Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century (1977)

It's easy to forget now the level of hype that surrounded the release of Dino Di Laurentis' remake of King Kong in 1976.  Especially when the film itself is seen today, with its variable special effects, particularly the man-in-a-suit Kong who strides around some large scale miniatures pretending to be New York, (ducking behind a building to hide from the US Army at one point - a sequence which still makes me laugh).  Yet it was a huge financial success, meaning that cheap imitations were inevitable.  One such was 1977's Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century, a Canadian shot Italian production, made on a fraction of King Kong's budget - and it shows.  Like Kong, the titular creature is discovered and exploited by an oil company, develops a crush on the female lead, scales a skyscraper, faces off against helicopters and saves the heroine from peril.  The titular beast is also portrayed by a man in a suit, well, sort of - it isn't a full suit, as the actor's hirsute face can be seen, (allowing him to emote far more economically than Kong - who required a complex mask operated by cables in order to change expression - did).  He sports a magnificent mane of hair, which he is prone to play with, like a love sick teenage school girl, as he shoots coy glances at the object of his fascination.  The yeti, (who is portrayed as some kind of giant primitive hominid), is inserted into the action mainly via some very shaky green screen work, backed up with some miniature props, his size seemingly varying from scene to scene.  As in the 1976  film, he breaks free in the city when being exhibited (and startled by the flash bulbs of press photographers).  He even has a scene similar to the fore mentioned one in King Kong, when he hides from the police, this time by ducking between two buildings.  

In a fascinating parallel with the 1976 film, the end credits even include mention of the crew responsible for a giant mechanical yeti - part of the hype for King Kong was that the title character was to be portrayed by a giant animatronic ape.  In reality, of course, this contraption didn't work and - apart from one blink and you'll miss it appearance - it is Rick Baker and his ape suit portraying Kong for the majority of the film.  The only other times we see anything of the mechanical Kong are when we see his giant hands picking up Jessica Lange, or his giant feet in a few scenes.  I can only assume a similar situation in Yeti - if such a complete mechanical prop ever really existed, then it isn't seen in the film, with only a pair of giant hands featuring in some scenes, (a giant nipple is also seen, to be fair, becoming erect when the heroine's hand brushes it).  But while Yeti is clearly closely modelled on King Kong, there are some significant differences - the skyscraper scene isn't the film's climax and the creature isn't eventually gunned down by authorities, instead being allowed to vanish back into the wilds.  Most significantly, the film inserts a set of villains into the film separate from the original oil company that found the creature frozen in Arctic ice and thawed him out.  A consortium of their rivals hire the oil company's own trouble shooter to head up a gang of heavies, with the aim of ensuring the Yeti is destroyed and the oil company blamed for the mayhem it creates.  To this end, they frame the creature for the killing of the scientist looking after him, but this backfires when the heroine and her brother overhear their scheming and they decide to eliminate them.  The Yeti turns up to save the girl from being raped, but she's still kidnapped by the villains, with the Yeti finally confronting them (and the RCMP - the budget apparently didn't stretch to hiring the Canadian Armed Forces) on a remote hill top.

As can be gathered, Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century is a typically ramshackle King Kong knock off, with shaky special effects, threadbare production values and some utterly ludicrous dialogue, ('Go away Yeti - this world is not for you').  Yet time has given the film a certain nostalgic charm.  The special effects are reminiscent of seventies Dr Who, or even seventies British kids film Digby, The Biggest Dog in the World.  Indeed, watching Yeti you get the impression that its target audience might have been kids - the heroine is in her teens and her brother younger (they are the orphaned grand children of the head of the oil company), for instance and the Yeti himself, in appearance and character, seems designed to be child friendly.  Moreover, the brother even has a Lassie look-a-like dog that, toward the climax, seems to have sacrificed itself to save its master when it takes a knife for the boy, yet miraculously turns up again at the end, seemingly have walked miles with a serious wound in order to be reunited with the kid.  At the same time, some of the film's incidents - the attempted rape of the girl or the Yeti breaking a bad guy's neck between his prehensile toes, for example - seem unsuitable for a picture aimed at children.  It has to be said that the heroine, played by sixteen year old Antonella Interlenghi (billed as 'Phoenix Grant') is probably the best thing about the film - strikingly attractive, she manages to keep a straight face throughout proceedings, despite the indignities heaped upon her character.  One time Euro-spy star Tony Kendall (he was Kommissar X in the long running series) is probably the most familiar cast member, portraying the trouble shooter turned bad who eventually gets stamped on by the Yeti.  In what appears to be a sly dig at the marketing hype surrounding the Di Laurentis King Kong, Yeti includes a scene highlighting the oil company's exploitation of the Yeti with all manner of merchandising, such as Yeti dolls.  

The film ends on a poignant note: as the theme song 'Yeti' (performed by 'The Yetians') plays, we see the creature back in the frozen Arctic wastes where he was found, the same stock footage of an ice floe collapsing which opened the movie playing on the back projection behind him, as he looks around wistfully, perhaps hoping that a lady Yeti might be freed.  See, there is an upside to global warming after all - if you are a lovelorn Yeti seeking love, that is.