Man Beast is a 1956 American horror film directed and produced by Jerry Warren. It was Warren's first directorial effort and the first film distributed by his Associated Producers, Inc. The film is about a young woman who persuades some mountai…
Man Beast is a 1956 American horror film directed and produced by Jerry Warren. It was Warren's first directorial effort and the first film distributed by his Associated Producers, Inc. The film is about a young woman who persuades some mountain climbers to trek up to the Himalayas to attempt to find her missing brother, who hasn't been heard from since he went there on an earlier expedition to find the Abominable Snowman. A mysterious guide befriends them, but winds up actually in league with the Yetis who inhabit the mountains, and he secretly works against the explorers behind their backs, killing them off one by one.
Film historian Bill Warren said a lot of the mountain climbing footage was taken from an unfinished foreign film, "probably of Mexican origin". The film was shown as early as April 1956, and opened in Los Angeles on December 5, 1956. The film was distributed in the United States as a double feature with Prehistoric Women.
Connie Hayward (Virginia Maynor) and Trevor Hudson (Lloyd Nelson) travel to the Himalayas with a guide named Steve (Tom Maruzzi) to locate Connie's missing brother, who disappeared in that region while on an earlier expedition looking for the Abominable Snowman. Together with the help of a Dr. Erickson (George Wells Lewis), they manage to locate her brother's camp, but it is abandoned, except for a mysterious native guide named Varga (George Skaff) who attempts to befriend them.
The group is attacked by the snowmen, with the treacherous Varga secretly working against the members of the expedition. Hudson falls off a cliff while being chased by a yeti, and Dr. Erickson is lured into a cave by Varga, who then shoots him dead. When most of the party is dead, Varga reveals to Connie that he is actually a fifth-generation descendant of Yeti, who for decades have been kidnapping human women and forcing them to breed with the male snowmen in an attempt to eventually wipe out the yeti strain from their DNA. He plots to kidnap Connie and mate with her, so that their progeny will be another step closer to being human.
Steve comes to Connie's rescue, and manages to knock Varga unconscious. Steve and Connie attempt to escape down the mountain, but Varga follows them down a rope to insure they do not make it. The rope slips loose from its mooring, Varga falls to his death, and Connie and Steve (now in love) make their way back to civilization.
