sddavis63
"Grizzly" is kind of cheesy, but it's all right. It's quite watchable and has a few exciting moments. It's the story of a huge, 18 foot tall grizzly bear roaming a state park that has started to feast on campers. The bear is explained to be some sort of evolutionary holdout - so, in a way, it's kind of a sasquatch-type movie as well. When I first came across it I had the impression that it was one of those made for TV movies that were all the rage in the 1970's, but it's far too graphic and the language is too harsh for that. It was, though, made on a show string budget of $750,000, which sometimes does show through. In particular, some of the more graphic aspects of the bear attacks do seem cheap. They're graphic - limbs and heads are torn off of victims - but somehow the limbs and heads always looked to me like something off a mannequin. But that can be forgiven on a low budget movie.The performances were all right. The biggest name (for me anyway) was Richard Jaeckel, and somehow he seemed totally miscast as the big name bear hunter. It just didn't seem to be a part that worked for him.This movie is often considered a bit of a rip off of "Jaws," and there are similarities - the authorities refuse to close the park, just as they refused to close the beach in Jaws. But even if it was a rip-off of Jaws - well, it wasn't the only rip-off of the basic themes of "Jaws." Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. "Jaws" worked, so of course others tried to copy the format. For a low budget movie, this was OK. (5/10)
Heres_Johny
Somehow I found myself watching Grizzly, a mid-70's monster-horror featuring a giant grizzly bear. The promotional original tagline was "18 feet of gut-crunching, man-eating terror." Well, it was grizzly, all right, but not the kind of 'grizzly' the producers aimed for.The film opened with some promise as one of the main characters, Don/'NamMan, helicopters some sightseers over the unnamed national park which serves as the film's setting. We get some beautiful shots of tree-clad mountains and valleys which 'NamMan claims are virgin and untouched since before Europeans came to America. I'm thinking "Hey, maybe we've got an environmental message!", and the long shots in the title sequence - along with the recommendation of a previously trusted friend - make me think Grizzly was headed to be something more than just a monster movie.Act 1 quickly dispelled those naive notions.After some confusion with who the heck the protagonist is, we find out it's Michael Kelly. I'll be calling him Chiseljaw, though, since that's all he is: a beautiful jawline meant to attract reluctant female movie-goers. Chiseljaw runs Unnamed Park as the direct supervisor of its many inept rangers. The majority of his job involves babysitting hikers and making sure they don't go about setting wildfires or getting lost. He has a romantic interest who's cast as the "Strong Female", but there's no point in even assigning her a nickname, since she's completely irrelevant to the plot. As a matter of fact, there isn't a single female in Grizzly who exists for any reasons besides fodder for the aforementioned giant bear. Oh, and cleavage/midriff, which I suppose passed for racy back in the 70's.The only characters who matter - as much as any character matters in this sort of film- are Chiseljaw, 'NamMan (Don, the obligatory Vietnam veteran who I thought was the protagonist when he flew us over the forest), and BearDude, whose name I forget but was maybe Scott but doesn't freaking matter because all you need to know is that he's a naturalist and cosplays as a bear, or deer, or something.I dunno. He's got a massive fur cape, and he digs bears.Anyways, some sexy ladies get merc'ed by the bear, which sets off an investigation and a killing spree of approximately nine-thousand people. Plot juice, but it's cheap plot juice. Seriously, it's like they figured out they only had thirty minutes of actual film, and the director just said "Oh, it's cool, sprinkle in a bear-murder between every scene until we've got a movie." And I'm not using 'murder' flippantly, either. This is basically a serial-killer movie, only the serial-killer is a big dumb animal lacking the psychologically twisted aspect of a good serial-killer villain, and instead of cops, the good guys are park rangers. We even get the obligatory gun-and-badge scene we expect from that sort of cop movie, where Chiseljaw begs his 'Chief' (or park supervisor, whatever) "Let me do my job," to which the Chief responds "You're in over your head" and threatens to fire him. Not those literal words, but you get my drift. I'm not unconvinced that the writer didn't simply deconstruct the worst murder-spree movie ever and rewrite everything with a bear-centric focus.The irony there is that it's not even a good monster movie. I was unsurprised to discover Grizzly released hot on the tails of Jaws, which I suppose they wanted to emulate. Knowing that, the blatant ripoff was pretty obvious. But it still felt closer to a dozen cop movies I've seen than to Jaws.Trudging right along, Chiseljaw, BearDude and 'NamMan form the least effective power-trio in cinema history. Later on I started to like 'NamMan, who probably would have made a better protagonist than wet-blanket Chiseljaw, and BearDude was OK too in the lovable-weirdo sense, but we all know the best buddies are only there so they can die late in the game anyways. Their bumbling is only offset by the Chief, who is playing politics by bringing press to the park and hoping to attract more visitors, or a cushy job offer for himself, by illogically highlighting the fact that two million and counting visitors have been viciously mauled and devoured by a ginormous prehistoric bear.The worst aspect of Grizzly, though, is ironically the freakin' grizzly. Many of the shots of its feet (before the not-so-big reveal) are clearly a black bear. At one point, an adult black bear is trotted onto the set and a bunch of hunters think it's the grizzly's cub, which ends in some hilarious bear-on-bear violence. When the grizzly attacks, it never once bites its victims: its killing move, as far as I can tell, is split between either a lethal bear hug and a swing of its mighty claws, which at one point decapitates a horse in one swipe.I wish I had something good to say. I wish I could post a review that wasn't entirely comprised of ridicule and mockery. But the unfortunate fact is that ridicule and mockery are more than Grizzly deserves.It should have languished in ignominy, forgotten in the dusty halls of crappy films. It doesn't deserve a Wikipedia page. It should have withered and died on the vine anonymously, unreleased, and - barring that - nobody should have been talking about it one year later, much less forty.Instead my idiot friend recommended it to me, which is the only reason this review exists. I'd like to publicly declare that Jon "Bingo" of Fort Lauderdale, FL is an ignoramus, knows nothing about good film, and should consider checking into a mental institution if he thought a single scene of Grizzly was worth watching.To me, the real lesson in Grizzly is Be Careful Who You Trust. Oh, and if you're going to make a bear movie, you should know something about bears.
Jonathan C
Most every review you read of this movie points out that it is a rip-off of Jaws, so I won't belabor the point. The interesting thing, however, is that much of the movie is so implausible that you wonder if perhaps the writers are doing it for laughs. The best bit is of course the female forest ranger who strips down to bra and panties to go skinny dipping while hunting a dangerous bear that has killed two people, but there is also the park manager who decides that the best way to combat the bear is to open the hunting season and let the masses of hunters go after him. This is COMPLETELY unrealistic. I can only guess that the film is employing a certain exploitative impressionism, kind of like when you are telling your five-year old a story and you exaggerate stuff for the fun of it. As a result, this movie is actually fairly entertaining, sort of like bedtime horror story for adults.
