Stunning visual effects and scenes of intense adventure highlight Sheldon Wilson's Killer Mountain. An exciting saga of mountain climbing and brutal survival, this is horror film with strong characters and a magnificent story to tell. Among the stunning vistas of mighty mountains stand a group of individuals called upon to meet the greatest challenges any group of intrepid explorers may have ever faced. Their skills and character are truly put to the test, especially when it becomes quite clear that it is not the mountain alone they are confronting. Haunting scenes of an icy hell, veiled in mystery and a dark terror, will keep audiences spellbound in this sterling adventure. Fine performances from a terrific cast add to the cinematic quality and give us people we really care about as they struggle to conquer the unknown. The influence of Everest and Howard Hawks' original The Thing are clearly seen throughout and the director's reverence for these sources is well integrated in the experience.

This another typical Syfy channel type movie. Low quality writing and directing. Below par acting overall with some actors actually doing a good job. The CGI when the chopper gets trashed is not bad. The scene towards the beginning when the fresh blood starts dripping from the outside top of the tent is very unbelievable. At that height and temperature it would have frozen or congealed a long time ago. The lead rescue climber is a self admitted out of shape, retired climber but with an extremely well regarded reputation. He only takes the job when he finds out his ex wife is one of those needing rescue. Of course there is duplicity from the rich big shots that want the rescue mounted. Relatively early on you see that the ex has survived so far (shucks). The creatures that inhabit the mountain look more like the ones from Alien than any Yeti ever thought up by any human imagination. Not only that but they seem reptilian in appearance and if that is true how do they survive such cold? Actually they look more like a poor man's Godzilla and about as realistic. Then there are the Bhutanese military that show up to steal the info on the site everyone is looking for.. The magic acclimatizing drug works just fine except the supplements are lost and that leaves the new crew with eight hours remaining before their lungs blow out and their brains, such as they are, explode. When it is found out that the entire operation is a search for the mythical Sham-Ba-La or Shangri-La. Then of course, the shots start to wear off and the good guys start bleeding, gasping, and dying. When Kate finally gets rescued they use flares to drive the animals off, yet earlier they operated in the outside. The end where the spoiled son discovers that the blood of the young creatures will heal starts him on the road to destruction. As he harvests the blood he is attacked by a swarm of the younglings and gets his. Where so many young ones come from in the frozen, very high altitude mountain aerie is beyond me, but this is one of those Syfy low budget films. Of course it ends with the pair of exe's getting out and blowing up the cavern.

Staying home for the recent storm, I decided to check out Syfy's Saturday night movie to see if it might be another schlock masterpiece like SHARKTOPUS or MEGA PYTHON VS. GATOROID. Instead I was pleasantly surprised to see a movie that actually took itself, and its monsters, seriously.KILLER MOUNTAIN is about a mountain climber (Chief Tyrol from BATTLESTAR GALACTICA) who goes to rescue his missing girlfriend from a forbidden mountain. Once he and his fellow climbers (including hottie Crystal Lowe from FINAL DESTINATION 3) get to the top, they realize that the whole thing was a ruse. The reason goal of the mission was to uncover a "fountain of youth" (or something) that a greedy corporate type wants to use to cure himself and then sell on the open market. It turns out that the mountain is really the hidden location of Shangri-La (they call it Shambala).The cool part is that Shangri-La isn't the mystical city we've seen before time and time again. In this version, Shangri-La is an abandoned, underground alien city that is home to hungry alien monsters that are bent on protecting it.The most interesting thing about KILLER MOUNTAIN is that the creatures aren't the sole focus of the story. It's actually an adventure film first, creature film second, which I liked. There's some twists and turns and it's never boring. And they managed to stick in a couple of GALACTICA references which is always fun.What's not so good about it is some questionable CGI... it's the only thing that makes the movie look low budget. Bad FX aside, KILLER MOUNTAIN is definitely worth checking out if you're sick of the same ol' campy creature stuff.

Something about some mountain climbers scaling a 25,000 foot peak; looking for the mythical Shambala, and getting their hands full with a mysterious thing that likes to wreck helicopters, base camps, and of course any people it can get its hands on. Also, some trigger-happy demented army Captain and his grunts show up out of nowhere to croak anybody the creature doesn't get first.There's a few random scares here and there; and that's the magic word for this film: random. The plot is incoherent and meandering, and nothing ever makes sense. The cast do the best they can with the transparent characters and the absence of a story, but they get chopped up in the attempt, just like their characters do every time the monster or the homicidally obsessed army captain show up. I guess the film had to throw in the lunatic army guy to spice things up; even though mountain climbing is an adrenalin rush for its practitioners, its excitement level simply does not translate to screen very well.It's not too clear what the creature is supposed to be, or why it's slamming everything and everybody on sight. Is it protecting Shambala from interlopers, or is it just hungry from the lack of eatable meat at 25,000 feet of elevation? Is it a resurrected dinosaur? A crash-landed alien? A deformed Yeti? A toothy dragon? A mutated freak from genetic experimentation? Don't ask me; all you ever see is a high body count. Think Michael Bay-type movie making, but with a smaller budget. If you go in looking for nothing but brainless action, then Killer Mountain is OK to kill a couple of hours.