To begin with this piece is going to look at Yeti, Bigfoot and Sasquatch stories in as many mediums as we can squeeze into such a short space. Expressions like “wild men” or the more scientific “cryptid” are repellent to me so I am going to coin my own expression. Let us take the first letter of each Y for Yeti, B for Bigfoot and S for Sasquatch and come up with YBS or “YuBS”, meaning any unexplained natural humanoid between human and ape, usually living in hiding amongst us.
Unlike some other fictional monsters, YuBS have their start in reality of a sort. The name “Abominable Snowman” was coined by Charles Howard-Bury in his account of the Royal Geographical Society’s Everest Reconnaissance Expedition of 1921. There Howard-Bury saw the tracks of the Yeti. His Sherpa guide called it “The Wild Man of the Snows,” or “metoh-kangmi.” (“Metoh” is “man-bear” and “Kang-mi” is “snowman.”) Howard-Bury simplified it to “Abominable Snowman” (and Yukon Cornelius shortened it to “Bumble” but since children’s cartoons are not considered worthy of note at the Royal Society his Bumble has not replaced the more popular “Yeti”.)
Howard-Bury’s account of his travels was quickly picked up by English ghost story writer E. F. Benson, who wrote “The Horror-Horn” for Munsey’s Magazine, November 1922. In this story Yetis of the Alps terrorize a Swiss resort. Benson’s tale is a classic but seems to have had little effect on spreading the concept of YuBS. The Pulps are filled with ape creatures, (usually followed by psychic detectives like Jules de Grandin) but the YuBS never really got much attention there. It was easier to have a mad scientist capture gorillas or create them from weird experiments. H. P. Lovecraft makes a slight reference to them with his Migos in “The Whisperer in Darkness” (Weird Tales, August 1931), having his evil creatures mistaken for apemen.
The Yeti received serious attention (at last) in William Sambrot’s “Creatures of the Snows” in The Saturday Evening Post, October 29, 1960. As a sign of the times, Sambrot’s monsters are innocent and the humans are the dangerous ones, an attitude to be found more often in media after the Pulps died. Sambrot’s story concerns a man who discovers the YuBS but chooses to leave them be, knowing what humanity will do to them.
Fiction returned to the YuBS as forgotten prehistoric men in The Island at the Bottom of the World (aka Devil Country) (1972) by Ian Cameron. Cameron has his red-haired monsters living in a volcanic crater in the Andes Mountains. The novel is somewhat repetitive of his earlier masterpiece, The Lost Ones but is quite readable. In true adventure story style the YuBS are wiped out by the end of the book as their volcano erupts. (You can’t have a volcano without one, you know.) Cameron echoes his master Jules Verne’s The Village in the Treetops (1901) in which Verne takes on Darwin and evolutionary theory.
The changes in horror writing in the 1970s made it inevitable that a major writer should pen a YuBS novel. It had to wait until 1980 when Michael Cricthon wrote Congo, in which scientists go to Africa to find a missing team who has been killed by a race of guard apes left by a vanished civilization. Crichton spices things up by having a tamed gorilla accompany the crew, giving a third POV to the primate mix. Like most Crichton novels, it is a re-fit of a classic novel, in this case King Solomon’s Mines, with Crichton borrowing from Haggard’s Henrika the baboon woman in “Allan’s Wife” (1887) or Heu-Heu the Monster (1924). The book was filmed in 1995.
True horror novels eventually followed Crichton’s Science Fictional book with The Mountain King by Rick Hautala proving it could be done with nail-biting tension and satisfying logic. Hautala’s short novel follows a man’s desperate race to save his family from very nasty sasquatches. In the same year, John Darnton made his debut with Neanderthal, in which anthropologists search for a lost scientist and discover Neanderthals living in the foot hills of the Himalayas. An exciting novel in the Michael Crichton/Ian Cameron mode, it explains why the Neanderthals died out and how humans were responsible.
In the comics ape creatures are far too frequent for me to attempt being inclusive. Here are some memorable YuBS comics: the first and most prominent is a mutant in the X-Men universe, a member of Alpha-Team named Sasquatch. Created by John Byrne to give Canada its own set of X-Mutants, Sasquatch first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #120 (April 1979). As you’d expect his mutant abilities include great strength and a predilection to hairballs.
Long before Sasquatch joined the ranks of Wolverine, YuBS appeared in My Greatest Adventure #10 with “I Battled the Abominable Snowman” with art by Leonard Starr.
Long after this several YuBs appeared in the Warren magazines,first with a one-pager in Creepy #26 (April 1969) “Creepy’s Loathsome Lore: Sasquatches!” by Bill Parente, Bill Fraccio & Tony Tallarico.
“Don’t Help Me” (Ghostly Tales #77, December 1969) has a photographer join a family of yetis.
Jerry Lewis in “The Abominable Schmoman!” (The Adventures of Jerry Lewis #116, January-February 1970)
They followed this with three stories as the popular media, fueled by Patterson’s footage, made YuBS hot properties: “Quest of the Bigfoot” Creepy #43 by R. Michael Rosen and Jerry Grandenetti, in which the Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) have horns and appear to be mind-affecting demons. “Sasquatch Love” in Vampirella #75 (January 1979) by Cary Bates and Jose Ortiz, has scientists trying to show sasquatches how to mate with disastrous results. “Night of the Yeti” in Vampirella #77 (April 1979) by Michael Fleisher and Russ Heath, has lust lead to disaster on the high mountain as innocent Yetis suffer for human stupidity.
