Rating: **
Review Date: 3/23/25
Director: David Allen
Music: Richard Band
Cast: Juliet Mills, Richard Joseph Paul, Leon Russom, Walker Brandt,
Tai Thai
"The beast in the soul of man. A legacy they were powerless to overcome."
A rampaging yeti is killed in Nepal, and a young scientist manages to sneak its corpse out of the country. Analysis of the creature reveals some startling discoveries, and a small expedition is formed to try and capture a live specimen. Somewhat comically, the woefully unprepared team consists of a college professor (Juliet Mills), two anthropology students (Richard Joseph Paul and Walker Brandt), a big game hunter (Leon Russom), and a Nepalese guide (Tai Thai). In the Himalayan mountains, they discover a temperate lost world, where primitive prehistoric creatures exist. They also discover an alien spacecraft and deduce that the extraterrestrial visitors were conducting genetic experiments on local lifeforms, and things got out of control. Ultimately, the crew gets captured by the cruel and mutated aliens, and have to fight to survive.
Originally slated to be released in 1980, it was repeatedly postponed due to lack of funds. The film was finally greenlit in 1994, which was when all of the principal photography was shot. Unfortunately, the film got shelved again, and director David Allen died of cancer before he could complete all of the stop-motion animation effects. In 2019, the film was resurrected by a crowd funding campaign to finish the remaining visual effects and assemble a final edit.
The film promises all of the charm of a Jules Verne adventure or a Ray Harryhausen fantasy, but ends up a bit lacking. The dialog is cringey, the acting is a little flat, and the contemporary setting doesn't do the story any favors. While these are all staples of low budget genre films, the biggest disappointment is the visual effects, which is the main reason you watch these kinds of films in the first place. That said, the stop-motion animation is very good - almost too good. It lacks the typical jerkiness and strobing effects of the technique, and looks like some digital technology was employed to smooth out the movement. Also, unlike Ray Harryhausen's work, the animated characters are digitally composited with the live action, which ends up cheapening the overall look. Other digital composites and effects make the film look more modern than it should, which ultimately just makes it look bad. On the plus side, Richard Band's music score is excellent.
I really wanted to like this film, but it disappointed me at every turn. Even so, it's an innocuous piece of family-friendly fantasy entertainment as well as a time capsule for a dying art form. I guess I set my expectations too high.