Half Human: The Story of the Abominable Snowman (1958)

Certainly, the original Japanese filming is masterful, and the conversations between the three Americans could have been less stilted, but the cut-up is fine and the more the story unfolds the more you realize that the narration actually works very well. To enjoy this movie, just try not to be offended on behalf of legendary filmmakers and enjoy a good, atmospheric story told in an interesting way.

HALF HUMAN was originally a Japanese monster flick from Toho before US distributors got their hands on it and proceeded to mutilate it. In doing so, they exercised about half of the original footage, added in a sappy voice-over narration, and included lots of extraneous scenes with American actors.I'm a fan of John Carradine but he has a nothing role as the desk-bound professor. Obviously this kind of cut-and-paste nonsense had worked with GODZILLA - another film directed by Ishiro Honda - but it's a waste of time here, because the viewer only gets the occasional glimpse of goodness from the original Japanese footage. I won't attempt to review that here, only to say that there's a lot of action and incident, and the Yeti costume looks great; I hope to track down the original film at some point to check it out properly.

Half Human (1957) ** (out of 4) Scientist John Carradine tells the story of how an abominable snowman was killed in Japan. As was the case with Godzilla, the producer's of this film bought the rights to the Japanese film Ju jin Yuki Otoko (1955), cut out around an hour and then added some twenty minutes worth of footage dealing with Carradine. This is certainly a cut and paste hack job but sadly Toho pulled the original film so it's nearly impossible to see outside of this movie. The American footage is all rather silly but it's always fun seeing Carradine and he has a good voice for narration. The Japanese segment of the film makes me really want to see the original movie because there's some nice, intense moments including the first encounter with the Yeti. I've seen countless films on the Yeti but the costumes here are the greatest I've ever seen. The monster actually looks real, which makes this entertaining enough.

"Half Human" was one of a handful of 50's monster horror flicks made about the Abominable Snowman. Although it's a marginal improvement over the abysmal "Snow Creature," it's alas still no great shakes as a movie. Once more an expedition into the treacherous snowy mountains stumbles across the yeti and its offspring. They also discover a primitive society who worship the yeti ala the backwoods Bigfoot cult in the infamous sanguinary Sasquatch splatter hoot "Night of the Demon." Unfortunately, the hack American distributors who released this film in the States produced a severely truncated and oversimplified version of this Japanese-made item (it was done by Toho Studios, the same outfit responsible for "Godzilla," which coincidentally was also drastically recut for American release). They chopped out 30 minutes and replaced 'em with cheap-looking, frustratingly needless and useless insert filler sequences starring the ever-desperate John Carradine (in his first and probably least humiliating of three Sasquatch cinema gigs) along with fellow washed-up has-been character actor Morris Ankrum. The sequences with Carradine and Ankrum are acted and directed with all the skill and flair of a first grade elementary school play, thus draining all the punch and tension out of a picture which could have been reasonably effective and interesting on its own. Further damage is wrought by Carradine's asinine narrative commentary ("Even in death his face still carried an expression of fear, shock and unadulterated terror"). In a shameless cost-cutting move Carradine's nonstop blathering drowns out all of the film's original dialogue, therefor eliminating the necessity of any dubbing.It's a testament to director Inoshiro ("Rodan," "Mothra") Honda's talent that a modicum of spooky atmosphere and a dash of poignant tragedy somehow manage to shine through this chintzy ragbag melange of dreary talk and eye-filling travelogue footage. Moreover, the yeti himself is quite impressive: brawny, limber, and toweringly gigantic, he's a genuinely redoubtable beastman. If there only had been less dull chitchat and more cool creature, this could have been a pretty enjoyable and enthralling romp. But there isn't, so it ain't.