New Best of the Hopper I

First aired ... November 10, 2008 ...


Yeti


Saturday night there was this awful, awful movie on the awful, awful Sci Fi channel entitled Yeti. It caused a minor disturbance at my house.

First, a disclaimer. I did not see the movie. Well, I did watch the last ten minutes, but I’ll get to that in a second. Basically, the plot follows, I think, a bunch of twentysomethings who crash on top of some snowy woodsy mountain and try to make it back to civilization. Problem is there’s this bloodthirsty yeti tracking them, and eventually hunts them down. I mean, this thing at one point rips some dude’s leg off, takes a bite out of it, and starts beating the poor chap with it.

Why is it so difficult to make a good hairy beast movie? I don’t think it’s ever been done. The angle to take is not one of gory violence or tense chase scenes. No. Absolutely, no! The way to go is to exploit the creepiness factor. Something moving in the shadows. Something that may be looking in your window. Watching you. Something that’s big and powerful and unknown. That’s scary enough. A Freddy Krueger sasquatch just ain’t. Anybody remember The Legend of Boggy Creek, from the early 70s? That movie scared the heck outta me as a little kid. I last saw it about ten or so years ago, and while the monster’s obviously some stunt man in a gorilla suit, it was creepy as all heck and it worked.

The problem with Yeti was that my four-year-old daughter saw the trailer with me while we were channel surfing Saturday afternoon. That’s all it took. The damn burst, and the questions followed. But instead of focusing on what a yeti was, she seemed really concerned that I not watch the movie. Talk about a budding young film critic! No, actually, I think the trailer scared her a bit and she didn’t want me to watch the movie. Maybe she thought that if I watched it … It might start watching us, eh?

Sunday morning rolls around, specifically six-thirty, a.m., and I’m awakened by a tiny finger tapping the center of my forehead. Groggy, dehydrated, I open my eyes and see my daughter, upside-down in my field of vision. Hands-on-hips. “Daddy,” she says in that clipped, disapproving voice she gets when she’s disappointed in something I’ve done, “Daddy, you watched Yeti!”

I laugh and shrug it off and roll over, but she pursues it. “Daddy! You watched Yeti!” I admit I watched the last ten minutes, after the DVD Mommy and me were watching ended. The Little One’s not pacified. “You said you weren’t going to watch Yeti but you did!” Laughing, I explain, patiently and slowly, that I didn’t intend to watch Yeti but the DVD finished early and we were surfing through the channels (actually my wife was feeding the Littlest One at this time), and I came across the movie and watched the ending. A pouting lip. Not good enough.

Then, an idea. I reach out, grab her, and say: “You just like saying the word ‘Yeti’!” She starts giggling, and I keep saying “Yeti Yeti Yeti”, chasing her around the living room. A couple of minutes later, I’m making us breakfast and she’s watching the Disney channel.

Situation diffused.