The Path to the Himalayas: The Birth of the Abominable Snowman
The Abominable Snowman (1957) is the latest Hammer classic to become part of the Limited Collector’s Edition range and is available to pre-order now. To celebrate its release we’re tracing the strange history of its titular terror, looking at how a centuries-old belief in a ‘wild man of the mountains’ evolved from a local lore to a global mania that resulted in Nigel Kneale’s The Creature, which was remade for the big screen as The Abominable Snowman. So, come with us as we venture out in search of the yeti, following the path to the Himalayas that eventually led to one of Hammer’s most eerie and accomplished movies…
Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) ran with the memorable tagline, ‘An adventure 65 million years in the making’, and although The Abominable Snowman can’t match that length of development, it can reasonably claim to have had its genesis over 2000 years before its premiere in the summer of ’57.
‘An adventure over 2 millennia in the making…’
In early 326 BC, a few individuals from the Indus Valley region of Asia left their homes, probably after saying nervous goodbyes to their loved ones, and set off for a meeting with the most powerful person on the planet. Their apprehension would have been natural. Alexander the Great’s military campaigns had already seen him forge an empire that covered about 2 million square miles. He’d toppled empires, founded well over 50 cities and changed the course of countless cultures, and in doing so, he’d established a reputation for murderous ruthlessness that was enough to make even his closest friends fear for their lives when in his presence.
Those locals summoned for a meeting with Alexander must have wondered what he wanted, and whether they’d leave the rendez-vous alive.
But his reason for wanting to speak with these people turned out to be an unexpected one, seemingly unconnected with martial matters or the punitive demands of an invading general, widely considered to be the greatest tactical commander in the history of warfare. He had one request. And yes, chroniclers term it a ‘request’ as opposed to an order. Alexander looked at the locals he’d summoned and politely asked them if he could see a yeti.
Some accounts suggest he believed the men and women of the region kept the creatures in captivity. Others imply he was simply asking to be taken to their habitat where they could be observed and studied in their natural conditions. But however the question was phrased, historians generally agree on the answer he received. No, this would not be possible. Not because the yeti didn’t exist, but due to the fact it didn’t stray from the higher, colder lands.
Alexander accepted this information but gave orders to his forces, essentially telling them to keep an eye open for the creature. Perhaps unsurprisingly, despite a number of possible but unconfirmed sightings, none were captured.
This glimpse into Alexander’s life also provides an insight that’s apposite to fans of Hammer’s The Abominable Snowman. Firstly, it proves that the phenomenon known as the yeti (or Yeti), has been established since – at least – the third century BC. But perhaps more saliently, it shows that for well over 2000 years, the idea of the yeti has held people in its thrall. Even a man who legitimately believed he could conquer the whole of the known world put his aims and ambitions on hold because he wanted to check out what became known as the abominable snowman.
The fact that folklore regarding the yeti stretches back centuries is well documented, but the fascination the legend holds for people from all across the globe is equally enduring and pertinent. No wonder the execs at Hammer jumped at the chance to bring The Creature to the big screen. In terms of pulling power, Frankenstein was a relative novice. He’d been drawing in the crowds for less than 150 years. The yeti had been captivating them for millennia.
Throughout the centuries that followed Alexander’s Asian incursion, the legend of the yeti thrived through oral tradition. Stories told to children as an entertainment; apocryphal anecdotes shared with friends; campfire tales recounted with expert attempts to seem credible, or scary, or both. All perpetuating… a myth? Or a series of half-truths?
Many respected observers have gone on record as harbouring a genuine belief in the species’ existence. In his 1955 autobiography, Tiger of the Snows, Tenzing Norgay admitted he hadn’t seen the abominable snowman, but based on evidence he’d heard, including that of his father who told him he’d spotted the creature on more than one occasion, he felt confident enough to believe in the mysterious beings.
At one point in the early 1960s, Tenzing’s mountaineering comrade, Edmund Hillary, was open-minded enough to lead an expedition into the Himalayas, tasked with discovering if the stories were real. He famously borrowed what locals insisted was a yeti’s scalp from the Khumjung monastery, but disappointingly, scientists analysing the ‘evidence’ found it was fabricated from the hide of a Himalayan antelope… allegedly!
Later, even Sir David Attenborough conceded the yeti could exist. Although he pooh-poohed the notion of myths such as the Loch Ness Monster, he reflected that the evidence surrounding the abominable snowman, and the environment it was supposedly indigenous to, made it an authentic possibility. ‘So I think there is something,’ he replied when asked directly about the creature, calling the whole conundrum, ‘An unanswered problem.’
