Did you have old small town cinemas like we did in Scotland back in the fifties and sixties? People now call them flea-pits but I certainly never called them that. I remember, like almost all kids of my generation, going to the Saturday morning kids shows that had a whole mix of things to hold our attention for two or three hours at a stretch although, now, only a vague Batman stands out from a rather drab overall impression. I remember watching old black and white 'cowboys', - we never called them 'Westerns'. And early on Mum must have taken use to take us to see other full-length films. I remember a colour film set in Africa for the giant spider (giant for those days!) that crawled across the chest of the hero and a 'native' with glove of a tiger's claws that ripped through the canvas of the hero's tent. And I remember the Flight of the White Stallions more for a bad egg that I'd eaten beforehand that made me feel ill during the show and vomit afterw
ards. I have never really liked eggs since then. Some things stick in your mind.But from that time there's really only one film that stuck in my mind, The Abominable Snowman. I watched it again a few days ago for the first time since I originally saw it in the very early sixties, when I was about ten. I think we must have been recommended to see it by my friend's elder brother, Terry. He was a keen film fan and used to send Robert and me to see films that he thought we'd like. We usually went on a Saturday afternoon. Of the many cinemas in Aberdeen we most often we went to the ABC, the Odeon or the Majestic but on this occasion, and I think it was my first time, we went to a small cinema in Diamond Street, The Cosmo. I'm not sure what I thought the film would be about with a title like that but I understood when I was told it was about the Yeti. I had remembered correctly the rough outline of the film. An expedition goes to capture a yeti in the Himalayas. Their base camp is a Tibetan Monastery where they meet the High Lama. Although they capture a yeti they are, finally, uns
uccessful. More importantly they discover the Yeti is the missing link or a descendant of the missing link.Three things stick in my mind. First was that it was set in a Tibetan Monastery – that stuck, although I had no images of it all except one when the expedition is climbing up the slope and nearly at the gates. You can see the Tibetan Monastery huddles under a cliff. What surprised me recently was recognising the original for this set. It's almost certainly taken from one of Lama Anagarika Govinda's paintings that he did in the thirties on his 'Tsaparang Expedition' to the lost kingdom of Guge in the Western Himalayas.
Second, as I said, the yeti was supposed to be the missing link. What sticks in my mind is that I really didn't know what the missing link was and I had to ask my friend Robert, and maybe later also his elder brother. The missing link was the missing, lost species, that connects man with the monkeys, I was told. This was suggested in the film but it became clearer as the film progressed that it was more that the yeti was a parallel descendent of the missing link – and one more advanced than us, with strange mental powers. That I didn't remember.
The third thi
ng, again as I remembered it, was that you never saw the Lama abbot's face until the very end. We were shown the face of the Yeti and in the closing scene when I finally saw the lama's face I thought it bore a close resemblance to the yeti's. Actually, although I understood the symbolic significance of the climax of the film I remembered it incorrectly: it was the yeti's face we never saw till the end, the lama's face was visible throughout! Still, as I say, I made a connection and that moment stuck in my mind throughout all my years – a mystical face appearing momentarily from the shadow, except it was the yeti's face not the lama's. The point for me being, of course, that there was indeed a link between the Yetis and the lamas, with their mystical powers. The lama in the film had powers and could tell what was happening away on the distant mountains and the yetis could make you see things, hallucinate, sort of invade your mind. The lama and his attendant were portrayed in a slightly sinister manner, but then they did have the last of the Yeti, the last of the more-intelligent-than-human creatures, to protect.
ng, again as I remembered it, was that you never saw the Lama abbot's face until the very end. We were shown the face of the Yeti and in the closing scene when I finally saw the lama's face I thought it bore a close resemblance to the yeti's. Actually, although I understood the symbolic significance of the climax of the film I remembered it incorrectly: it was the yeti's face we never saw till the end, the lama's face was visible throughout! Still, as I say, I made a connection and that moment stuck in my mind throughout all my years – a mystical face appearing momentarily from the shadow, except it was the yeti's face not the lama's. The point for me being, of course, that there was indeed a link between the Yetis and the lamas, with their mystical powers. The lama in the film had powers and could tell what was happening away on the distant mountains and the yetis could make you see things, hallucinate, sort of invade your mind. The lama and his attendant were portrayed in a slightly sinister manner, but then they did have the last of the Yeti, the last of the more-intelligent-than-human creatures, to protect.Having seen the film again I'm still left with questions: why should this film have stuck in the mind of a little boy from Aberdeen? Why did not the monastery and the monks not stick more in my mind? The film got many things right – obviously a lot of effort was put into getting it right. The monk's robes were a bit more Christian like but other details were right. For the chanting you can hear the famous verse that begins, "May the Bodhicitta arise where it has not yet arisen…" (This i
s still chanted nowadays – I heard it this year chanted as a peaceful protest by Tibetans, monks, nuns and lay, during Tibetan protests against the Beijing Olympics!) Or did it all stick in my mind, only much more subliminally? And why should I have been captivated all these years by the face of the lama – except it wasn't the lama was it? It was actually the Yeti's face, which I thought (wrongly it seems from looking at the list of credits) was portrayed by the same actor as the lama. Why did the boy transpose that serene, mystical shadowy face to the lama? Strange – I remember being this boy! Is it strange then that I later gravitated towards the lamas, in my forties wrote a biography of a lama of Tibet and even, to be honest, have wanted to be a lama of some sort? And isn't it strange that I too, like the famous Czechoslovakian actor, Arnold Marle, who played the Lama, should in turn play the role of a red-robed lama in a Buddhist monastery.
s still chanted nowadays – I heard it this year chanted as a peaceful protest by Tibetans, monks, nuns and lay, during Tibetan protests against the Beijing Olympics!) Or did it all stick in my mind, only much more subliminally? And why should I have been captivated all these years by the face of the lama – except it wasn't the lama was it? It was actually the Yeti's face, which I thought (wrongly it seems from looking at the list of credits) was portrayed by the same actor as the lama. Why did the boy transpose that serene, mystical shadowy face to the lama? Strange – I remember being this boy! Is it strange then that I later gravitated towards the lamas, in my forties wrote a biography of a lama of Tibet and even, to be honest, have wanted to be a lama of some sort? And isn't it strange that I too, like the famous Czechoslovakian actor, Arnold Marle, who played the Lama, should in turn play the role of a red-robed lama in a Buddhist monastery.
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