Fairaher
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
Janae Milner
Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.
Jonah Abbott
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
Lebowskidoo
I know I saw Grizzly long ago, so long ago that I forgot everything that was going to happen. This is an obvious homage/ripoff of Jaws, possibly the first of its type, coming just a year after that shark movie, the lead characters are hardly disguised at all. But this movie has some great kills, most of them unexpectedly horrific, not expecting that from this movie.It's got its flaws, such as the sequence where the bear destroys a cabin in order to kill a very bad actress. Not long after, the body is found, and the cabin is intact. Apparently, this bear wanted to cover its tracks.Overall, this is a very entertaining 70's killer bear movie, although missing some suspense of later killer bear movies like The Edge or Backcountry. I especially thought the ending, where the bear is killed with a bazooka and explodes, to be pretty kickass, especially considering it was only 1976.
warejohnm
The original New York Times review in 1976 and the Wikipedia page for Grizzly detail the many ways in which Grizzly replicates Jaws (1975). When not borrowing from Jaws, the film borders on incoherence. Character, action, and dialogue invoke the value of the national park system, greed at the expense of safety, science and myth, sex and the woods, and the good life. None of these ideas are developed; they're simply laced throughout a film whose only continuity is a bear that is running around and killing people whether they're in the grass, in a shed, in a tent, in a fire tower, or in a helicopter. It's fitting that the film ends by zooming out from the scene of Kelly the park ranger next to the dead body of the helicopter pilot which is next to the burning patch of grass marking the spot where the bear was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade. Bear dead ... end of story, such as it is.All that having been said, it's interesting to note that Grizzly was made and was successful, which means that all these fragments found some resonance with a wide audience. If you're not worried about the film's quality, you can find plenty to consider, especially when put in relation to other films. Why does the bear victimize so many women? The film toys with male/female relationships, but never develops it. What is the appeal of the blend of authority that Jaws sets out and Grizzly follows so closely: the trio of legal authority, scientific authority, and hunting authority? What was the appeal to 1970's audiences of locating monstrous behavior in animals? You can wring something interesting out of Grizzly, but you might start to wonder if you're working harder than the anyone involved with the original film.
Thom Sirveaux
Grizzly is, as many reviewers have noted, basically Jaws on land. Except cheaper. And not as well written. And not Jaws.It is wonderfully fun for what it is. The gore effects aren't too over-the-top, but they represent the budget this movie must've been made on back in 1976.One thing that's really worth noting is that the color effects are delightfully 60s-70s. The colors are rich and vibrant, with strong dark contrasts. The visual texture of the film has a very gritty feel to it, a heavy realism that is both reminiscent of filmstrips and such of the 60s and 70s that were used well into the late 80s. It's a rich color that becomes nostalgic for the time period.The writing and characters are often what you'd expect, with a couple surprises, but the actors take their roles seriously and some of the over-the-top clichéd dialog is delivered with such a straight face that it's actually good. Exchanges like "Listen -" "NO, YOU LISTEN!" carry a lot of acting talent with them - even if they were clichés then - they're played straight and played well. There is a lot of manly manliness in the movie, but none of it is parody, and that gives it a wonderfully dated charm as well.Richard Jaeckel's character is great every time he's on screen. His proto-Timothy Treadwell is a great addition to the story, and is a lot of fun.The monster effects, like the gore effects, are limited by a small budget, but they're adequate for the story, and are still fun.The ending is unintentionally wonderful if you watch it as a bad movie, and adequate if you watch it as a good movie.Overall, if you like bad movies, you'll be pleasantly surprised by this as a really good bad movie. If you like good movies, you'll be pleasantly surprised with the earnestness of the film, and you'll enjoy the visuals as well as the often quite good acting.
ferbs54
A common thread runs through the four films of director William Girdler that I have seen: All are somewhat crudely made, shlocky entertainments, and all are nevertheless quite fun to watch. First, there was 1975's "Sheba, Baby," a lesser Pam Grier action flick; then, 1976's "Project: Kill," with Leslie Nielsen (of all people) starring as a drug-enhanced secret agent on the run who gets involved with the forever yummy Nancy Kwan; and then 1978's "The Manitou," in which a large tumor growing on the neck of Susan Strasberg turns out to be the developing fetus of a rebirthing Indian medicine man! And now, for this viewer, 1976's "Grizzly." Released a year after "Jaws" kicked box office tuchus, the film makes zero attempt to conceal its debt to Steven Spielberg's big-fish classic; indeed, the film's poster itself proclaimed its monstrous ursine protagonist "The Most Dangerous Jaws In The Land." In the film, for reasons that are never adequately explained, a 15-foot-tall, 2,000-pound grizzly takes to killing and eating campers in a national park (the viewer must assume it to be Yellowstone or Yosemite, although the picture was shot in Clayton, Georgia, near where the state borders both North and South Carolinas). Thus, it falls on head forest ranger Kelly (Christopher George), chopper pilot Don (Andrew Prine) and maniacal naturalist Scott (the great character actor Richard Jaeckel) to put a stop to the ferocious attacks....To "Grizzly"'s credit, the viewer does not have to wait long to see the film's first attack sequence, and these scenes crop up fairly regularly throughout. The film is fairly bloody (or should I say grisly?), and there really is no way of predicting who will be attacked and who will survive; even little moppets are open game! As if the film's debt to "Jaws" were not already transparent enough, however, "Grizzly" gives us POV shots from the bear's eyes, accompanied by ominous music; a scary nighttime tale told by one of the hunters; a bureaucratic jerk who wants to keep the park open, despite the obvious danger; and an explosive death for the beastly nemesis at the picture's end. The acting by the film's three leads is certainly passable, although the thesping by the lesser players (especially the grizzly's victims) is often quite lame. Girdler's film has been shoddily put together, like his others, and, most egregiously, features a "monster" that just isn't that fear inducing; indeed, despite his murderous inclinations, the grizzly here often looks kinda cute and cuddly (although still a long way from Winnie the Pooh or Yogi!). One element of the film that this viewer did enjoy was the breezy, outdoorsy score by Robert O. Ragland, conducting the National Philharmonic Orchestra of London; so reminiscent, somehow, of many of these cheezy, mid-'70s entertainments. Other aspects of "Grizzly" to find pleasure in: the best horse decapitation scene since "The Godfather" and the hilarious name of the film's editor-- Bub Asman. I wish MY name was Bub Asman! Anyway, as I mentioned up top, all in all, good, shlocky fun. My psychotronic guru, Rob, by the way, tells me that Girdler's follow-up film, 1977's "Day of the Animals" (also starring George and Jaeckel), is even more fun than this one, and it will surely be my next visit to the world of Girdler....
