If you watch this thing, do yourself a favor and don't ask too many questions. Just sit back and enjoy this train wreck for the campy schlock it is. I think this movie would be even better if the people making it hadn't taken it as seriously as they did. Some of the other reviews have gone into more details, but I don't think that's necessary. This thing has to be experienced to be believed. Give it ten minutes and you'll know whether you can stand the rest of it. For B-movie fans, it's a rare and amazing treat. For the rest, it will be a hideous, head-shaking, mess that will have them constantly asking "WHY??" Watching this with one of them will make the movie even more fun. No one will be the same after watching this. It's a little like taking a reality-altering drug.

After a young boy, Herbie Hunnicut (Jim Sullivan), discovers a giant yeti frozen in a block of ice, scientists thaw out the creature (using flamethrowers!) and bring it back to life. The boy's grandfather, businessman Morgan (Edoardo Faieta), sees an opportunity to use the creature to promote his companies, but controlling the yeti proves tricky, even after Herbie and his older sister Jane (Antonella Interlenghi) befriend the beast.A really lame Italian monster movie designed to ride the coat-tails of the '76 King Kong remake, Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century is cheap and trashy nonsense, providing zero in the way of genuine thrills, but quite a few unintentional laughs. The yeti itself, played by Mimmo Crao, looks like a massive Dave Lee Travis, roars like Godzilla when angered, and changes size significantly from scene to scene. Herbie is extremely irritating despite not being able to talk. His intelligent friend Indio is also annoying despite being a dog. I will cut Jane some slack for being very easy on the eye (although her propensity for rubbing yeti nipple is more than a little disturbing).The crappy plot sees the ape-man go on a minor rampage after being frightened by photographers' flashes, escaping from the police despite being huge and hard to hide, and opening a can of yeti whoop-ass when some nasty men kill the kindly scientist who has been caring for the creature.Clearly aimed at the whole family (although the sight of Indio being stabbed by the baddies might disturb some kiddies), the film foregoes a King Kong-style tragic ending for a much happier one: the yeti gets to disappear into the wilderness, and Indio appears, running into Herbie's arms having miraculously recovered from his seemingly fatal wound.

I guess every country has to have their KING KONG rip-off at one stage or another. Thus the Danish gave us REPTILICUS, the Japanese GODZILLA, the British KONGA, the Chinese THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN, and finally the Italians with their wacky family movie YETI, THE GIANT OF THE 20TH CENTURY. Yes, this movie - made a year after the Hollywood KING KONG remake of '76, to cash in no doubt - is as bizarre as any Italian production you will see, with plenty of tacky special effects and far too much time spent on mundane characters chatting and discussing predictable stuff we've heard a million times before in creature features. It's also highly silly, silly enough to offer a scene of a villain having his neck broken between two of the Yeti's toes, and to rip off a Lassie movie with the slow-motion shot of a dog - previously knifed in an earlier scene but here returned to full health - running through a cornfield to be enveloped in the arms of a cute young boy. It's enough to make you retch.The Yeti itself is an impressively big beastie (wait, I'm not sure that the real-life "abominable snowmen" are supposed to be THAT big), his size achieved via some okayish back-projection work. It's certainly better than the atrocious back-projection in the second instalment of THE UNCANNY, a British horror anthology made in the same year, anyway. Unfortunately, as the shaggy creature is just an actor with a wig and an ape costume, he isn't quite so impressive, and Mimmo Crao plays it all wide-eyed and wondrous to pretty much disastrous effect. The destructive sequences in which the Yeti wrecks toy cars and plays yo-yo with a lift are poorly done and only enjoyable in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way.The human elements of the cast fare little better, and the predictable "ruthless businessmen" are here that pop up time and time again in giant monster films, instantly ready to exploit the creatures for their own purposes and always getting killed or discredited by the end of the movie. It's no different here, although to complicate matters there are two rival organisations, one of which has murder in mind. The chief villain is played by former heart-throb Tony Kendall, here aged a little and thus relegated to being the villain (there is no young male lead here, aside from the annoying kid). In fact he fits the bill rather well although he isn't nearly slimy enough as he should be. Antonella Interlenghi is "Jane" (har har), the object of the Yeti's affections, and is forced to gratingly emote a lot too, more's the pity. The only other familiar cast member - at least to this fan - is Donald O'Brian, who appears briefly as a butch policeman.Yet YETI, THE GIANT OF THE 20TH CENTURY is worthwhile for a number of reasons. The toy helicopters and matchbox cars that make up the "special effects" element make this instantly watchable for bad movie lovers, so we have that field covered. The combination of bone-breaking violence and kiddie entertainment (lovey-dovey Lassie dog, Yeti-human bonding) doesn't exactly sit together well which is a little odd. It's like the film-makers tried to combine the action genre with the monster and family genres and the result is a very strange combination - even stranger still is the "Yeti Theme", as performed by the "Yetians", a simple rip-off of Carl Orff's music in THE OMEN if you listen carefully. Nothing I wouldn't expect from an Italian Z-movie, that's for sure...

LOL! Not a bad way to start it. I thought this was original, but then I discovered it was a clone of the 1976 remake of KING KONG. I never saw KING KONG until I was 15. I saw this film when I was 9. The film's funky disco music will get stuck in your head! Not to mention the film's theme song by the Yetians. This is the worst creature effects I've ever seen. At the same time this film remains a holy grail of B-movies. Memorable quotes: "Take a tranquilizer and go to bed." "Put the Yeti in your tank and you have Yeti power." I remember seeing this film on MOVIE MACRABE hosted by Elvira. There is one scene where it was like KING KONG in reverse! In KING KONG he grabs the girl and climbs up the building, but in this film he climbs down the building and grabs the girl (who was falling)! Also around that year was another KONG clone MIGHTY PEKING MAN (1977) which came from Hong Kong. There is a lot of traveling matte scenes and motorized body parts. This film will leave you laughing. It is like I said, just another KING KONG clone. Rated PG for violence, language, thematic elements, and some scary scenes.