For a cheapo '50s B-movie from producer/director Jerry Warren (the man who gave us the terrible Frankenstein's Island and who was responsible for the US Sequences in the even worse Face of the Screaming Werewolf), yeti creature feature Man Beast isn't as abominable as it might have been.
Asa Maynor plays Connie Hayward, who travels to the Himalayas in search of her brother James, who has disappeared while on an expedition to find the legendary yetis. Tom Maruzzi, also billed as Rock Madison, is Steve Cameron, who helps Connie uncover the truth surrounding the elusive creatures and their connection to shifty mountain guide Varga (George Skaff).
Although the monsters themselves are disappointing - men in moth-eaten costumes that were originally used in The White Gorilla and White Pongo (both 1945)- the film makes up for this with plenty of impressive scenery and some decent climbing scenes (most likely stock footage, but it works well), and a positive female character in Connie, who isn't your typical screaming, helpless woman-in-peril, but rather a strong, gutsy and very capable woman.
Other positives are the short runtime which keeps things snappy, and the twisted denouement at the end, in which it is revealed that the hairy monsters have been abducting human women for breeding purposes. Yeti rape in a fifties movie! Yowzah!
6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.
Asa Maynor plays Connie Hayward, who travels to the Himalayas in search of her brother James, who has disappeared while on an expedition to find the legendary yetis. Tom Maruzzi, also billed as Rock Madison, is Steve Cameron, who helps Connie uncover the truth surrounding the elusive creatures and their connection to shifty mountain guide Varga (George Skaff).
Although the monsters themselves are disappointing - men in moth-eaten costumes that were originally used in The White Gorilla and White Pongo (both 1945)- the film makes up for this with plenty of impressive scenery and some decent climbing scenes (most likely stock footage, but it works well), and a positive female character in Connie, who isn't your typical screaming, helpless woman-in-peril, but rather a strong, gutsy and very capable woman.
Other positives are the short runtime which keeps things snappy, and the twisted denouement at the end, in which it is revealed that the hairy monsters have been abducting human women for breeding purposes. Yeti rape in a fifties movie! Yowzah!
6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.