A month or so ago I happened to catch a screening of The
Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas (1957) on Talking Pictures TV.
It’s a movie which I’d never heard of before, but I’m quite a fan of old movies
and there are a lot of ‘lost’ or long forgotten gems to be found on this
particular UK TV channel. This one naturally piqued my interest because I was
intrigued to see how it depicted Tibet and the Himalaya.
Directed by Val Guest, the film is based upon a BBC TV play titled The Creature (1955), written by Nigel Kneale, which Kneale adapted for the famous British horror filmmakers, Hammer. The Abominable Snowman tells the story of Dr John Rollason (played by Peter Cushing), a British scientist, who is staying at a remote monastery high up in the Himalayan mountains, with his wife, Helen (Maureen Connell), and his assistant, Peter Fox (Richard Wattis). They are nearing the end of their expedition. Rollason and Fox are introduced to the viewer via an extended scene in which they talk with the Head ‘Lhama’ of the monastery (Arnold Marle). It is clear that Rollason and his companions are respectful of the Head Lama and they thank him for letting them stay at the monastery while they have gone about their work, collecting plant specimens, and the like. But as the conversation continues and Rollason is left alone with the Lama, the Buddhist cleric begins to talk cryptically to Rollason, hinting at some sort of deeper clairvoyance. The wise old Lama quizzes Rollason about his real motives and intentions in coming to the Himalaya, telling Rollason that he knows Rollason hasn’t yet finished all of his work in the mountains. The Lama says some men are coming and Rollason intends to join them. Rollason tries to deny this, but the Lama craftily manages to tell just enough of his suspicions to Rollason’s wife, who is naturally upset because she is keen for them to leave and return to their normal life, far away from the mountains. It’s also revealed that Rollason was once an expert climber, but that he’s given up the dangerous sport; hence another reason why his wife is both concerned and upset by the Lama’s revelation. But there’s something strange about the way Rollason receives all of this information, because it seems as though he himself is not fully aware of all the facts the Lama has alluded to with such assurance, along with an edge of definite disapproval.
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| Cushing & Connell |
It soon turns out that the Lama is correct. A party of Americans arrives at the monastery. They are on their way up into the mountains, heading far above the snowline in search of the Yeti – the much fabled ‘Abominable Snowman’ of the film’s title. They’ve already conveniently cached their supplies at various staging posts along the way during the summer months, and so everything is set for the intentionally small group of explorers to embark upon the adventure which lies ahead. Against his wife’s wishes, Rollason is persuaded to join the expedition led by brash American, Tom Friend (Forrest Tucker), along with his companion Ed Shelley (Robert Brown). There’s a third member of the party, a young Scottish photographer, named Andrew McNee (Michael Brill), who seems very different from the rest. And, of course, they take with them a local guide, a Sherpa by the name of Kusang (Wolfe Morris), who says he has actually seen the Yeti.
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| Cushing, Brill, Morris, Brown & Tucker |
Rather than pick apart the fanciful plot of the movie, I’m more interested here in penning a few thoughts on the stylised representations of Himalayan mountaineering and exploration as they are depicted in this film. Naturally, it is very much “of its time” (as current euphemistic parlance might describe it). All of the local Tibetans – mainly monks mumbling their sutras in the background, and rowdy porters shouting angrily about their lack of pay, along with a small group of easily disbursed bandits, plus a mystical (and perhaps Svengali-like?) Lama, who talks like a gnomic grandfather of Master Yoda (a familiar figure in the later Star Wars franchise) – are racist caricatures. But then, so too are the Westerners stereotyped in their own peculiar ways. The British are decent, level-headed sorts, who believe in fair play and talk with clipped and flinty British accents. The Americans are brash, selfish and insensitive, ‘gung-ho’ manly-man-types, loud and uncouth. Dr Rollason represents the quintessential disinterested-nobility of pursuing science for its own sake, although he is also susceptible to an innate sense of Romanticism which is naturally implicit in such a quest. McNee turns out to be a character who is similarly flawed, but in a different manner to Rollason. McNee is not up to the quest, but there is something spiritual about him, something which drives him with an equal sense of passion and destiny – he too, like the Lama, seems to have a telepathic connection to the region and to the Yeti in particular. There are quite a few allusions in the film to mystical powers and psychic connections, thought transference, and the like, but interestingly none of these points is too heavily implied or overplayed. We get the sense that the Yetis might be higher beings, not so much a ‘missing link’, but a more of a co-evolutionary lineage, who might somehow be better than humans.
Rollason deplores the two Americans’
commercial greed in their hunt for the Yeti, but the Americans flatter Rollason
that having him on-board as a member of their expedition will lend it some
scientific credibility, and they persuade him that, ultimately, they are working towards the same
ends in the pursuit of knowledge – and, in particular, the desire to understand
mankind’s place in the world. At the end of the movie (spoiler alert!) Rollason
is the sole survivor. He returns to the monastery because, as the Lama hinted
at the beginning of the story, his fate would be decided by what was most
essential within him – that sense of decency innate to his character has seen
him through (whereas, by the same token, the misadventures of his companions
has brought about their demise). And so, having looked into the face of the
Abominable Snowman, Dr Rollason says that there is no such thing as the Yeti in
existence. The ending is very ambiguous. Perhaps Rollason has been hypnotised by the Head Lama, or perhaps he has realised that some mysteries in life must remain just that, mysteries.
