HALF HUMAN (1958)

HALF HUMAN (1958)

Tagline: 1400 pounds of frozen fury that moves like man! Half-man, half-beast but all monster!

(Sci-Fi, Horror, Frozen Fury) [G]

Note: This movie wasn’t given an MPAA rating, but it would have been a [G]. There are two different versions of this movie and this review is of the American version. 

All good questions Alan, and they all deserve answers…

In this one, a couple of Japanese students are killed in Japan. Back in America Dr. John Rayburn and his colleagues discuss the mold of a very large footprint sent to them and ponder what it was. Dr. John Rayburn then tells a tale of Professor Tanaka and an expedition that was led specifically to find a snowman in the wilderness of Japan. Then the next thing you know the tale focuses on one of the young men from the expedition getting brought into a primitive village by a woman. As the tales unfold, it becomes clear that the snowman is an emotional creature, capable of both compassion and murderous rage. 

First off, in spite of some of the movie's posters, this “half-human” is more the size of a man in a large gorilla suit. This isn’t MIGHT Y JOE YOUNG or KING KONG. The suit isn’t quite as crazy looking as Kong’s in KING KONG VS GODZILLA, but it’s pretty rough. Having said that, it’s still better than the design we get in several other “abominable snowman” type flicks from the 50s.  

Acting wise this movie has some pretty iconic acting talents in it. Morris Ankrum who is one of my favorite 50s actors plays Dr. Carl Jordan in this but as usual, gets too few lines. Ankrum was in a bunch of 1950s movies including THE GIANT CLAW and ROCKETSHIP X-M among others. We also get Robert Karnes who is just okay in this. Karnes was famous for the movie RIDERS TO THE STARS but also acted in over 200 other productions. We also get some acting and all of the narration from John Carradine who was in every movie known to man it seems. Overall the acting is fine. I really don’t have any complaints. 

This movie succeeds in a few areas for me. I loved that we get a moving vehicle attack, I love that this movie doesn’t shy away from showing us the creature dozens of times in the daylight and up close. Execution outside of the last 10 minutes or so is actually pretty decent. I have read some reviews where the person writing it hated John Carradine’s delivery of the narration, but I really didn’t have any issues with it. I thought he actually did a pretty good job. What I don’t understand is why they didn’t go with Morris Ankrum for that. He’s fantastic at narration. 

Where this movie falls flat is in the fact that we don’t hear a single character talk that isn’t telling the story. I would have liked to have these characters say a few things that got some captions or anything other than what we got. That was a weird decision. I also hated how abrupt the ending was. This is a story within a story and the outer shell layer with Dr. John Rayburn telling it is challenged in that they don’t bother giving us even another 5 minutes to wrap it up. It’s just kinda weird. 

Overall this one gets a 3 out of 7. As cool as some of the scenes were you have to give me a reason to care about these characters and that just didn’t happen.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF TOHO COMPANY AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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