Monte Hellman's Beast from the Haunted Cave.1959

When I wrote my post about snow in movies in 2014 I neglected to mention Monte Hellman's Beast from the Haunted Cave, probably since I had not seen it since 1972; it is now on Amazon Prime.  It's Hellman's first movie in a rather sparse career: 14 films in 60 years, some of them highly regarded (The Shooting, Ride in the Whirlwind, both 1966, and Two-Lane Blacktop in 1971), almost all of them low-budget.  Produced by Gene Corman (brother of Roger, who was shooting Ski Troop Attack at the same time with the same actors).  Beast.. is a rather unusual combination of a horror film and a heist film, as a group steals gold from a bank and takes off on skis through the snow, followed by a blood sucking monster who fancies the female of the group, Gypsy (played by Sheila Noonan).  The group quarrels among themselves and the monster gradually does them in, until only Gypsy and their guide through the snow survive.

The script is by Corman regular Charles Griffith, who wrote many Corman films and could pack a great deal into a film barely over sixty minutes, and cinematographer Andrew Costikyan shot in an austere black-and-white style that never revealed much of the monster, making him mostly a psychological threat until the end.  The leader of the gang, Alexander Ward, was played with intensity by Frank Wolff, who was impressive later in his small role in Sergio Leone's C'er una volta il West (1968)