Better than I remembered, surprisingly

I just saw Man Beast (1956) for the first time since the mid-60s and I was surprised to find it better than I had remembered it even as a kid, and much better than its reviews.

Now, a clarification: the terms "better" and "much better" are very relative here. Man Beast is not a good movie. It is mostly poorly acted, written and directed. That said, I generally agree with the User's Comment on the main page that this film is much better than one has the right to expect, particularly when you consider the film was made by one of the absolute worst, most incompetent, most cynical filmmakers ever to haunt the fringes of Hollywood: Jerry Warren. However, MB is better than any other film Warren ever made -- a really relative statement. Every one of his other films was terrible -- really dreadful. But Man Beast manages to generate some suspense and features a surprisingly nifty monster -- a kind of dopey but enjoyable manifestation of the Yeti.

No synopsis or spoilers about the film here...just some general statements. On the plus side, Warren seems to have filmed all, or virtually all, of this movie himself, with little stock footage -- including putting his actors up on near-vertical mountain slopes in some scenes, extremely impressive -- and risky -- for a bottom-budget cheapie like this (and considering that the actors probably weren't paid more than $700 or $800 for their work). It was almost all made on real mountain locations, and while these vary greatly in appearance -- it's obvious they were filmed in different areas -- at least he made the effort. One actor, George Skaff, who plays the mysterious mountain guide Varga, is really pretty good and appropriately sinister. The mystery in the film is pretty good, and the payoff scene very neat and neatly done, though it's not well or logically explained. And we get generous sequences featuring the Yeti -- several snowmen, supposedly, though it's clear there's only one, seen in surprisingly well-edited shots to make it appear as though there were several of them in the scene (but you never see two together). The abominable snowman/men in this film look appropriately like monsters -- big, hulking, hairy, menacing monsters, using a good costume -- and are very dangerous, indeed murderous. There is nothing subtle about this, but while it may seem this reduces the film to a basic monster movie (which in part it does), it at least stands in contrast to the more nuanced depictions of the creatures in other 50s Yeti films: The Snow Creature (1954), Jujin Yuki Otoko (1955) [US: Half Human (1958)], and The Abominable Snowman (1957) [US: The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas]. One good old plain monster Yeti is, in the circumstances, quite refreshing...though even as monsters, they too have their nuances, as you'll see.

On the downside, the other actors are only fair to poor (leading lady Virginia Maynor is positively awful). In scenes taking place in the tents, Warren lines his actors up in a row, all of them facing the camera, not exactly natural in scenes where they're supposed to be talking to one another. (Actor Tom Maruzzi, playing the hero Steve, usually speaks his lines directly at the camera instead of turning toward the people he's supposed to be addressing.) While all the mountain scenes really were filmed out on some mountains -- obviously, and clearly, not the Himalayas -- Warren mixes some truly impressive mountain shots in with scenes plainly filmed on some other snowy slope with brush and even small trees sticking up from under the snow, not even remotely convincing. Though they're supposed to be scaling the highest peaks on Earth (and say things to that effect several times), the actors are dressed as if they're going hiking in the Catskills: two of the climbers, including Varga, supposedly the most experienced guide in Nepal, wear Alpine hats, complete with a little feather sticking out the top; all that's missing are the Alpenhorns and cough drops. Nobody even wears gloves, let alone heavy snow gear, oxygen tanks, or any of the other impedimenta useful to prevent things like death while climbing in the Himalayas. Warren's close-ups are pretty poorly matched to the overall scene being depicted, and there are far too many of these.

And then there is the ridiculous "casting" of top-billed "Rock Madison". As you'll read elsewhere here, there is no such person as "Rock Madison". This is not just a phony name made up for an actor in the movie. There is no actor, no person, in the movie named Rock Madison: the name refers to a non-existent individual. It's just a name Warren made up (gee, ya think?), but rather than ask one of the actors to bill himself under that name, Warren just stuck the name into the credits. Maybe it's supposed to refer to the character of Connie's (Miss Maynor) brother, whom they're searching for on a frankly ridiculous pretext (he's taken an experimental drug and it was discovered after he left for the Himalayas that the effects of high altitude cause the drug to become fatal). We never see this person, so it would be convenient to call an unseen character by a fake name; but this isn't claimed or clear. Anyway, Warren apparently thought he needed some dynamic-sounding name in the cast, and with his usual ingeniousness combined the names of Rock Hudson and Guy Madison to come up with Guy Hudson...oh, excuse me, Rock Madison. "Guy Hudson" sounded too, oh, I don't know, gay.

Anyway, despite its many flaws, this movie actually manages to be pretty suspenseful, even scary in parts, not least because of some of those vertiginous mountain-climbing shots (not the ones with the underbrush), the mystery surrounding Varga, and the cool and fun Yeti. The fact that Warren for once did not write the script for this film helps immeasurably (as bad a director as he was, his writing skills were less than non-existent: positively abysmal, truly illiterate, redolent of ignorance). I have no idea who writer B. Arthur Cassidy was but he was much better than Warren -- again, not all that good, but even a back-handed compliment is more applause than any of Warren's other films usually gets or deserves. Oh, and fans of TV's The Adventures of Superman (with George Reeves) will recognize some of the stock music used throughout the film, so that's nostalgic. And I repeat my praise of the film's editing job, probably the best technical aspect of this movie -- it serves to heighten the suspense and keep things moving pretty well most of the time -- again, quite unusual for such a low-budget film, and absolutely unheard-of in a Jerry Warren movie.

Bottom line: I was pleasantly surprised by this film, seeing it for the first time in over 40 years. It's so-so at best, it still has many shortcomings, but it is better than you'd expect, with some effective sequences and a good Yeti. It's better, in my opinion, than W. Lee Wilder's earlier The Snow Creature, though not as good as Jujin Yuki Otoko/Half Human or the best of all the Yeti films, Hammer's The Abominable Snowman.

Try it! What else would you do with a spare hour? Watch Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck? Even Jerry Warren is preferable to that stuff...aided by the comforting thought that he, at least, is long dead.