I sit in with CKTB morning show host Steph Vivier to have a look at movies in theatres including a modernized “Hamlet,” an old-fashioned “You, Me & Tuscany,” a reflective “Outcome,” a monstrous “The Yeti” and a hypnotic “Exit 8.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “The Yeti,” a new low budget monster movie now on VOD, a rescue team sets out to find an oil tycoon and a famous adventurer whovanished in Yeti territory.
CAST: Brittany Allen, Eric Nelsen, Jim Cummings, William Sadler, Corbin Bernsen. Directed and written by Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta.
REVIEW: A return to “a guy in a furry suit” monster movies, “The Yeti” is a lo fi survival flick with practical effects that harken back to the heyday of drive-in creature feature nights.
First-time directors Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta clearly have a love for the direct-to-video/DVD genre. They were the movies you rented when you had either seen everything else at least twice, or you wanted something to watch with a few beers, or something stronger.
Populated with fading and/or emerging stars, they were generally formulaic, genre driven grindhouse style movies that generally made up in fun what they lacked in production value.
Such is the case with “The Yeti.”
The marquee comes decorated with names like “L.A. Law” star Corben Bernsen and genre favorite William Sadler, in addition to an eager cast of players, including the entertainingly named Elizabeth Cappuccino.
The story itself is pure b-movie hokum.
Set in 1947, it picks up after a famed adventurer (Sadler) and an oil tycoon (Bernsen) vanished without a trace in the wilds of Alaska. Curious to know their father’s fates, the missing men’s kids (Brittany Allen and Eric Nelsen) assemble a ragtag team, with nicknames like Watchdog—“Watchdog doesn’t fetch… he hunts.”—Doctor, Radio and Demolition, to bundle up and travel to snowy Alaska to retrace their father’s footsteps. The worst part of the adventure? It’s not the unforgiving weather or the isolation. It’s the ferocious Yeti, a giant, hairy beast, the result, we’re told, of “20,000 years of primal evolution.”
This trip to Yeti territory is actually a journey down memory lane to a time when movie monsters lurked in the shadows to create suspense and disguise any shortcomings in the creature’s makeup. In this case the Yeti, a kind of man-shaped polar bear, is more fun than terrifying, but Gallerano and Pisciotta take their time, working up to the Yeti’s bloody on-screen debut, building tension up to the reveal. That the practical effects bring more of an organic feel to “The Yeti” than actual scares is OK because they are delivered with old-school b-movie exuberance and buckets of blood.
