Snowbeast Reviews

TV director Herb Wallerstein leads a cast of second-rate reliables on a leisurely walk through creature feature territory. Scripted by Joseph Stefano (Psycho, The Outer Limits) with help from real-life Bigfoot "expert" Roger Patterson, Snowbeast transparently restages Jaws on the slopes of Colorado with a yeti standing in for the Great White. Every base is touched at least once, so we're given a festive "Winter Carnival" that no one wants to cancel, a trio of crusaders whose warnings go ignored, and a camper van taking the place of the Orca. Robert Logan (Across the Great Divide), Yvette Mimieux (The Black Hole), and Bo Svenson (Walking Tall, Part Two) make for an unlikely love triangle, but a lot of early energy is spent drumming up interest in unrequited romance and a failing marriage. It's all tossed aside with a handshake once the beast starts leaving corpses in the snow, rendering this feeble stab at character development moot. Svenson muses over the "Bigfoot controversy" while soaking in a steaming outdoor pool, dating Snowbeast for anyone who remembers the proliferation of bogus Sasquatch documentaries in the mid-'70s. There's a good reason why the monster is never shown for more than a few fleeting seconds; no matter how good the special effects are, it's hard to get scared by anything that fluffy and white. As a result, yeti films have never been wildly popular, and Snowbeast is one of the weaker entries into an already tepid horror subgenre.