Snowbeast
Encyclopedia
Snowbeast is a made-for-television horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

 that was first broadcast in 1977 in the The United States of America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

The movie details the attacks of a ravenous white sasquatch on a Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...

 ski resort
Ski resort
A ski resort is a resort developed for skiing and other winter sports. In Europe a ski resort is a town or village in a ski area - a mountainous area, where there are ski trails and supporting services such as hotels and other accommodation, restaurants, equipment rental and a ski lift system...

. The teleplay
Teleplay
A teleplay is a television play, a comedy or drama written or adapted for television. The term surfaced during the 1950s with wide usage to distinguish a television plays from stage plays for the theater and screenplays written for films...

 was written by Joseph Stefano
Joseph Stefano
Joseph Stefano was an American screenwriter, known to genre fans for writing the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and for being the producer and co-writer of the Outer Limits TV series.-Early years:As a teenager, Stefano was so keen to become an actor that he dropped out of high school two...

, who wrote the script for Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1960 thriller Psycho
Psycho (1960 film)
Psycho is a 1960 American suspense/psychological horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins. The film is based on the screenplay by Joseph Stefano, who adapted it from the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch...

. Stefano reportedly used a book by Roger Patterson (who claimed to have encountered a bigfoot in 1967) as his primary inspiration, though no credit is given.

Snowbeast was directed by Herb Wallerstein, a veteran of many television shows such as I Dream of Jeannie
I Dream of Jeannie
I Dream of Jeannie is a 1960s American sitcom with a fantasy premise. The show starred Barbara Eden as a 2,000-year-old genie, and Larry Hagman as an astronaut who becomes her master, with whom she falls in love and eventually marries...

, Star Trek
Star Trek: The Original Series
Star Trek is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry, produced by Desilu Productions . Star Trek was telecast on NBC from September 8, 1966, through June 3, 1969...

, The Brady Bunch
The Brady Bunch
The Brady Bunch is an American sitcom created by Sherwood Schwartz and starring Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, and Ann B. Davis. The series revolved around a large blended family...

, and The Six Million Dollar Man
The Six Million Dollar Man
The Six Million Dollar Man is an American television series about a former astronaut with bionic implants working for the OSI...

.

Plot

A ski resort
Ski resort
A ski resort is a resort developed for skiing and other winter sports. In Europe a ski resort is a town or village in a ski area - a mountainous area, where there are ski trails and supporting services such as hotels and other accommodation, restaurants, equipment rental and a ski lift system...

 in the Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...

 Rockies
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains are a major mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico, in the southwestern United States...

 has its annual winter
Winter
Winter is the coldest season of the year in temperate climates, between autumn and spring. At the winter solstice, the days are shortest and the nights are longest, with days lengthening as the season progresses after the solstice.-Meteorology:...

 carnival spoiled by a series of vacationers that are being brutally murdered by an unknown animal. The local sheriff (Clint Walker) believes that the culprit is a legendary creature, a Yeti or Sasquatch. The owner of the ski resort says there is no such being because she doesn't want to lose her business. Either way, the creature must be stopped as it is continuing its attacks.

In the film's climax, the Yeti attacks Gar Seberg (Bo Svenson
Bo Svenson
Bo Svenson is a Swedish-born American actor, known for his roles in American genre films of the 1970s and 1980s.-Early life:...

) who shoots it with a revolver. However, the Yeti survives the shots, and, out of ammunition, Gar picks up a ski pole and impales the beast, causing it to fall off a mountain, killing it. Gar and his wife, Ellen Seberg (Yvette Mimieux
Yvette Mimieux
Yvette Carmen Mimieux is a retired American movie and television actress.-Early life and career:Yvette Mimieux was born in Los Angeles, California, to a French father and Mexican mother, Carmen Montemayor...

) embrace happily, while the rest of the group looks on.

Release

The film appears to be in the Public Domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...

 because it is an American production which did not have its copyright renewed after its 28th year. This has caused the film to be released legitimately by numerous distributors on TV, DVD and VHS, sometimes on the home DVD-R format, all in copies of varying quality. As of 2008, the film is available on DVD from the following companies: Mill Creek Entertainment (USA), Legacy Entertainment/Air Music and Media Group (USA and Canada), Synergy Entertainment (USA), EastWestDVD (USA), Family Value Collection (USA) and VIPCO (UK).

Reception

Due to its on-location setting, timelessly captivating theme of 'Bigfoot' and higher-than-usual production values for a made-for-television movie, the film was a major success when it was first released, and it has since earned a cult following
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...

.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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