Director: Gianfranco Parolini
Cast: Antonella Interlenghi, Mimmo Crao, Jim Sullivan, Tony Kendall

Making movies is a tough business indeed. It should then come as no surprise that enterprising movie producers and filmmakers will look for ways to make the process easier. One way that has been very handy countless times is for producers and filmmakers to get the assistance from resources in another country. For example, in the 1980s, it was very advantageous for movie productions based in outside countries to do their filmmaking in South Africa. Naturally there were the exotic outdoor backdrops to use, but a bigger incentive was that the South African government offered lucrative tax shelters. This last fact attracted a lot of filmmakers from other countries, such as Cannon Films, who shot movies there like American Ninja 2 with Michael Dudikoff and Mercenary Fighters with Peter Fonda. Unfortunately, movie companies who went to South Africa got some backlash since apartheid was still going on. (Dudikoff managed to eventually get enough clout to be able to refuse being in Cannon's South African shoots, though Peter Fonda just simply refused to talk about why he agreed to be in a movie shot in South Africa.) Another country that for several decades proved to be attractive for outside filmmakers was the former Yugoslavia. The country did boast its own rugged yet beautiful landscapes and cheap production costs, but it also had in its possession a lot of military equipment left over from World War II, so making war movies like Force 10 From Navarone was easier in several ways. Also, it provided a way for non-movie foreign companies in the country an avenue to get their money back from frozen funds - profits that could only be spent in the country the money was generated in. Did you know that the awful 1985 horror-comedy Transylvania 6-5000, starring Jeff Goldblum and Ed Begley Jr.,was actually completely funded by the Dow Chemical Company? Since they had frozen funds in Yugoslavia, they saw a good way to get their money back and possibly make a profit in the process was to fund a movie to be made in Yugoslavia.

There are other countries that over the decades have provided advantageous to filmmakers and producers from other countries to collaborate with, but there are two specific countries I want to talk about. The first one is my own country, Canada. While I admit that some people might be initially scared off from my country - face it, my country makes a lot more than its share of cheap and pretentious crap that nobody wants to see - if you play your cards right, you can possibly find it advantageous to work with Canada. For starters, Canada has a ton of varied scenery - forests, mountains, big cities, semi-deserts, and even one full-on desert in a small pocket in British Columbia. You name it, we probably have it here. Another advantage is that it can cost a lot less to hire personnel for a movie, from actors to crew behind the camera. These people also tend to be better behaved than many actors and crew found in other countries. Also, the Canadian government over the decades has added tax credits, tax shelters, and other financial incentives that can save a ton of money for producers. The second country that I want to address is Italy. If you've been around the world cinematic block a reasonable amount of time, you'll know that it can pay to collaborate with Italians. For many decades, Italians have known what kind of movies can attract audiences around the world. They know their action, horror, fantasy, comedy, and other popular genres very well. Also, they know how to make these movies for a lot less while still ending up being attractive to audiences. A third incentive is that the Italians sure know how to sell their movies very well, unlike the film industries of other countries, coughCanadacough.

Now that you clearly know that both Canada and Italy have shown they have some real strengths when it comes to making movies, you then might share my surprise that both countries haven't collaborated with each other very often. Off the top of my head, I can only think of three movies where Canada and Italy have worked together. The most recent example I can think of is the movie Barney's Version, which was a worldwide box office bomb because of its pretentious and boring nature (nobody cares about author Mordecai Richler, maybe aside from his first Jacob Two-Two book that was written for children). On the other hand, the seemingly first Canadian-Italian coproduction, Strange Shadows In An Empty Room, no doubt made a lot of money worldwide since it really delivered the goods you expect an action-crime movie to have. The third film is the one I want to talk about in this review, Yeti: Giant Of The 20th Century. It seems (at least on these shores) to be the least known of the three movies, so not only did its unknown nature appeal to me, it promised that it might have evidence as to why there haven't been more Canadian-Italian co-productions. The opening sequences of the movie explain that off the coast of the Canadian province of Newfoundland, something very big that's encased in ice has been discovered by a mute boy by the name of Herbie (played by Jim Sullivan). Herbie and his older sister Jane (Antonella Interlenghi, City Of The Living Dead) are the grandchildren of millionaire tycoon Hunnicutt (Edoardo Faieta, The Lord Of The Rings), so it's not only inevitable that they pass their discovery to their grandfather, but that Hunnicutt sees great financial promise with whatever is in the ice. He convinces scientist Wasserman (John Stacy, Wild Beasts) to go to the remote location, and with a large team, uncover what's beneath the ice. It turns out to be a gigantic Yeti (Mimmo Crao, The Grand Duel), one so big that it would tower over a giraffe or elephant. In the process of thawing out the Yeti, it is reanimated, and Hunnicutt sees even bigger potential with it. He decides to ship the now living Yeti to Toronto, where it will be exhibited. However, nobody knows that Hunnicutt's right hand man Cliff (Tony Kendall, Machine Gun McCain) is up to no good concerning the Yeti... and I'm sure you know that eventually once the Yeti reaches Toronto, stuff quickly hits the fan.