Inevitably, the nature of the yeti mythos has evolved over the years. For those born and brought up close to where it’s said to exist, the creature is usually described as a peaceful force, kind and uncombative. One ancient, familiar story tells of a man who sought solitude in the Himalayas. He fell ill and his life hung in the balance, until a yeti befriended him and nursed him back to good health. Some iterations of the account, said to be true, have the two individuals forming a friendship that lasted beyond the man’s recovery, but whichever variation is recounted, the tale is typical insofar as it lends the creature noble qualities all too often lacking in mankind. This traditional approach to the yeti would be the one taken by Nigel Kneale and Val Guest when they welcomed the abominable snowman into Hammer’s stable.
The Victorians’ relative apathy towards the yeti is baffling. The publication of Charles Darwins’ On the Origin of Species in November, 1859 fuelled a frenzy of public debate regarding evolution and the possibilities inherent in the animal kingdom which had previously been discounted as myth and folklore. The likelihood of ‘monsters’ existing had also been given credence by the increased knowledge of dinosaurs (the word itself was coined in 1842 after Richard Owen used the name ‘Dinosauria’, meaning ‘terrible lizards’, to corral these reptiles into a single group) and explorers of the era always seemed to be returning home with tall tales of incredible beasts including giant sea serpents and other animals that were allegedly ‘living dinosaurs’.
Perhaps these claims distracted from the yeti, or maybe one possible account of the Himalayan legend came too early: in 1832, trekker B. H. Hodgson, sometimes said to be the Court of Nepal’s first British Resident, wrote that his colleagues from the area told him of a mysterious creature they’d witnessed. In a piece submitted to the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, Hodgson revealed that the creature, ‘moved erectly, was covered in long, dark hair, and had no tail.’ Had his article first appeared during the evolution mania that began several years later, it’s plausible to conclude that more may have been made of it. As it was, it initially became nothing more than a footnote in yeti history, later picked up by students of the field and claimed by some to be an early sighting of the abominable snowman.
Later, in 1899 Lieutenant Colonel Laurence Austine Waddell, a Scottish explorer and expert in the culture of Tibet, was remarkably circumspect about the legend. In his travel memoir, Among the Himalayas, published in 1899, he acknowledged that many locals believed in the yeti’s existence, but he dismissed their certainties with a disappointing refusal to enter into the spirit of the thing. Discussing the many ‘sightings’ he wrote, ‘…none, however, of the many Tibetans I have interrogated on this subject could ever give me an authentic case.’ He concluded, ‘On the most superficial investigation, it always resolved into something that somebody heard tell of.’
Or to put it another way, ‘What I was searching for does not exist…’
The enigmatic hominid of the Himalayas could have become just another minor piece of local folklore, largely unknown after early notoriety. But one photograph changed everything; one photograph created a belief and an industry and led directly to the rebirth of a legend.
Context: In 1933 The Inverness Courier ran a feature about a creature in Loch Ness, describing it as being a ‘whale-like fish’. Although this generated interest in the Loch Ness Monster (the soubriquet had also been coined in 1933), it wasn’t until the following year that the water beast made a huge splash around the world. One picture – the famous snap known as the Surgeon’s Photograph, catapulted Nessie to instant and immense fame. This black and white image allowed the public to have a vision of the monster’s appearance, solidifying stories and hearsay into the actuality that only comes with visual evidence.
Looking at that photograph now it’s hard to believe so many people fell for the hoax, not least the Daily Mail that printed and repeatedly reprinted the image across its pages in 1934. The perspectives of the waves shown in the uncut image, in relation to the creature’s (alleged) neck and head make a mockery of the cameraman’s claims about the size of Nessie. It’s blurry and almost laughable inauthentic. Yet it became the defining shot of Scotland’s premier legend, turning a tale into a thriving global industry, and even after it was exposed as a fraud, it remains the enduring image of Loch Ness’s most famous resident.
The equivalent of ‘the Surgeon’s photograph’ for the yeti was a shot taken by the respected British explorer Eric Shipton in 1951. It's one of the giant footprint in the snow, with its enormous size demonstrated by the pickaxe which can be seen by the side of the print. The National Geographic succinctly summed up its potency: ‘The photograph was taken on the Menlung Glacier, west of Mount Everest, on the Nepal-Tibet border. Shipton and Michael Ward were searching for an alternative Everest route when they came across the prints. Shipton was one of the most highly respected Everest explorers, so if he is bringing back a print, it is a real print. Nobody ever questioned that.’
