Snowbeast (1977)

Plot Outline: A Colorado ski resort is terrorised by a giant animal, which a group of people in the town believe to be Bigfoot. Skiers are turning up dead but with the town's festival just around the corner, the supervisor of the resort wants to keep it open otherwise they will lose their only source of income.

The Review: Jaws kick started the killer monster flick craze of the late 70s/early 80s and many of these cheap rip-offs involved land-based creatures. Here the poor abominable snowman is picked on and given a make-over to become a crazed killing machine. The only problem is you don't actually get a good look at the creature at all in the whole film - just a load of POV shots and a monster glove used for attack scenes. In fact it could be argued that the monster of the title is in fact a POV shot because it seems that's what most of the cast are killed by! It's really slow and plodding, even when the monster is supposed to be lurking around. There's absolutely no tension built up before a kill and the film freezes and turns red when someone dies - it was made for TV and this is presumably the ad break moment. But watching it as a full feature film, this gets extremely annoying quickly. Based around the classic Jaws formula of "monster attacks small town with a big festival/event of some kind approaching in which the town must be kept open to survive economically," this one spews out the rest of the clichés associated with such a film including the killing of a creature everyone thinks is the killer but isn't, the local officials who refuse to believe the stories, the group of random people pitched together to kill the monster and many more. The cast don't do too badly with what they have to work with but they can't be held responsible for really terrible writing.

Final Verdict: Snowbeast doesn't sound particularly thrilling and there is a big reason for that - it's not! It's a dull, lifeless film which offers very little and demands too much (in the way of the time you'll waste watching it). Play spot the cliché with it if you want, just don't bring it near me again.

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