Half Human: The Story of the Abominable Snowman

1958 "1400 pounds of frozen fury that moves like man! Half-man, half-beast but all monster!"
3.8| 1h3m| en| More Info
Released: 01 December 1958 Released
Producted By: TOHO
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Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

An American scientist tells two colleagues about the finding of an abominable snowman living in the Japanese alps, where it is worshipped by a remote tribe as a god, and how it was discovered by modern man after it raided a ski-ers' shelter following an avalanche, killing all inside. This is an adaptation of the Japanese film Ju Jin Yuki Otoko with added American-made footage, narration and music track.

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Reviews

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.
Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.
Suman Roberson It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.
Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
semielco 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.
Michael_Elliott 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.
pv71989 Toho got drunk with stupidity and Inoshiro Honda suffered for it. Toho got a worldwide hit when 20 minutes of inserts featuring Raymond Burr were added to "Gojira" and retitled as "Godzilla, King of the Monsters." Unfortunately, studio execs overlooked the fact that it was Burr's superior acting and stark narration that got the attention. They added inserts of American actor Myron Healey to Honda's "Varan, the Unbelievable" and it tanked. They did the same to "Half Human," giving rights to an American producer who added boring clips of John Carradine and Forrest Tucker ("F-Troop"). The library music-style score for the American insert clashed horribly with the original score and Carradine's narration seems out of place since he appears in absolutely no scenes in Japan.Sadly, after the utter disaster of this flick, Toho took the negatives of the original and locked them away. Even though "Gojira" and "Varan" have made it to American television, albeit only once, in their original forms, this film is still not available to the public.
Scott Andrew Hutchins It is a very unfortunate thing that Toho has decided to pull _Jû jin yuki otoko_ from its catalog based on Ainu lobbyists. Had Akira Ifukube scored the film, rather than Masaru Sato, he might have said something against it because he lived among the Ainu and knew the culture presented in this film bears little resemblance to the Ainu.Instead, we are left with this badly edited mess because an American producer got his hands on it, and inserted scenes with American actors that give away the story before we can actually be shown it. Ostensibly this footage was shot to increase Americans' interest in the Japanese production. Instead it brings the action screeching to a halt and we are given glimpses of what is obviously a much better film, with one of the most convincing yet-teh costumes of all time. The older one has a very lifelike face that is showing signs of balding.Because of Toho's quarantine on the original film, one has to sit through a lot of drek to have any film at all, since the 98 minute film runs 63 minutes in this version, even after all the boring footage was added. The sound quality is poor as well, and all (or most) of Masaru Sato's score as been replaced with library music. It's too short to fast-forward through all the nonsense and too dull to sit through it.The only redeeming element of the film are the exquisite Japanese scenes that we hear John Carradine talking over. This film is utterly ruined, thereby demonstrating Gresham's law. The good version is unavailable, and only the bad version can be seen.