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A group of mountaineers led by zooplogist professor Koizumi (Nobuo
Nakamura) gets caught up in a storm on a mountain, and one of the group,
Takeno (Tadashi Akabe), goes missing in the process. The next day, when
the rest of the group goes looking for him, they only find giant
footprints ... of the Yeti (Sagara Sanshiro) perhaps? Professor Koizumi
feels obliged to lead a search party to rescue Takeno, not only because he
feels obliged to rescue the boy, but also because he wants to find and
examine a live Yeti (and can you blame him), and he is strongly supported
by Takeno's brother Shinsuke (Kenji Kasahara), Takeno's sister Michiko
(Momoko Kochi), and Michiko's lover Iijima (Akira Takarada). But not
everybody is happy about the professor's Yeti hunt, especially animal
trader Oba (Yoshio Kosugi), who wants to capture the Yeti to make a
fortune exhibiting him around the globe - and he can't need competition
one bit. Eventually, Iijima runs into Oba and his men, they get into a
fight, and Iijima is thrown of a cliff to his death ... and he would have
died too if it wasn't for native girl Chika (Akemi Negishi), who saves
him, carries him to her village, and nurses him back to health. However,
Chika's village is a secret village actually worshipping the Yeti, and the
village elder (Kokuten Kodo) is less than pleased about the newcomer from
the outer world, and thus, when Chika's not looking he and his men tie
Iijima up and hang him down a cliff, for the vultures to feed on. However,
the Yeti arrives ahead of the vultures, and he ... saves Iijima's life. Chika,
not knowing that Iijima is already saved, looks for him everywhere and
eventually runs into Oba and company, who pretend to be Iijima's friends
just to have her lead them to the Yeti's lair. They manage to capture the
Yeti, but then his son Takashi Ito interferes, everything leads to a big
brawl in which Oba and his men are killed, tehre trucks are thrown over
the cliffs - but Yeti junior dies as well. Daddy Yeti is so enraged that
he lays waste to the secret native village and kills the village elder. Iijima
joins up with professor Koizumi's group again and they head for the native
village, to find it in ruins and deserted. Only Chika has stayed behind,
and now she leads Koizumi's men to the Yeti's cave in an effort to calm
him down - but the situation backfires, and eventually, the Yeti takes
Michiko captive, Chika tries to stab the Yeti but is doomed to die a
heroine's death, and ultimately, the Yeti has to be shot dead ... Inoshiro
Honda's second monster movie might be as serious in approach as his first
one, Godzilla from a year before,
but it's by far not as successful in bringing its message across: While Godzilla
was basically a film about pacifism cleverly disguised as a pulpy story
about mass destruction, Beast Man Snow Man is much more obvious in
delivering its message about a misunderstood creature - but also
embarrassingly blunt and simplistic to the point of silliness. Sure, the
film is still competently enough directed and features atmospheric enough
scenes to be at least moderately entertaining, but it certainly is no
masterpiece.
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