It is worth bearing in mind that this movie is a melodrama. It is a Hammer horror movie which was primarily intended to shock and thrill, and to excite and entertain its first audiences. As a morality play about the psychology of paranoia, all the movie posters for the film ‘ham up’ those frights, challenging the viewer: “We dare you to watch it alone!” – Claiming it is “More terrifying than The Curse of Frankenstein.” The Yeti is described as the “Demon-Prowler of Mountain Shadows … The Dreaded Man-Beast of Tibet.” – But for all the fanciful elements which are embellished throughout the course of the movie, there are some aspects which are to certain degrees grounded in fact.
The set-dressings in the monastery scenes are reminiscent of genuine Tibetan monasteries, although I don’t recall if in the film the story’s location is explicitly referred to as being Tibet per se (except perhaps for a joking reference to the ‘awfulness of Tibetan tea’). The architecture is similar, with trapezoidal windows; Tibetan butter churns and a mani stone can be seen in the monastery’s courtyard; and there are quite realistic thangka paintings hanging up in the interior rooms, but these are also adorned with strangely stylised Southeast Asian-looking Buddha statues (though more scowling than serene); the monks’ robes are fairly generic, and their religious dances seem pretty perfunctory. As already mentioned, the Chief Lama appears to behave more like an Indian guru-figure, one who perhaps The Beatles might have befriended in the subsequent decade, rather than a genuine Tibetan cleric. And, in many ways, it is hinted that he is a kind of deus ex machina, operating with a pseudo-all-seeing supernatural effect, possibly even guiding events behind the scenes throughout the film.
The mountain scenery is certainly the most impressive aspect of the movie. While many of the scenes were clearly filmed in the synthetic mock-ups of a studio, these are nevertheless blended into some impressive long sweeping shots of diminutive figures wending their way through realistically wide Himalayan-looking vistas (filmed in the French Pyrenees). On the whole, the characters’ contemporary mountaineering gear looks credibly authentic; and there is even a passing reference to Eric Shipton in the initial dialogue.
In the context of this movie’s times, the hunt for the Yeti was not such a far-fetched idea for a cinematic plot either (although if you tune into certain TV channels today, such as Blaze, you’d be forgiven for thinking that such quests are still widely held to be credible even now!). Sir Edmund Hillary, after his first ascent of Mount Everest (Chomolungma) in 1953, subsequently returned to the Himalaya on just such a scientific quest himself. Consequently, it is worth watching this movie with an eye to the cultural insights it might suggest – not so much about Tibet, Tibetans, or the Himalaya – but rather, about the psychological perceptions, prejudices, and peccadillos of British and American movie audiences, and the piquantly picturesque elements of these pseudo-Himalayan themes which it was thought by the filmmakers would most appeal to movie-goers at the time.
It’s a topic which certainly appeals to me. Having spent so much time studying genuine travel accounts written by Westerners who ventured into this part of the world during the first half of the twentieth century for my PhD thesis, I am keen to continue my studies, looking at the way in which the ostensible realism of this genre was subsequently transmuted and later valorised into such fictional representations. In many ways, it was a genre which began with the making of a movie version of James Hilton’s bestselling novel, Lost Horizon (book 1933, movie 1937), and continues on through later cinematic outings, such as Eddie Murphy’s The Golden Child (1986), to Brad Pitt, starring as Heinrich Harrer, in the Hollywood version of Harrer’s memoir, Seven Years in Tibet (book 1952, movie 1997).
The Himalaya remains a region of perennial fascination for cultural outsiders. Ever since writers such as Alexandra David-Neel and Charles Bell took an interest in interpreting Tibetan Buddhism for a Western audience and perhaps inspired novelists such as James Hilton, the Himalaya has become a kind of spiritual and geographical backcloth onto which popular tropes of solipsistic questing can be projected. Yet the continuing ubiquity of such clumsy metaphors and cultural misappropriations which seem to abound in Hollywood’s fascination for the Himalaya as an always remote, hidden and inaccessible region seem to attest to a continuing need to locate an ‘orientalising’ search for the self through tests of spiritual, psychological and physical endurance in this notion of esoteric mysteries persisting somewhere far away. In this sense, the Himalaya as it is seen in Hollywood remains a place which is pristine and untouched by modernity, a place located beyond the ordinary mundane nature of our own humdrum lives, somewhere lost perhaps in someone else’s or some other culture’s past whether real or imagined. As a meta-myth it has become a cliché, a cultural trope in and of itself which only serves to occlude and evade a deeper and far more intriguing question: why does such a need to culturally appropriate as a means of mediating inwardly with ourselves by projecting our own perceptions through such a process of ‘othering’ continue to persist?
Watch The Abominable Snowman (1957) on BFI iplayer
Also on 'Waymarks'
Himalaya - The Heart of Eurasia
'Other Everests' - A New Research Network
NB - I am currently in the process of re-working this blog post as a proper academic paper for inclusion in an edited volume of film studies, due to be published in 2024. For more info, see here.
