Snowbeast

(1977) **

I borrowed this one off of Summerisle and threw it in at four in the morning. It wasn't the best choice for four in the morning. Snowbeast is a made-for-TV movie from 1977, so it features guys like Grinny here, or his buddy with the light Southern drawl in the blue and yellow ski suit. They're 70's guys, both macho and sensitive, and most of the movie about the not-quite love triangle involving these two good buddies and that tiny woman who married Ski Suit. She's a reporter, natch, who's skiiing around threatening to blow the cover on the snowbeast that's whacking Grinny's ski lodge guests. But she gets lost and the snowbeast blows his own cover by crashing some ski-related celebration happening in a high-school gym. See, there he is up there, looking in the window and ruining it for everybody. If you look at that picture and count to twelve, you've seen as much screen time as the snowbeast actually gets in this movie. Mostly he's just a series of POV shots peeking out of the trees. Occasionally we get to see a big paw, there's two face shots they save for the *ahem* big scares, and one hilarious shot of his foot. That happens when the main characters are out in their camper tracking the bad boy down. All night they're big tough humans with rifles, then they put the guns down to drink some coffee and Snowbeast kicks a huge pile of logs down a hill and tips over their camper. Total ewok move.

Snowbeast may be low quality, but there's a basic made-for-TV standard upheld that I have to admit was oddly comforting. The music was the main factor, poured like thick syrup over everything to make it very clear how to feel. It's like Hallmark horror. The ending is insultingly anticlimactic; in a totally cheapo manuever it's all done with POV shots, so it looks like Ski Suit saved the day by impaling the cameraman on his ski pole.