I have to make a confession about a perspective I had about Yeti: Giant Of The 20th Century while watching it. Seeing a full-blown fantasy adventure such as this set in Canada just felt, well, weird to me. Let me explain. As a Canadian, I know that unlike countries such as the United States, England, or France, Canada has an almost zero presence in fantasy fiction of any medium, especially in stories set in Canada. Instead, we generally produce boring fiction writers like that Richler guy, or Alice Munro. So I'm not used to Canadian settings in a fantasy story. Still, I admit there was a part of me pleased to observe Canadian references in the movie (even token ones), such as the CN Tower, The Sun newspaper (now unfortunately a fascist rag), Toronto police uniforms, or a Bank of Montreal headquarters... though I'm not sure why the transport of the Yeti from Newfoundland to Toronto flew over Niagara Falls before landing in Toronto on "Hotel Toronto" (look at a map, non-Canadians). Also, in the Newfoundland sequences, everyone is wearing thick coats despite the nature backdrop being fully green and full of foliage. Such slipshod details like those ones will probably have many readers concluding that other aspects of the movie are equally or more slipshod, and for the most part they would be correct. Take the production values, for instance. It's clear even with the movie being a co-production that there wasn't a great deal of money for the production to spend. There's really lousy day-for-night photography, footage is clearly being run backwards a couple of times, and there's ample use of stock footage. When the chaos starts in Toronto, at most there are only two cop cars onscreen at a time, resulting towards the end the sight of eight cops being squeezed into both cop cars. The modelwork from aircraft to buildings is beyond obvious. There are also a couple of sequences where the Yeti is so poorly superimposed on the screen that we can see the background through him.

I admit that some close-up effects of the Yeti - large constructed hands holding various members of the human cast, and the Yeti's impossibly large feet - do show some effort was made on them, and they probably look better than you might expect. As it turns out, those fleeting shots are the most interesting depictions of the Yeti itself. Although this particular cinematic giant ape is more human in appearance than those in movies like King Kong - not wearing a costume - his personality is less human. It's hard to read him and figure out what he's feeling or thinking, except for one moment when he gets a thrill when the Jane character fondles his nipple. Mostly he just trumpets like an elephant, lumbers about awkwardly, and acts p*ssed off. You can't identify with him to any degree... or for that matter, the human characters as well. The human characters waver from being poorly written to being simple stock characters. Millionaire Hunnicutt is absolutely deranged to feel that the way he'll display the Yeti (on top of the Toronto Hotel) seems to pose no risks for Torontonians or the Yeti itself - how did this guy manage to become a millionaire in the first place? The young Herbie (who is strangely kind of effeminate despite his reduced age) is mute, but his being mute has absolutely no bearing on the story or the other characters, and in the end his quietness was probably written so the production wouldn't have to pay extra for a speaking actor in the role. Director Gianfranco Parolini (Sabata) not only doesn't have a handle on how even remotely how real people would act in this particular situation, but also how fantastic this situation would be in real life. The movie is remarkably low on awe, or how we humans can seem small and significant to many aspects past or present in this world of ours. Instead, in the first half of the movie he has the narrative lumber from scene to scene in an awesomely low-key manner. When the movie finally gets to Toronto and things go awry, it just doesn't feel convincing, from passerbys somehow not noticing the crisis until it gets right under their noses, to no feeling of any real big city-wide emotion when word gets out.

It's practically impossible to find anything to take seriously in Yeti: Giant Of The 20th Century. Viewers who sit down to watch it with a desire to feel the magic of classic giant monster movies like King Kong will be very disappointed. As you may have guessed, the only possible way the movie might be appreciated is viewing it for its camp value. And yes, the movie definitely has a lot of unintentionally amusing moments, not just those I described in the previous two paragraphs. In the first part of the movie, we get sights like Hunnicutt being transported in a leather sofa hanging under a helicopter, the decision to find what's hidden under that block of ice by blasting it with flamethrowers, and deciding the best course of action to reanimate the Yeti is while doing it while its hanging under a flying helicopter. The later portions of the movie also have their share of staggeringly bad moments, my favorite being when the gigantic Yeti is on a rampage in Toronto, Jane is telling other people, "They'll be sure to find him sooner or later." If you prepare to watch the movie with a kind of MST3K viewpoint, you'll likely have a good time... just not a great time. While Yeti: Giant Of The 20th Century has a good share of unintended laughs, at the same time there seems to be something that's holding it back from true classic so-bad-it's-good status. It may be that its energy level, as I mentioned before, is kind of sluggish and it seemingly not wanting to be as aggressive in its attitude as other (and better) giant monster movies. What is the cause of this lack of enough spark? To be honest, I think it's the movie's Canadian connection. As I said before, Canada hasn't practiced fantasy fiction enough to even know what the right attitudes should be in this genre, and it doesn't look like any time soon Canadian fiction tellers will finally catch on to what an audience anywhere in the world desires.

(Posted April 3, 2026)