SNOWBEAST (1977) Label: Leomark Studios
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 87 Minutes 40 Seconds
Audio: English Dolby Digital (No Subtitles)
Video: 1080p HD (1.33:1)
Director: Herb Wallerstein
Cast: Bo Svenson, Yvette Mimieux, and Robert Logan
Made-for-TV terror Snowbeast (1977), directed by jobbing TV director Herb Wallerstein, concerns married couple Gar (Bo Svenson, The Inglorious Bastards) and Ellen Seberg (Yvette Mimieux, The Dark of the Sun), who return to his home town, a ski resort area in the beautiful Colorado Rockies. He's a former Olympic champion skier out of work, now finding employment at the ski resort, run by Carrie Rill (Sylvia Sidney, Beetle Juice, Mars Attacks) and her son adult Tony (Robert Logan, TV's 77 Sunset Strip), a longtime friend of Gar's. Things at the resort are gearing up for the annual winter carnival, a lifeline for the cash-strapped ski resort, but when a couple of skiers get chewed by a creature stalking the treelined slopes, well, that certainly puts a damper on the winter festivities.
Make no mistake about it, this is a Jaws knock-off in the tradition of Grizzly, y'know, 'Jaws with claws', with loads of parallels in story and structure to Spielberg's classic shark attack flick. Instead of sunny beaches we have wintery slopes, instead of a crooked mayor who doesn't want to close the beach for the 4th of July, we have Mrs. Rill who won't cancel the winter carnival. It's a very familiar story, and credit to Jaws, it's a pretty timeless and evergreen story structure that has endured for decades through various incarnations, jus take that template and add whatever creature or rabid animal you wants. The screenplay for this made-for-TV flick comes from Joseph Stefano, the screenwriter of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and many great episodes of the anthology series The Outer Limits. His scrips has some decent character explorations, stuff like how Gar mysteriously stopped skiing after winning gold at the Olympics years earlier, for reasons that are later revealed when he is forced to ski for the first time in years to rescue his wife, and how his wife had a previous relationship with Gar's pal Tony, who still carries a torch for her, which itself harkens back to the original Jaws novel. We also get the local cop Sheriff Paraday (Clint Walker, The Scream of the Wolf)) who is wary of local legends of bigfoot or the yeti, despite claims from a survivor and other eyewitnesses who report seeing a white-furred creature in the tree lines of the slopes. When the titular snowbeast shows up at the local highschool during a winter carnival event it creates a panic, well, he has no choice but to believe, teaming up with Gar, Ellen, and Tony to form a cryptid-hunting posse, they head up the mountain in their snowmobiles to hunt the creature down, but this beast will not prove easy to find or kill.
The scrappy made-for-TV terror came out at a time when bigfoot/sasquatch was huge in popular culture, the infamous Patterson-Gimlin bigfoot footage of '67 was still fresh in our minds still, and that bonkers episode of The Six Million Dollar Man "The Secret of Bigfoot" aired the previous year, as did the "In Search Of Bigfoot ... With Leonard Nimoy" episode, and I watched both of those episodes, which is how I as a very young kid first discovered bigfoot, bigfoot fever was just in the air at that time. Also, Jaws arrived to much cheer in '75. so the idea of mashing-up Jaws with bigfoot was really a no-brainer.
So how's the flick? I like it just fine, I saw it on TV when I was in kindergarten, my mom loved horror and I remember staying up watching the scary made-for-TV terrors with her. I distinctly remember seeing a re-broadcast of the made-for-TV terror Gargoyles (1972) around the same time, and I was fucking traumatized by it, I woke up screaming on multiple occasions thinking Bernie Casey's green-skinned Gargoyle was hiding under my bed waiting to get at me. Anyway, sort of like how Jaws "Bruce" the a shark was often not working the bigfoot/yet suit for Snowbeast, well, it looked like shit and did not hold-up to close-ups, so they shot it from afar and we only see it in glimpses, which is probably the biggest mark against it, we only see it's claw, white-furred arm (echoes of Grizzly) and brief bits in longshots, except for the attack on the highschool, which is when we get a very quick glimpse of it's face - and, well, it's not great. Most of what we get is the creature's POV as he stalks his prey. Even during the finale when the creature is killed we don't even get to see it then. Also, we do get a bit of blood, but no gore of any kind, when the creature kills the screen just turns red, and then onto the next scene. That said, I do love the cast, they are all pretty solid, and the snowy mountains and the footage of people skiing look pretty terrific, but getting hardly any creature with your creature-feature is still a pretty crummy deal. Not a deal-breaker for me though, I still have plenty of love for this, and loads of nostalgia, but I am not sure how this would play to someone who doesn't have that 1970s made-for-TV nostalgia in their hearts.
Audio/Video: Snowbeast (1977) arrives on BD-R from Leomark Studios presented in 1080p HD framed n the original 1.33:1 broadcast aspect ratio. I was pleasantly surprised how good this looked, Leomark Studios made-for-TV on BD-R output have been all over the place, a couple looked like raw scans from flawed/worn film elements (Destination Inner Space), while others look like straight-up VHS rips (Scream of the Wolf). If I had to guess I would say that this 88-minute syndicated version that is sourced from the restoration done by Fred Olen Ray for their now OOP Retromedia Blu-ray back in 2018. That release offered two cuts of the films, the original 72-min CBS Late Movie version which was sourced from a 35mm print, and the longer 88-min longer syndicated cut which was sourced from the 35mm print, 16mm archival sources and digital sources. I think what we have here is the longer 88-min version. The footage from the 35mm print looks terrific, nice depth and clarity, colors of ski-outfits are vibrant, the snow-covered mountains looks crisp, while the extended footage sourced from 16mm sources looks less stellar, some of the non 35mm elements to get a bit contrasty and murky, but never dips into murky dregs of VHS territory. Audio comes by way of lossy Dolby Digital 2.0, with no subtitles options, and it sounds just fine. It's appropriately thin and narrow, as I would expect from a low-budget made-for-TV production, but it sounds clean and the levels are well-balanced.
This is as barebones as you can get, no menu, no subtitles, no extras. I might have to hunt around for that Retromedia Blu-ray, which I believe is a BD-R as well. That version has the two cuts of the film, a commentary with Fred Olen Ray and David DeCoteau, plus liner notes by made-for-TV goddess Amanda Rayes.
The singe-disc release arrives in a standard keepcase with a single-sided wrap featuring some sort of A.I. abomination that looks like a knock-off of the slasher film Jack Frost, it's really atrocious. As this was a made-for-TV film it never had a movie poster, but I've seen several VHS covers for it that put this to shame.
I think that the only other thing I have to say is that I really wish someone - I am looking at you Vinegar Syndrome and kino Lorber - please put out a restored Blu-ray of the made-for-TV terror Gargoyles (1972)!?!
Special Features:
- None
Screenshots from the Leomark Studios Blu-ray:
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