Tales from the Cryptid

Film: The Abominable Snowman
Format: Internet video on the new internet machine.

I have a friend who loves cryptids and cryptozoology. Her penchant is much more for Mothman than for anything else, but name a cryptid around her and she’s going to know the lore. The Abominable Snowman (sometimes given the longer and more impressive title of The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas) is a movie with her in mind. Not only is there the titular cryptid beastie at the center of this, it also features the great Peter Cushing as the sort of gentleman adventurer/scientist that he was born to play.

Dr. John Rollason (Cushing) is a botanist working in the Himalayas along with his wife Helen (Maureen Connell) and their assistant, Peter Fox (Richard Wattis). They are guests of the local lama (Arnold Marle) when a second expedition appears. This expedition is lead by Dr. Tom Friend (Forrest Tucker), who brings with him a trapper named Ed Shelley (Robert Brown), a photographer named McNee (Michael Brill), and a native Sherpa named Kusang (Wolfe Morris). This expedition is geared to find, capture, and bring back a yeti to display to the outside world. Not realizing the full corporate greed of the expedition, John Rollason agrees to join, motivated by a desire to know about the creature. He goes, despite the protests of both Helen and the lama.

If Only They Had a Budget...

Film: The Quatermass Xperiment
Format: DVD from St. Charles Public Library through OCLC WorldCat on The New Portable.

Science fiction from the 1950s tended to deal with some very specific topics in a number of different ways. One of those major topics was space travel. Generally speaking, there were two basic space travel plots. The first, and by far much larger group of films dealt with space travel as a robust phenomenon. People in these films are flying between planets and solar systems, exploring the universe in a pre-Star Trek fashion. The other set of films was set more in the era’s present, with the first steps of space exploration happening. For this basic plot, the big part of the story tended to be a capsule (manned or unmanned) coming back with something that attached itself from outer space. Of these, The Quatermass Xperiment (sometimes called The Creeping Unknown) is one of the granddaddies.

The thin outline referenced above will form the guts of our story. The British Rocket Group launches a capsule under the tutelage of American professor Bernard Quatermass (Brian Donlevey). It goes up with three men and comes back with just one. Victor Caroon (Richard Wordsworth) seems to still be around, but his companions Reichenheim and Green are nowhere to be found. Caroon’s wife Judith (Margia Dean) complicates matters slightly, although her concern for her husband is certainly understandable.

Off Script: Quatermass and the Pit; Quatermass 2

Films: Quatermass and the Pit (Five Million Years to Earth); Quatermass 2 (Enemy from Space)
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

I tend to like movies from Hammer Studios in its heyday. Sure, they’re not all great, but there’s an earnestness to them that I appreciate. Quatermass and the Pit is later in their run, but it’s a fine example of what Hammer could do on a very small budget. This is actually the third Quatermass film, based on a character created for the BBC. Despite it being the third film, the character name didn’t have the same recognition in the States, so it was released here under the awesome title Five Million Years to Earth.

In London in the mid-1960s, construction is going on at a tube station in Hobb’s End when a set of skeletal remains are unearthed. Dr. Matthew Roney (James Donald), a paleontologist, is called in to examine them. He determines that the remains are of a pre-human ancestor and he estimates them at five million years old—far older than any other previous finds of definably human ancestry. Around the same time that Roney reaches this conclusion, evidence of something metallic is located. It is decided that this metallic object is likely an unexploded bomb from World War II, and a bomb disposal squad is called in.