It isn't too much of a leap to expect an astonishing dummy-death in Hammer Films' eerie science-fiction horror tale, THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN OF THE HIMALAYAS. The film is rife with transformative deceptions: a landscape that (physically) changes continuously, characters who aren't who they seem to be and monsters who are equally misidentified and underestimated. Even the simplicity of the narrative is a deception.
By the time we reach the sequence presently under examination, the viewer is completely unprepared for the level of revelation director Guest and author Nigel Kneale have conspired to lift him up to (as would also be the case in the duo's QUATERMASS 2, released by Hammer that same year).
It is this dummy-death that acts as a staple in the centerfold; separating the film's first half which sets up and satisfies those viewers who desire a straight-forward horror-adventure and a second half which destabilizes the audience's trust in everyone and everything around them.
CLOSE INSPECTION
Here flees Andrew McNee --
-- Andrew McNee --
-- a man who very nearly "comes apart" (and is literally petrified) while suffering under the unyielding mind-control of the unearthly Yeti!
