Bad Movie Club: Giant of the 20th Century

1977 horror classic

Bad Movie Rating: 4/5 (Johnny: 3/5; Fred: fell asleep; Josh: fell asleep)

Rating: 5/20

Plot: Scientists find themselves a giant frozen yeti in some part of Canada that apparently never thaws. They decide to use flying telephone booth technology to thaw him out, and he shockingly goes on a rampage.

My King Kong interest led me to force this one upon my friends. It really takes a while to unfreeze that yeti. Things then get nearly magical before sagging a bit in the middle. By the end, after a nasty twist or two, it gets nearly magical yet again.

The main appeal, as you might be able to tell from the poster, is the monster himself. This poster shows him off a little better:

That son of a bitch's coiffure was mesmerizing, so it's no wonder the cute girl and her mute brother fell in love with him. Before you start drooling over this next poster, by the way, you should be warned that the girl is underaged:

Perhaps the biggest question I have now is why there are so many posters for this one.

The yeti creature, who I believe changes size considerably throughout this thing, is played by Mimmo Crao. He's got a variety of faces included puzzled, worried, and puzzled. It's a bad enough performance that there probably shouldn't have been nearly as many close-ups of Crao's face as there ended up being. Crao looked like he could have played Jesus, but despite actually being in a Jesus of Nazareth, he never did. He was Thaddeus if that's the kind of information you collect. And if you collect that sort of information, why?

Puzzled. Or maybe worried.

The rest of the characters do what you'd expect them to although there is what I assume was a major twist and a lot more violence than you might expect from something stupid enough to be a movie for children. The happiest surprise of the movie is probably the yeti-rific theme song that plays over the credits.