This low-budget release is believed to be the first American film about the Yeti, although another film featuring a Yeti-like snowman, Pekka ja Pätkä lumimiehen jäljillä (1954), was released four months earlier.
Director-producer W. Lee Wilder (and his son, the film's screenwriter Myles Wilder' deliberately took the name of the police detective, Lt. Dunbar (played by William Phipps), from the name of the prisoner of war played by Don Taylor in Stalag 17 (1953), which was written, produced and directed by W. Lee's much more famous brother: Billy Wilder.
The airplane shown is a Lockheed Constellation built between 1943-58. TWA acquired its first model in October 1945 and began its Trans-Atlantic flight operations in February of 1946.
60% of this movie is film of people just walking, hiking, and running.
Although regarded as the first to feature the Yeti, this film actually follows Georges Méliès' À la conquête du pôle (1912). The name "Abominable Snowman" was coined in 1921, when Lt. Col. Charles Howard-Bury led the 1921 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition and discovered the now iconic, mysterious tracks in the snow. This discovery eventually led to several films in the 1950s depicting the Abominable Snowman, starting with this film. "Conquest of the Pole" was released before those large tracks discovered by Howard-Bury were part of the western folklore surrounding this cryptid; nevertheless, a case could be made that Melies' film is truly the first film to feature the Yeti. Additionally, just a few years before the release of this film, Curt Siodmak wrote and directed Bride of the Gorilla (1951), which featured the "Sukara," one of the many names of the South American version of the hairy, ape-like creature that would later be theorized to be related to both Yeti and Sasquatch.