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.

HALF HUMAN was originally a Japanese monster flick from Toho before US distributors got their hands on it and proceeded to mutilate it. In doing so, they exercised about half of the original footage, added in a sappy voice-over narration, and included lots of extraneous scenes with American actors.I'm a fan of John Carradine but he has a nothing role as the desk-bound professor. Obviously this kind of cut-and-paste nonsense had worked with GODZILLA - another film directed by Ishiro Honda - but it's a waste of time here, because the viewer only gets the occasional glimpse of goodness from the original Japanese footage. I won't attempt to review that here, only to say that there's a lot of action and incident, and the Yeti costume looks great; I hope to track down the original film at some point to check it out properly.

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.

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.