Only in glorious Italy, my friends.Only in Italy.On several occasions in the past, we've examined several Jaws rip-off paroxysms from the boot, but tonight, we'll be looking at a King Kong rip-off instead, a mediterranean movie miscarriage so farcically inept, it almost makes the turgid-budgeted 1976 DeLaurentiis remake seem exceptional in comparison.Overseeing the project from the director's chair was Gianfranco Parolini, whose previous spaghetti western and sword and sandal credits included the impressive Sabata(1969), Adios Sabata(1971), and La furia di Ercole(1962), and who duplicated DeLaurentiis' construction of a massive and expensive animatronic robot that ends up seeing precious little screen time in the finished product.Instead, Parolini enlists Italian television actor Mimmo Crao to portray the titular snowman, who kind of looks like E.L.O. frontman Jeff Lynne circa the On the Third Day(1973) album, wearing only spirit-gummed crepe wool and a smile.The entire production is plagued with ubiquitous hokey movie scientifics and ineffective blue screen effects, where the yeti(who's got his own horrible, dated disco theme, as performed by the Yetians, mind you)can be anywhere from ten to a thousand feet tall, depending on the shot composition.Continuity?We don't need no stinkin' continuity.Add a supporting cast of bad dialogue-spewing comic book characters, headed by Antonella Interlenghi, who would later turn up as a teenaged teleporting flesh-chewer in Lucio Fulci's Paura nella città dei morti viventi(1980), and who really shoulda known better here, to be honest.Can't blame her for going by the screen name 'Phoenix Grant' on this one.More embarrassingly bad than those checked polyester curtain pants my parents had the balls to dress me in towards the end of the seventies, and though pictures of those babies may have thankfully disappeared over time, prints of this cinematic eyesore are still out there, floating around, and causing riotous unintentional laughter among the audiences ridiculous enough to sit through it, your humble narrator included.Onwards!
"He is sooo big, the man of snow.But he won't harm you, the yeee-tiii!"Come on, you know the words, people.
After watching some modestly impressive stock footage of glacial ice breaking off and being carried off into the sea, we meet Professor Wasserman(John Stacy), who's asked by an industrialist named Hunnicut(Eddie Faye) to head off an expedition to the coast of Newfoundland to humanely study the enigmatic Yeti(Mimmo Crao), discovered lodged in a capacious chunk of ice."An avalanche probably caught him while he was sleeping on the ice millions of years ago...then perhaps an earthquake caused the ice to break up and fall into the Arctic Ocean.", surmizes the professor, while Hunnicut declares the frozen fella to be the new Hunnicut Enterprises trademark, since nothing says 1970's multi-national corporation like an ice-encrusted crypto-hominid giant, really.Hunnicut's grandkids, Jane(Antonella Interlenghi) and her effeminate mute brother, Herbie, also oversee 'Operation Yeti', which, after extensive flamethrowers melt the bulk of the outer layers of ice off of the snowman, escalates to packing him into a massive plexiglas phone booth as towed by helicopter to 10,000 feet, where he can thaw the rest of the way, and comfortably at that, at the altitude of his native Himalayas.After several obvious shots of a model helicopter flying with a miniature yeti doll hanging below, the missing link grumpily awakens from his million year slumber with a booming scream that almost knocks his toy airlift out of the sky.Back on terra firma, Yeti breaks the fuck out like the shingles to the stupefaction of onlooking media types and lab coats in attendance, carrying off Jane and Herbie into the Canadian wilderness in the process.Jane's touch gives the Yeti an erect nipple(!), and he repays her by catching fish for them to eat, while Herbie's collie, Indio, trots off to find the professor.When he arrives, he sees the yeti using fish bones to comb Jane's hair while she uses hairspray to tend to the beast's wounds."Yeti, come!", she says, and the big lug bats his eyelashes at her flirtingly, apparently comprehending a language like English perfectly already.Phew...
Put it on a hanger right next to your "I'm With Stupid" tee in the nostalgia closet.
Not wasting a moment, Hunnicut launches a huge publicity campaign, consisting of cheap iron-on "Kiss Me Yeti" t-shirts and drivers refueling their vehicles being encouraged to "Put a Yeti in your tank and you'll have giant power!".In Toronto, Yeti is greeted by a parade(cue:awful disco theme), then makes his media debut atop one of Hunnicut's hotels where paparazzi flashbulbs whip him into a Kong-style frenzy where the ensuing chaos traps Jane in a glass observation elevator, which Yeti plays with like a yo-yo(!) by yanking the cables from above, before saving her from plummetting to her demise and strolling off through the city streets with the girl(or an unreasonable toy facsimile thereof) in his massive mitt.“If the Yeti doesn’t get oxygen within the next ten minutes he’ll die!”, Wasserman surmises, before being beaten to death by a couple of thugs paid by one of Hunnicut's rivals(Tony Kendall) in front of the Yeti's eyes, as he's ducked into a warehouse away from the local police force.Not content to stomp these bastards, Yeti uses his toes to strangle one of the men instead(!!).Herbie is held at gunpoint(Who's he going to tell, the kid's a mute, remember?) and his dog Indio is shanked while trying to guard the children.Yeti smashes through the warehouse wall just as the head baddie is about to C.T.F.O. Jane, forcing him to drive off with Herbie as a hostage.Yeti throws trees and boulders to nullify the other goons in cars, and scares the final carload of cohorts into falling off a cliff(!!!).After rescuing Herbie, he's attacked by a construction crane(or a Tonka-produced facsimile thereof) which he flips over, finally putting the fatal boot, extra large-style, to the last evildoer."This world is not for you. Go back to the wilderness, to the mountains, where life is like you knew it.”, Jane tells the Yeti, who sheds a single tear as he lumbers off into the forest as a bark is heard in the distance.You guessed it, Indio pulled through, afterall, and the movie ends with the boy and his dog running at each other in slow motion like a couple of love-smitten fools.Somebody fetch me a bucket.
"Eh!C'è ne di voi leccapiedi quello è giù là hanno soldi per il telefono?"
Recorded off of a late Saturday night television broadcast on Channel 29(shoulda left the eighties commercials in, might have been more entertaining), as evidenced by the tracking problems in the screencaps, and ripped to dvd, I'm sure my copy of this epic failure could be upgraded by now with a Pal region special edition or some such nonsense, but I'd rather spend my dough on smokes, choice hallucinogenics, or rad inked up women of low moral fiber at this point.I know how to live, motherfuckers.Asie from the aforementioned titles, Parolini also directed things like Diamante Lobo(1975), È tornato Sabata... hai chiuso un'altra volta(1971), and Se incontri Sartana prega per la tua morte(1968).In fact, eleven years would pass before he took the chair again after this movie, and that adventure, Alla ricerca dell'impero sepolto(1988), would be his last to date.Interlenghi would keep busy throughout the eighties, in fare like La Cage aux Folles 3: The Wedding(1985), but most recently appeared in an Italian television mini-series a few years ago.Crau, who would appear as Thaddeus in the Jesus of Nazareth mini-series the same year, has also enjoyed extended success on Italian television ever since.Let's hope he's gotten a haircut and put some clothes on in the years that followed.Kendall, born Luciano Stella, scored genre credits in movies like The Whip and the Body(1963), El ataque de los muertos sin ojos for Amando De Ossorio in 1973, and Las garras de Lorelei the following year.On the scale, Yeti's a one Wopper all the way, but as you can probably tell, it makes for pretty entertaining one-off viewing under the right circumstances.
"Lynyrd who just crashed a Convair CV-300 into my sauce bag??!!".
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