Submitted my last discussion post last night, now I have more than a week to cool off and ease back into the next term. So, what do you wanna talk about? There is one John Kricfalusi cartoon I wanna talk about, but I have a hard time describing it, I feel like reviewing a TV movie, it's a good thing I'm not setting myself up here, otherwise I'd lose a balance between work and leisure. Hmmm... how about the Cinema Snob?
I used to watch him quite a bit back in the day, but ever since he geared out more content related to religion, I'm starting to question if he ever set foot inside of a church, it'd be hilarious if not even the most depraved of Catholic priests wanted him. Maybe I just lost interest.
I always enjoy it when he looks deeper into the production of most movies he covers, all for the sake of establishing context, but there are times when he slacks on it, mostly when he finds candidates for the worst movies he has seen. Looking into To Catch a Yeti, after cross referencing it with my own research, I feel that Brad Jones missed a very good opportunity.
So I'm going to try and discuss whatever behind the scenes info I could on this movie for the hell of it.
Why?
The roots of To Catch a Yeti can be traced as far back as the mid-80s, with a production company known as Emmeritus Productions. Emmeritus was formed by Lionel Shenken to produce shot-on-video movies for local Ontario stations, CHCH in Hamilton for instance. Because of their focus on Canadian culture, the company is best recognized for that (for the Canuxploitation movement to give it its association.)
Emmeritus' movies operated under certain principles, where scenes can't last for more than two minutes and action scenes would occur every six minutes. Keep this in mind when we get into the movie itself. This was owed to low costs and to ensure the movies keep a certain flow, also to aid with two-hour television junctions.
The company went under in 1989 and Shenken continued on with co-productions, one of which being through Dandelion, who distributed Emmeritus' movies in the United Kingdom. But wait, Dandelion? You mean the name of the company that presented To Catch a Yeti? No joke, that movie is mentioned by name in the article I'm getting my information from.
I looked on IMDb just to be sure and yeah, Shenken not only produced it, but wrote it too. The fact that most scenes were also shot in Ontario only reinforces the Emmeritus connection. Referring back to Shenken's principles, you know how some scenes are resolved quickly, and the action scenes go on for ac certain amount of time? They were by design and to keep costs low.
Shenken had the most influence on the script, causing rewrites that while it led to laughable results, apparently cut down on any spending. As of yet Shenken was not tied to any embezzlement cases, so it's likely he was going by his own resources and felt whatever was drafted initially would've been too rich for his blood. In the spirit of many direct-to-video family B movies, this tried to tap into familiar inroads of other family films. For the sake of appeal and increasing sales, it's understandable.
When it comes to selling anyone on a project, you needed a big name actor. Had Shenken had his way he would've stuck with a local actor to avoid paying any further on expenses. One of the executive producers, Noel Cronin, had worked with Meat Loaf on a prior project (Meat Loaf being that big name) so it was easy to get him on board.
From there, it was just whatever local actors were available, getting by on a low budget shoot and just getting something to sell to networks and the like. Needless to say, there were buyers so at the very least things worked out for them.'
Overall
I won't defend this movie on the grounds that it's just a dumb kid movie, but once you take into account that this was another brick in a wall of low-budget Canadian productions, you'd have to be an idiot to be mad about this kind of movie. It couldn't have improved, had the writers taken up their original vision, it probably wouldn't have turned out as well.
We needed context, and clearly the Cinema Snob wussed out. Check out the articles below for more information on Emmeritus and an interview with the film's director.
canuxploitation.com/article/emmeritus.html
https://www.dreadcentral.com/news/169601/insanity-kids-catching-catch-yeti-director-bob-keen/
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