Half Human (獣人雪男, Jūjin Yuki Otoko; lit. 'Beastman Snowman') is a 1955 Japanese science fiction horror film directed by Ishirō Honda, with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. The film stars Akira Takarada, Momoko Kōchi, Akemi Negishi, Sachio Sakai, and Nobuo Nakamura, with Sanshiro Sagara as the Abominable Snowman. The film was released in Japan in 1955, and in the US (cut to 70 minutes) on May 22, 1957 (retitled Half Human), on a double feature with Monster from Green Hell (1957).
Contents
Plot
The Japanese version is told in flashbacks framed by scenes of a reporter questioning the survivors.
During New Year's, Five young university students come to the Japanese Alps in Nagano for a skiing vacation. They are Takashi Iijima, his girlfriend Machiko Takeno, her older brother Kiyoshi Takeno, and their friends Nakada and Kaji. When they arrive, Kiyoshi and Kaji split off and visit their mutual friend, Gen, promising to meet the others later at the lodge. Takashi, Michiko, and Nakada arrive at the lodge, whose caretaker informs them of an approaching blizzard.
The caretaker telephones Gen's cabin, but nobody answers, worrying the group. While Takashi takes over the phone, a fur-coat-clad young woman named Chika, who lives in a village deep in the mountains, enters. Growing up in a village that shuns contact with outsiders, Chika is none too pleased to see so many visitors but reluctantly takes shelter from the storm nonetheless.
The sound of an avalanche thundering down a nearby slope terrifies the group. The lodge telephone rings. Michiko picks up the phone but drops it in horror. Through the earpiece comes the sound of screams, followed by a single gunshot. When Takashi picks up the receiver, he hears another agonized scream and the line goes dead. Chika puts her coat back on and slips away.
The next day, as soon as the weather clears, a rescue party goes off to find Gen and Kaji. Kiyoshi is nowhere to be found. Gen is dead on the cabin floor while Kaji's body has been dragged out into the snow. Their injuries suggest they were attacked by something far stronger than a man.
Takashi and Nakata find strange tufts of hair around the cabin, as though whatever had left them was absurdly large. Most disturbing of all are the enormous bare footprints leading off into the snow. The team splits up, one group brings the bodies back to the lodge and the other continues searching for Kiyoshi. By nightfall, there is still no sign of Kiyoshi and the rescue team leader announces that they will have to return to Tōkyo until the snow thaws.
Six months later, when the snow has thawed enough for a proper search, Takashi and Machiko join an expedition to the Japanese Alps led by anthropologist Professor Shigeki Koizumi. The two have come to terms with the possibility of Kiyoshi's death, but are determined to find out what happened. Koizumi's goal, also the expedition's main focus, is to verify the existence of an unknown bipedal primate lurking in the area.
Cast
Japanese version
The cast from the Japanese version of the film are taken from the official Ishirō Honda website.
American version
John Carradine as Dr. John Rayburn
Russell Thorson as Prof. Philip Osborne
Robert Karnes as Prof. Alan Templeton
Morris Ankrum as Dr. Carl Jordan
The cast from the American version of the film are taken from The Japanese Filmography: 1900 through 1994.
Production
Crew
Personnel taken the official Ishirō Honda website.
Development
Before Godzilla had been released, Toho had already planned its next monster movie with Honda attached to direct it. Half Human was part of a mini-cycle of topical films influenced by Eric Shipton's photographs of large footprints found in the snow at Mount Everest in 1951. These included the 1954 American film The Snow Creature and the 1957 British film The Abominable Snowman.
Writer Shigeru Kayama was hired to write the original script and completed his treatment on October 16, 1954. The film began under the working title of S-Project (S for Snowman) with the production being officially announced in November with the title Snowman of the Alps. Screenwriter Takeo Murata began working on the project at the same time as Godzilla Raids Again.
Filming
Honda went to Tokyo to shoot Half Human's scenes with snow and on returning found that special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya was busy working on Godzilla Raids Again, which put Half Human on hold while Honda began filming Mother and Son. Half Human resumed filming in June and July and was released on August 14.
Release
Half Human was released in Japan by Toho on August 14, 1955, as a double feature with Three Brides for Three Sons. Toho has not acknowledged the matter of the film's release. Honda biographers Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski suggested the film was not released to avoid backlash from burakumin's rights groups such as the Buraku Liberation League, the film being removed from distribution for decades as a result. Some sources indicate it was aired on Japanese television in either the 1960s or early 1970s and the film received a screening at a film retrospective in Kyoto in 2001. As of 2017, a complete version of the film has never been released by Toho in any home video format.
American version
For the American version of the film, the American company Distributors Corporation of America (DCA) added English-language scenes and narration. The American version of the film contains the original Japanese footage with scenes of John Carradine as John Rayburn explaining the Snowman to his colleagues. The new footage was directed by Kenneth G. Crane on two different sets over the course of two days.
Crane also directed Monster from Green Hell, which was released by DCA on May 23, 1957 as a double feature with Half Human (1957) for its US release. This version also removes Sato's film score.
The American version features a scene where Carradine reveals the corpse of the Snowman's son on a morgue slab, and the corpse was portrayed by the costume used for the Snowman's son in the original Japanese film, which Toho shipped to the U.S. for filming.
Reception
Honda biographers Ryfle and Godziszewski noted that, though the film was "not Honda's best work", the original Japanese version is far superior to the more widely seen American version of the film.
They declared the film to suffer from "weak plotting, thin characters, and distracting humor" Online film database AllMovie described the American version of the film as "Another example of a fairly interesting Japanese monster film rendered nearly incomprehensible by ham-fisted editing and substandard English dubbing" and that Honda's original edit "was marginally more interesting, though Honda would soon fare better with monsters of the scaly, radioactive variety." The movie inspired Loren Coleman to begin his pursuit of cryptozoology.