Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon (2008)

A plane carrying an American college football team crashes in the Himalayan Alps, killing half the passengers. The few survivors find that there is almost no chance of rescuers finding their position so two of them head off to find the plane's spare radio, which is some distance away. As their food supply is severely limited, they are forced to ration their food to last for the next couple of days. Time passes & their food runs out. They are then racked with debate over whether to use the bodies of their dead teammates as food to survive. But that is not the least of their troubles – once night falls, they discover that they are not alone – a yeti is roaming the area, intent on feeding itself.In the past few years, there has been a rise in the number of cheap B-grade monster films, many of which use ridiculous ideas like crossbred animals like Piranhaconda, or insane yet ingenious ideas that no normal A-grade studio would even entertain, like Ghost Shark & the recent Asylum-made Sharknado phenomenon of late.Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon is a production by American World Pictures, a B-grade studio specialising in cheap genre-related action & monster films. The director for this project is Paul Ziller, who had earlier done the likes of the cheap generic action film Bloodfist IV: Die Trying starring Don "The Dragon" Wilson as a repo man taking on terrorists. Also making their presence felt is Ona Grauer, an actress who had starred in Uwe Boll's craptacular adaptation of House of the Dead.For the first half-hour Yeti seems like a reasonable & in parts interesting disaster film where a team of football players crash-land in the Himalayan Alps & are forced to make brutal decisions in order to survive. While the actors don't always convince of their characters' motivations (Adam O'Byrne, who reminds me of the Australian politician Bill Shorten & is just as slimy as his lookalike is), they tackle their roles with sincerity, making the drama intriguing.But once the monster reappears (it had showed up in a pointless prologue that takes all the mystery out of the film), the film reverts to a standard monster movie. The Yeti is depicted by a reasonably convincing suit & some cheap CGI, making itself into a decent threat & a passable monster. But the story has some lagging plot holes & some of the action set-pieces don't always convince. The Yeti manages to survive being shot, speared & set on fire, finally being dropped to its death in an improbable climax. The epilogue, showing that one of the 'dead' characters is still alive, only to fall victim to another Yeti in the area, is also pointless & detracts from the film. Ziller manages to keep the action going but his mediocre directing skills hurt the film's chances of making a good impression. A once-over for monster movie fans.

This plane-crash creature feature is fun to watch simply to count the Things People Would Never Do. For instance: 1. Search for matches when several fires are already burning 2. Leave clothes on dead bodies when live ones are freezing 3. Use one of 12 matches per day to start a fire and then let it go out at night These football jocks and their support staff are not scripted as stupid, but their actions prove otherwise. In fact, this bunch couldn't survive in a New York City snow storm, let alone the Himalayas. Of course, maybe the setting is supposed to be an alternate-universe Himalayas. I mean, the ground isn't so frozen that the characters can't dig a deep pit while the creature is asleep. (And would people really do this to trap a monster that can jump like a giant flea?) Most of the actors give this silliness their best effort, which only serves to make the on- the-cheap yeti costume and CGI more glaringly chintzy. The action does move along, and the incongruities never cease. So, sitting through this off-the-wall offering doesn't really have to be a curse.

Ed Wood is either still alive or has been reincarnated to make hilariously bad movies for the Syfy channel. This movie is so bad, that it's great. A 747 flying from the USA to play in Japan somehow mysteriously ends up flying over the Himalayas. Anyway, we see a plane crash which is a direct copy of the crash in 'Alive', and a group of survivors dressed in jeans and T shirts wandering about looking for means to start a fire, all despite the fact there's wreckage still burning all around them. The Himalaya search team consists of a man and woman, both Americans, being dropped off, while their helicopter flies off and doesn't join in the search. The Yetis manage to combine limping along with 40 foot leaps, all while carrying off the dead, or the female lead. Rabbits being harpooned (standard issue on this flight). A poor pilot who is clearly dying, but shaken awake so violently that he would likely die of that instead. Great to see that the searchers took along a couple of Glocks, just in case. This movie is a must see, just for the most ridiculous final 20 minutes when the survivors battle the yeti's, and to see someone beaten to death with their own leg.

As a pointless opening scene shows, yetis roam the Himalayas frequently, killing whoever trespasses on the mountain. Actually I suspect said scene existed just for showing the monster right away since that's what happens too often in films like this. Actually the main cast starts out on their flight to Japan which crashes shortly afterwards.The monster doesn't actually do too much on screen during the early stages of the film although the characters while not exactly deep are at least charismatic.American World Pictures may be one of the better companies commission to produce movies for Syfy since their three or so films (this, Lost Colony and Pterodactyl) are pretty entertaining although not terribly memorable.