Yeti: The Giant of the 20th Century (1977)

After a young boy, Herbie Hunnicut (Jim Sullivan), discovers a giant yeti frozen in a block of ice, scientists thaw out the creature (using flamethrowers!) and bring it back to life. The boy's grandfather, businessman Morgan (Edoardo Faieta), sees an opportunity to use the creature to promote his companies, but controlling the yeti proves tricky, even after Herbie and his older sister Jane (Antonella Interlenghi) befriend the beast.A really lame Italian monster movie designed to ride the coat-tails of the '76 King Kong remake, Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century is cheap and trashy nonsense, providing zero in the way of genuine thrills, but quite a few unintentional laughs. The yeti itself, played by Mimmo Crao, looks like a massive Dave Lee Travis, roars like Godzilla when angered, and changes size significantly from scene to scene. Herbie is extremely irritating despite not being able to talk. His intelligent friend Indio is also annoying despite being a dog. I will cut Jane some slack for being very easy on the eye (although her propensity for rubbing yeti nipple is more than a little disturbing).The crappy plot sees the ape-man go on a minor rampage after being frightened by photographers' flashes, escaping from the police despite being huge and hard to hide, and opening a can of yeti whoop-ass when some nasty men kill the kindly scientist who has been caring for the creature.Clearly aimed at the whole family (although the sight of Indio being stabbed by the baddies might disturb some kiddies), the film foregoes a King Kong-style tragic ending for a much happier one: the yeti gets to disappear into the wilderness, and Indio appears, running into Herbie's arms having miraculously recovered from his seemingly fatal wound.

Here's another movie that should be loaded into a satellite, fired into space and pointed in the direction of the galaxy Andromeda to show distant possible civilizations the best of humanity. This movie is so endearingly stupid and revealingly honest in being little more than a rip-off of the already bad movie classic KING KONG from 1976 that it not only manages to upstage that film in terms of sheer belly laugh idiotic goofiness, but successfully predicted much of Peter Jackson's miserable 2005 computer cartoon bearing the same name, as far as a "romance" between the giant (here a Yeti) and a gorgeous human female (Antonellina Interlenghi of Umberto Lenzi's CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, who is very easy on the eyes).The film was made for kids so aside from some innuendo over fish bones and a bizarre nipple tweak to say goodbye you can forget about sex -- the Yeti even has a sort of giant jock strap to cover up his monstrous package, the result being even more amusing than anatomical correctness. But as a trade-off you DO get a wacky old scientist, two inquisitive kids, Tony Kendall in a rare turn as a duplicitous bastard of a villain, a helpful intelligent collie dog who gets to have her own adventure (Dog Adventure movies were big in Europe for a while) and of course emerges as the hero at the end for saving the Yeti, who turns out to be the good guy, glorious stuff like front end loaders decorated to look like giant ape hands, a monster who's size literally changes scale from shot to shot, some inappropriately horrible deaths that will make the carnage in GODZILLA VS THE SMOG MONSTER look tame by comparison, crowd reaction shots a-plenty made up of either Spanish, Italian or Canadian extras depending upon scene (you can sort of tell where they were shooting from how the extras are dressed), and some of the most enthusiastically staged but inept special effects work ever in a giant monkey movie.It's here that the film won me over: It's enthusiasm just for being made. Frank Kramer is actually the same Gianfranco Parolini who brought the world SARTANA in 1968 and GOD'S GUN the year before this & was a very important director in the Spaghetti Western and action/adventure genre film scene from the 1960's/1970's and by the time of YETI he was probably delighted to get the work. I would say that this is his most adventuresome movie ever, or rather the one he took the most chances with, and may have felt more comfortable taking those chances with the film aimed at kids & families. The movie has a kind of reckless abandon to the way it was made that renders the technical errors or inconsistencies totally meaningless. Or rather they are part of the fun, and if the movie had been played seriously it wouldn't have worked -- WHICH IS EXACTLY WHY PETER JACKSON'S MOVIE SUCKED. He forgot to have fun with the material and let it dictate the outcome using his army of stupid Power Macintosh pod people animators, and with all it's faults + clunkiness, Kramer's YETI is actually closer to the spirit of why we watch movies like this, which is partly to see actors in ape suits tearing apart miniature sets on sound stages, not seamlessly animated vapid hours of nothing other than hard drive space. I'd rank this up there with KING KONG VERSUS GODZILLA and IT! CURSE OF THE GREAT GOLEM as one of the most enjoyably improbable giant rampaging monster movies ever. Because the movie looks so "fake" you can get over the story and just have fun watching stuff get wrecked, trampled, tossed about and smashed. Knowing that and armed with a fertile, energetic enthusiasm for having the chance to make the movie, Parolini pulled out all the stops and delivers a full bodied adventure that might get a bit rough for some of the small tykes but is the first movie I will ever share with the grandkids someday when their stupid parents leave them with me for a weekend. This is stuff for the ages and one of the most telling expressions of humanity to ever be committed to celluloid.10/10, it's about ten minutes too long but who cares, you only come around once and I'd rather go out with a smile on my face.

Others have said it already, but this is definitely one to check out. I bought an English version of this from some guy in Brazil (subtitled in Portuguese), but I saw it several times before on Saturday afternoon TV (Captain USA really did it up when he showed this -- even singing the Yeti song during the breaks!) My favorite things about Yeti:He looks like a hippie -- coincidence?He keeps changing in size -- hanging under the helicopter, he appears to be about 10 feet tall. Later, laying on his back in the warehouse, his foot is about 10 feet long! Great movie line -- listen for the background extra during the Toronto rampage scene who yells, "Look out! He's got a tree!"It turns into a crime movie -- honestly, I never saw it coming.So check this one out -- you'll never look at fish bones without thinking of the Yeti!

Very poorly dubbed Italian babe befriends unfrozen Giant.This 1977 film is a director's tour de farce. It is one of the worst films ever made. Finding that out was a sublime pleasure which only z-movie afficianados can appreciate. The only reason that this film hasn't been on MST3K yet is that they would probably be rendered speechless. Nothing need be added to keep the laughs coming.I hardly know what else to say. You will be literally dazed by the less than special effects, crappy storyline, and bad sets which make up the crazy world of YETI!