Daniel Taylor, author of Yeti: The Ecology of a Mystery, continued in the NG, ‘What was captivating about the prints was that they’re really sharp. The snow was hard so the photo looks like a sort of plaster of Paris cast. The second feature was that the prints looked like a human footprint, but with a thumb. So, you get this primate-like feeling but hominoid at the same time. Its enormous size—13 inches—also suggests a magnificent hominoid, a King Kong type of image! And the media grabbed it.’
To be fair, it wasn’t only the media that ‘grabbed it’. The public wanted to believe in the yeti. It was pointed out that the size and shape of the footprint could have been wildly distorted by melting ice and snow, but which is more exciting and fun to believe? The existence of a huge, wild snowman that marauds across the Himalayas, or the fact that weather conditions can play merry hell with footprints left by everyday mountain animals?
Debates around the yeti became commonplace after the photograph’s syndication and expeditions were mounted with the sole intention of proving the species’ existence. And crucially for the story of Hammer’s The Abominable Snowman, this monster-mania culminated in the Daily Mail (they loved a good monster story!) sponsoring an expedition in 1954 in order to serialise (and potentially sensationalise) its progress. Led by journalist Ralph Izzard, the newspaper’s quest proved to be a remarkable one. Writing for Fleet Street’s Finest, Alan Sparrow noted, ‘Scientists, mountaineers, biologists and anthropologists joined the mission. Supporting them were around 200 Sherpas, equipped with dart guns and even a cage, in case they managed to capture the legendary creature and bring it back to London…’
Spoiler alert: this high-profile expedition, like every other expedition, failed to find evidence of the yeti, or indeed any kind of quasi-supernatural beings lurking in the icy mountains of Asia.
In retrospect, however, Izzard’s mission demonstrates the extent to which the myth/legend had become embedded in contemporary social and popular culture, and the Daily Mail’s stunt clearly had some sort of resonance for Nigel Kneale. Introducing his BBC drama, The Creature, for the Radio Times, Kneale reflected, ‘A year ago a London newspaper sent a fully equipped expedition specifically to search for it. Again tracks were found, but not what made them. Is there, after all, some prosaic explanation for the footprints? Or does the yeti exist? If so, what can it be? The Creature, in purely fictional terms, is a guess at the answers.’
This seemingly inconsequential observation indicates that ‘yeti-mania’, and specifically the Izzard-led expedition, resulted in The Creature and by extension, The Abominable Snowman.
The former was broadcast from Lime Grove studios on Sunday, 30 January, 1955 and included filmed inserts shot in mountainous regions of Switzerland doubling for the Himalayas. It was remounted for a live ‘repeat’ the following Thursday evening but sadly, neither production was recorded and all that survives is a meagre collection of snaps, a few publicity shots and, of course, paperwork including the script.
Writing for Mana Pop, Mike Brooks described The Abominable Snowman as, ‘…more of a philosophical deconstruction of man’s place in the world while also debating the intrinsic dangers of scientific exploration…’
In December, 1956 The Kinematograph revealed that an adaption for The Creature would form Hammer’s first production of the following year, and sure enough, cameras started rolling on The Abominable Snowman in late January. Director Val Guest ran a tight ship (‘Val was always very prepared…’ - cinematographer, Len Harris) and the production wrapped on 5 March, 1957. Less than 6 months later the picture opened on the ABC circuit on August 26.
It’s worth noting, though, that other studios had reached the Himalayas before Hammer. The public’s burgeoning fascination with the yeti resulted in The Snow Creature (1954), a US movie produced and directed by W. Lee Wilder, and starring Paul Langton. This horror flick can legitimately claim to be the first film that uses the abominable snowman as its narrative core. Often derided by critics, it’s arguably quite an engrossing picture whilst it deals with an expedition to the Himalayas. It’s low budget and this shows, but the writing, unfussy direction and acting create an unnerving atmosphere, heavy with mystery and dread. The whole thing becomes disappointingly pedestrian when the action shifts to America, however, but it’s still worth a watch, if only for the early, gripping scenes, before the yeti it presents us with devolves into a run-of-the-mill hairy monster.
Indeed, the genius of The Abominable Snowman partly lies in Kneale’s handling of the creature. As the Guardian pointed out, ‘Cushing and Tucker play scientists who are searching for the mythical giant beasts in the Himalayas; the Yeti turn out to be intelligent beings laying low until they can reclaim their land from invading humankind.’
It may have taken over 2000 years, but Hammer had finally ensured the yeti had been given the story that its legend deserved.
The Abominable Snowman is available to preorder now and you can read more about the release and the film itself in our recent feature, Coming Soon: The Abominable Snowman… Plus 5 Things We Think You’ll Love About It. For more of Nigel Kneale’s work, check out Hammer’s acclaimed Quatermass Collection and visit the online store to explore more titles in the Limited Collector’s Edition range.
