
The last scene is pretty weird, and awful: The male leads talk in a car after the monster kill, about naming one of their kids after each other. The end. Awful film, really.

Click to enlarge this over-selling poster for W. Lee Wilder's The Snow Creature

The details:

The film is directed by W. Lee Wilder (The Man Without a Body (1957)) from Austria-Hungary (now Poland), whose younger brother was the famous, great American director Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard (1950)). The two were estranged for many years, and Billy Wilder once described his older brother as "a dull son of a bitch."
Without obviously knowing any of them personally, but only judging by their films, Billy Wilder may have been correct. Certainly The Snow Creature is not a match for even the poorest of W. Lee's brother Billy Wilder's movies.

In lieu of a trailer, here you can see 3 minutes of the film, in which the Yeti is revealed and captured

Budget: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown

What do you think of W. Lee Wilder's pictures, (if you have seen any)?
Do you know anything of the enmity between the film-making Wilder brothers?

The Adventures of Tintin - all 3 seasons (1991-92) - The animated Tintin series for everyone

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Tintin and Snowy always on the run to report and solve mysteries

Reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy traverse the globe in pursuit of stories and injustices to solve, report and shed light on.  

 

The Adventures of Tintin is a French/Canadian co-production TV-series of Belgian comic book author Hergé's beloved Tintin comics, which he wrote and drew from 1929 until his death in 1983.
The animation in the series is far from being terribly sophisticated, - in fact, it is nearly over-simplified and may seem unambitious, - but, most importantly, it is very faithful and near to Hergé's style in his comic books. It was also done at a time when digital shortcuts were mostly not around to help the animators out.
The show is funny and directed more towards children than the comic books necessarily were with several sensitive contents toned down or left out. There is always mortal danger, - but no one ever dies, (unlike in the comics, where there's also more drinking, violence and politically incorrect racial aspects.) Tintin's luck is sometimes ridiculous, but then again, it's a show mainly for children. Still, I find that adults can still enjoy Tintin's mysterious adventures all over the world (and beyond) swimmingly.
The voices (English version) are good and done with obvious love for the universe of the comics.
The series' director Stéphane Bernasconi has previously story-boarded on other animated series like Babar (1989) and produced other childrens' shows like the animated The NeverEnding Story (1995-1996).
In the last episode of Tintin, a Latin American revolution is introduced, actually fairly detailed and well-balanced. This is a merit of Tintin's formidable, cultural aspects; it conveys actual learning to future members of our world society about different countries and cultures.
Unfortunately, both the Soviet and the Congo adventures are missing in the series, both for political reasons in the hope of averting hysterical outcries.
Still, The Adventures of Tintin is a very good animated family adventure series.

Best episodes:

Episode 7: The Shooting Star

Judgment Day-dreams, absurdism and a maritime race. Followed by the episode that finally introduces Captain Haddock, who is an amusing addition along with Professor Calculus later on.

Episode 14 and 15: Destination Moon/Explorers on the Moon

 

The best in the series, both exciting, anxiety-provoking and really funny.

Episode 18: Tintin in Tibet

Another high-point, this episode is about the search for Tintin's Chinese friend Chang in the cold Tibet mountains. - With a yeti!

Episode 20: Flight 714

Also incredibly exciting: About a plane crash, the series' grand villain Rastapopoulos and UFO's!

What do you think of The Adventures of Tintin?