If it wasn't for Yvette Mimieux the movie would be zero stars. Half the film is watching them ski with the person filming also on skis. They never actually show you the snow beast. Face and hands only. You go in knowing it's a low budget yeti type film. But you'd at least expect see the "monster" holding its kill at least once.

How is it that I don't review any movies on here in like forever, and the first two I do all summer end up being obscure titles with Robert Logan in them?? Weird. Anyway, I sat through this 1977 small screen epic yesterday morning, and came away a bit disappointed. I recall there were plenty of decent tv movies when I was a kid. Don't Go To Sleep, Disaster on the Coast Liner, and perhaps the greatest of them all... Dark Night of the Scarecrow, but Snowbeast is nowhere near those in quality. It is a missed opportunity on many fronts. It takes an interesting premise, a solid cast of typical supporting players, a potentially frightening creature, and just ends up boring the audience. The concept of a yeti, or bigfoot has been the stuff of legends for many years here in America. So many people claim to have seen one, and many are still trying to prove its existence. But would he be some terrifying beast, or some harmless big ape-like animal? Well, this film shows him (or mostly doesn't show him) as being a blood-thirsty almost bear-like creature who attacks and kills humans on sight! Mostly skiers who ski too close are his victims. And of course the local town is doing some sort of big celebration or something common in these 70s monster movies such as Tentacles, Piranha, or others. This puts even more people in peril. Can a former Olympic Skier, his wife, the local law enforcement, and the resort owner's son team up to stop him??Snowbeast is at least an improvement over 1970's Bigfoot, but that is hardly an accomplishment. Way too much time is spent watching people ski or ride around on snowmobiles. The photography is poor, and that is hard to believe with beautiful Colorado scenery as the backdrop. Oddly enough, when we do get brief glimpses of the beast, he looks quite scary! But they hardly show him. Not too much gore, but more than an average tv movie probably had back then. Another downfall is the running time. With commercials thrown in, this thing doesn't have the goods to hold interest for two whole hours. There are at least two Scooby Doo episodes with this same basic plot, and they are more worth your time. 4 of 10 stars. The Hound.

I mean hey, you can't expect to watch movies like this and expect to see a masterpiece right? They did good in their plot and the acting was unusually well for a movie like this. However, the main issue is, the Monster is hardly in the movie. You usually see it through the monsters eyes and point of view when it's involved at all, and then the few times you do see it, it's so quick you don't get a chance to see it. The characters spend more time talking about the monster than you actually encounter it. Now that's not always a bad thing, but you get kinda disappointed as the movie goes on. They start off making you believe the creature is some type of Yeti, or a bigfoot, but that's one thing I do appreciate about this film. The creature is rather original, and resembles some type of troll or ogre rather than an ape. It's an interesting concept, but it could use a little work.

A ski lodge somewhere in the Colorado mountains is about to celebrate its 50th anniversary when a report comes in to the owner, "Tony Rill" (Robert Logan) that a girl has been attacked by a vicious beast of some kind. Not wanting to alarm the public he keeps the information low-key while he and 3 other men go to investigate. He finds the jacket of the missing girl and thinks he sees something big and fast moving in the trees. Not long afterward the local sheriff, "Sheriff Paraday" (Clint Walker) gets a disturbing report that a body of a girl has been found viciously mauled to death in a barn. Meanwhile, a gold-medal winning skier named "Gar Seberg" (Bo Svenson) and his wife "Ellen Seberg" (Yvette Mimieux) have arrived at the ski lodge and they join the sheriff and Tony in the hunt for "Bigfoot". At any rate, for a made-for-television movie this particular film wasn't too bad. I liked the performances of both Clint Walker and Yvette Mimieux along with the way the director (Herb Wallerstein) captured the cold winter climate. Unfortunately, the action was rather weak and the special effects left much to be desired. Additionally, there were several parts of the film that were just plain boring. All things considered, I rate it as slightly below average.