Five young university students — Takashi Iijima, his girlfriend, Machiko Takeno, her older brother, Kiyoshi Takeno, and their friends, Nakada and Kaji — went to the Japanese Alps for a skiing vacation. Kiyoshi and Kaji go to meet their friend Gen, but in the middle of a blizzard, they’re lost, and a phone call only reports screams and a gunshot. And just who is the mysterious mountain girl Chika?

All they can find are large piles of fur, Gen’s body inside, Kaji’s in the snow and Kiyoshi has disappeared. Six months later, when the snow has melted, Takashi and Machiko join an expedition led by anthropologist Professor Shigeki Koizumi. The goal? Find a giant monkey man. They’re not alone, as a hunter named Oba wants the creature and nearly kills Takashi, who is rescued by Chika.

Poor Chika. She’s abused by her grandfather, who leads the village, a man who beats her for every mistake. By the end of the movie, the monster drags her into a sulphur pit as it dies. Chika didn’t ask for any of this.

This film was decided upon before Godzilla was released, with Ishiro Honda to direct. It was inspired by Eric Shipton’s photographs of large footprints found in the snow at Mount Everest. This film, however, has been seen more in the U.S. than in Japan. 

That’s because the villagers are similar to burakumin, who are outcasts at the bottom of the traditional Japanese social hierarchy. Their ancestors worked in jobs considered impure or tainted by death, such as executioners, undertakers, slaughterhouse workers, butchers or tanners. They’re even called by that name in the film. As a result of new civil rights in Japan protecting these castes, Toho has imposed a self-imposed ban on its own version of the film. The U.S. version of Half Human remains the only version available on home video worldwide.

As for the American version, remixed by Distributors Corporation of America, it features English-language scenes and narration. The scene where the child snowman is experimented on is replaced with footage of American scientists, including John Carradine (who also narrates), Robert Karnes, Russell Thorson, and Morris Ankrum. The new scene features the child snowman’s costume, which was sent by Toho to the U.S. for filming. The added U.S. sequences were directed by Kenneth G. Crane. This played double features with Monster from Green Hell (Zombo’s Closet has the pressbook).

You can download the Japanese version from the Internet Archive. There’s also a colorized version of the U.S. cut available on the site.