SNOWBEAST, 1977 color
Watch out Colorado! Some sort of beast that likes snow has come to town! As anticipated, there is lots of 70’s music and slow-motion skiing montages. Lots of interpersonal drama. Carnival at a ski lodge. So much fun, until the bodies start piling up. Jennifer is apparently torn apart by the creature, leaving searchers to find only her skis and parts of her snow suit. Later they find her body in a barn. So instead of warning everyone, they decide it’s best to keep it quiet and let drunken skiers wander about. Lots of dramatic music. Adventure girl Ellen (a journalist who did a special on Bigfoots. Bigfeet?) decides to go out looking for what’s going on, and starts following a trail of footprints and blood in the snow. It gets dark so she beds down in the barn. The creature makes a grand appearance, scares the town, kills the Snow Queen’s Mama, and then heads off to the woods again. Don’t worry, the Snow Queen is alright. The sheriff gathers a posse and goes a-hunting. It’s not quite a pack of drunken rednecks, but I sure wouldn’t want to have been on the slopes in a fur jacket that day. Also a bad day to be a bear in those woods, as it turns out. Drama turns to morality questions, ugh. But finally the sheriff and our “heroes” head out once again, all quiet like, to track it down. Guess the posse didn’t inspire confidence the previous day. Sheriff gets whacked. Lots of tuba-intensive serial killer music. No big reveal to show us what the Snowbeast looked like, all we ever see is its clawed hand. Man triumphs by stabbing it with a ski pole. The guns were apparently ineffective.
Favorite lines:
Heidi: “Jennifer, let’s go back?”
Jennifer: “But why? It’s great out here.”
Heidi: “Because it funny.” No, it’s not funny at all. Sadly.
UNKNOWN WORLD, 1951 B&W
Fear of the destruction of humanity by the atom bomb drives a scientist to the conclusion that he should build a drill machine to drill to the middle of the Earth so that people could hide there and survive. We move forward and form the Society to Save Civilization (SSC? StSC?). Nazi scientist? Check. We have Bauer. Token woman? Check. We get Joan. Bunch of white men smoking pipes? Oh yes, by the handful. Okay, let’s just point out the fact that the center of the planet is molten. So…ouch. But in a stunning announcement, we are told the interior of the Earth is made up of vast caverns and air pockets that connect to the surface via fissures and caverns. Man, was my Geology class wrong. I had no idea! For some reason, they were denied funding. Imagine that! But a rich, idealistic dilettante, Thompson, gives them the money. They build their drill…OMG! The rear of it has tail lights on fins!!!! And a chrome bumper! They really went all out! Uh oh, look out, Joan and Thompson hate each other on sight. Looks like love is in the air. They find adequately sized tunnels with smooth floors to drive their drill through easily. Paxton and Coleman die when they suffocate from the lack of the oh so plenty fresh air promised. They find a cavern with a huge lake at 1100 miles down that will work for their purposes, but decide to continue onward. Andy falls off a cliff and dies. At 1600 miles they find a cavern with a waterfall, a sea, pure air and lots of light. First thing they do? Light up their pipes and start polluting the place. Suddenly…floods, lightning, avalanches, lava, sterile rabbits! Mankind cannot live here after all. Back to the drill! Up they go until they are back to the surface. Oh, there’s no place like home. But what about nuclear disaster? Meh, the alternative was sterile rabbits underground, so what you going to do?
Favorite lines:
Narrator: “Dr. Max Bauer. Eminent geophysicist ousted from the University of Munich by Hitler.” Just…something about this line gets me.
Narrator: “So the Society to Save Civilization was formed. To its headquarters flocked amateur do-gooders.” Oh boy, the world rests on the shoulders of amateur do-gooders. Not even professionals!
Paxton: “Nature doesn’t influence man. Man influences and controls nature.” Uh huh. How’s that working out for you?
Paxton: “A group of men are nothing but sheep. On man can rise above to lead them, but the rest are nothing but sheep.” Baa, sir. Baa.