Grizzly (1976)

Grizzly (1976)
Jaws ripoff? Check! Inaccurate representation of bears? Also check!
Genre: Adventure Thriller Action Directed by: William Girdler David Sheldon Produced by: Lloyd N. Adams Edward L. Montoro Harvey Flaxman David Sheldon Written by: Harvey Flaxman David Sheldon Starring: Christopher George Andrew Prine Richard Jaeckel Cinematography: William L. Asman Distributed by: Film Ventures International Columbia Pictures (USA) Release date: May 16th, 1976 Runtime: 89 minutes Country: United States Language: English Budget: $750,000 Box office: $39 million Sequel: Grizzly II: The Revenge (2020)

Grizzly (also known as Grizzly Bear) is an independent action-thriller movie directed by William Girdler and David Sheldon. It stars Christopher George, Andrew Prine, and Richard Jaeckel. It was released theatrically on May 16th of 1976.

Plot

After multiple people are killed by a giant bear deep in the woods of a national park, it is up to a Park Ranger to hunt down the beast and end its rampage.

Why It Sucks

1. To get the cat out of the bag, this movie is a very obvious ripoff of Jaws, with the only differences being that it takes place in a national park instead of a beach and the killer animal is a bear instead of a shark.
2. The depiction of grizzlies in this movie is disgustingly inaccurate. Grizzly bears are portrayed as man-eating vile monsters that massacre people for fun. Although grizzly bears are hostile animals, THEY AREN'T MAN-EATERS.
3. Very poor acting for the most part.
4. The storyline is weak and completely rehashed from Jaws.
5. Countless inconsistencies and illogical moments. For example:
   • The grizzly's feet constantly change colors from black to brown.
   • Scotty claims the bear is cannibalistic after it devoured a black bear, even though they are different species.
   • The rangers claim that there were brown bears seen in the area but no grizzlies, even though grizzlies and brown bears are the same exact animal.
   • When Kelly, Scotty, and Don are in the jeep and see the hunters, the rear view mirror is not there. Yet when they turn around to go back, the mirror is there.
   • When Kelly asks the helicopter pilot if he can get the chopper any lower the pilot responds "No. Too much of a down-draft today" and then lands the chopper a few seconds later when they think they have spotted the bear.
   • According to the tag line or the characters in the movie, the grizzly is supposedly anywhere from 15 to 18 feet tall. But at the end of the movie, when it is attacking the helicopter, it is clearly less than 10 feet tall on its hind legs.
   • Scotty is attacked on his horse and the bear tears the horse's head off. But when its body falls onto the ground a moment later, the bloodied head is still attached.
6. Although the kills are cool, they are hard to take seriously because of the gore and blood looking very bad.
7. The costume and animatronic used for a few shots of the bear are both laughably awful and ugly.
8. There are some obvious visual errors, most notably a few scenes where the camera man's shadow is literally visible, or a visible rope being attached to a mini watchtower in the watchtower destruction scene.
9. It is simply not scary in the absolute slightest. It is over-reliant on jumpscares and gore to be "scary" and it fails miserably.
10. There are so many clichés in this movie it's almost impossible to count them all. The most obvious ones being the "group of people have to find a killer who kills all of the group except for one" cliché.
11. Everything it attempts to copy from Jaws it does worse. Examples include:
    • In Jaws, the kill scenes are disturbing to to the actual tension leading up to them, while in Grizzly, the kills are never impactful because of the lack of tension or suspense in the movie.
    • Although the shark's behavior in Jaws is still very inaccurate, it is excusable considering the fact that the movie is based on a book about a true event. Grizzly on the other hand, just generalizes grizzly bears as monsters.
12. Ignorance about bears, like the grizzly bear legitimately being a staggering 18 feet tall, being able to decapitate people in a single swipe, and tussling with a helicopter. That as well as the fact that Arthur Scott mispronounces the binomial name of grizzlies as "Arctotis ursus horribilis" instead of "Ursus arctos horribilis".
13. Poor sound design, most notably being the bear's roars sounding more like a sheep or goat instead of an actual bear and the flesh ripping sounds sounding like cloth ripping noises.
14. Borderline uncomfortable dialogue that is poorly written.
15. It even had a sequel made 43 years after the original film, Grizzly II: Revenge, which turns out to be even worse and had an even more negative reception than this film.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Christopher George, Andrew Prine and Richard Jaeckel manage to perform decent and convincing performances.
2. The soundtrack is very good and nice sounding.
3. The acting from the grizzly bear Teddy (who portrayed the bear in this movie) is surprisingly very good.
4. Despite the blood and gore effects being very bad, the kill scenes are still very cool, brutal and memorable.
5. It is still an admittedly pretty fun movie to watch.
6. The artwork in the poster is very well made and memorable.
7. It can easily be considered so bad it's good.
8. Epic climactic battle between Michael Kelly and the bear.

Reception

Grizzly initially received very harsh reviews from both critics and audiences, both of which criticizing it for its nonsensical storyline, its awkward acting and dialogue, and being a rather obvious derivative to Jaws. On Rotten Tomatoes, Grizzly has a 36% "rotten" Tomatometer and a 32% Audience Score, although it doesn't have a Critics' Consensus yet. Grizzly has a 25 "generally unfavorable" score on Metacritic and a 40 "mixed or average" audience score. It also currently holds a 5.3/10 on IMDb.

Trivia

• The creators of Grizzly came up the idea of the movie after sighting a bear during their camping trip.
• The movie was parodied and referenced in the We Bare Bears episode "Grizzly: The Movie" .
• Grizzly was the most successful independent movie of 1976, earning $39 million at the box office.
• A bear, who was nicknamed "Teddy," played the title role. Teddy stood eleven feet tall, was the largest grizzly bear in captivity at that time, and was untamed, but trained by the bear's trainer. The crew was protected from Teddy by an electrical thin green wire that ran throughout the forest locations. In addition, a mechanical bear was used for when the bear had attacked.
• An unrelated horror film about killer bears called Claws came out in 1977, and was unofficially re-released in 1978 as Grizzly 2.
• It was featured in an episode of Rifftrax.

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