DC Comics had their own YuBS with “The Abominable Snowman” in Secret of the Sinister House #9 (February 1973) by Jack Oleck and Rico Rival. In Tarzan #277 “Ice Jungle” (January 1974) by Joe Kubert, Lord Greystoke faces off against YuBS on a snowy mountain. In The Warlord #9 “Lair of the Snowbeast” (October-November 1977) Mike Grell makes them the larva to a beautiful butterfly creature.
Skywald Publications wasn’t getting left out of the YBSfest. Nightmare #11 (February 1973) served up “Taw!”, written by Ted Fedory and drawn by Antonio Borrell. Taw is a yeti with horns in a plot we will see again and again. Hunters looking to capture a monster get eaten. Psycho #19 (July 1974) gave us “The Yeti” written by Al Hewetson and illustrated by Alphonso Font. A month later Psycho #20 (August 1974) featured “Tomorrow the Snowman Will Kill You!” written by Augustine Funnell and drawn by Luis Collado. Here hunters gunning to bag a yeti don’t know the YBS have a secret weapon of their own, telepathy. They simply have the hunters shoot each other. “The Thing in the Ragged Mountains” in Nightmare #23 (February 1975) was written by Al Hewetson and drawn by Amador. This time we have hunters and a bigfoot. Thornton Wells shoots the sasquatch and hides in a cave. The next morning they find he shot the other two hunters. He ends up in an asylum.
“Main Attraction” (Scary Tales #11, January 1978) has a circus manager capture a sasquatch.
The one thing that all these appearances share is the peaceful and/or misunderstood creatures of nature. They are all pro-Yeti stories, unlike Richard Corben’s Bigfoot (IDW Comics, February-May 2005) in which the massive creature maims and devours as many people as possible.
Hollywood has had a poor relationship with YuBS, producing no film of any great merit. Typical examples include the 1977 TV movie Snowbeast starring Bo Svenson and Yvette Mimieux. Basically it’s Jaws on a ski hill with a lame guy in a suit as the monster. Perhaps the saddest part is that the 2011 remake with John Schneider is even worse. The Legend of Boggy Creek does Bigfoot in a swamp and then two sequels and a remake. It seems these pictures can find no purpose to put these creatures to except poorly executed attack scenes.
The alternative is the other kind of YuBS films based on Harry and the Hendersons (1987) In these films the YuBS are gentle giants and show us the evils of not being vegetarians. Illogical, sentimental and maybe just plain mental. It really is too bad no producer/director can do for YuBS what The Descent (2005) did for ghouls. It needs intelligence and atmosphere and some goal besides boo-it’s a monster! I’m not holding my breath.
1. The Snow Creature (1954)
2. Man Beast (1955)
3. Half Human (1958)
4. Bigfoot (1967)
5. Bigfoot (1970)
6. The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)
7. Shriek of the Mutilated (1974)
8. Creature From Black Lake (1976)
9. Curse of Bigfoot (1976)
10. The Legend of Bigfoot (1976)
11. The Six Million Dollar Man (1976)
12. The Bionic Woman (1976)
13. Bigfoot and Wildboy (1977)
14. The Return to Boggy Creek (1977)
15. Sasquatch, The Legend of Bigfoot (1977)
16. Snowbeast (1977)
17. The Capture of Bigfoot (1979)
18. Night of the Demon (1980)
19. The Barbaric Beast of Boggy Creek II (1985)
20. Cry Wilderness (1987)
21. Harry And The Hendersons (1987)
22. Bigfoot: The Unforgettable Encounter (1994)
23. Search for the Beast (1997)
24. Sasquatch (2002)
25. Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch (2005)
26. Sasquatch Hunters (2005)
27. Abominable (2006)
28. Bigfoot (2006)
29. Sasquatch Mountain (2006) aka Devil on the Mountain
30. Bigfoot (2008)
31. The Assault on Sasquatch (2009)
32. Boggy Creek (2010)
33. Snowbeast (2011)
There are certainly more after 2011.
On TV, I remembered Ted Cassidy and then later Andre the Giant as Bigfoot to John Saxon and Sandy Duncan’s aliens in The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman (both 1976). Of course, we watched Leonard Nimoy talk about Bigfoot on In Search Of… (1975) and Peter Graves in Mysterious Monsters (1975). One I missed as a kid was Sid and Marty Krofft’s Bigfoot and Wildboy (1977). From the YouTube videos I think this was a blessing. I was surprised that The X-Files and Charmed had not done a “Bigfoot” episode. (Charmed did make their Wendigo look like a Sasquatch but…) It’s almost as if nobody wanted to touch the skunk bear after the Six Million Dollar Treatment? Psi Factor and Dan Ackroyd were braver with “Forbidden North” Season 1 Episode 14 (February 8, 1997) in which loggers are attacked by a monster but no satisfactory conclusion is reached by the end of the episode. (You wouldn’t want to give up the franchise now…)
Well, there is most of the YuBS in fiction, comics, movies and TV. I’m sure I missed a few. They are elusive creatures after all. Send me an email and let me know your favorites that I missed or where I flubbed on the details. (I love to be humbled.)
Bibliography
I used Wikipedia (of course) but two sites in particular were helpful for the YuBS movies: http://www.imdb.com/list/kui0ec7OlgA/. The pictures are used with “Fair Use” in mind and no copyright is implied.
The Author in Harrison Hot Springs, BC, Sasquatch town!
Since I wrote this I have discovered Eric S. Brown’s fantastic Bigfoot War series.
