Grizzly (1976)

"18 feet of gut-crunching, man-eating terror!"

Plot

When an eighteen foot, two thousand pound grizzly bear begins to maul and eat campers and hikers at a state park, it is up to Head Ranger Michael Kelly to capture or kill it. However his efforts are constantly hampered by the Park Supervisor, who insists on keeping the park open and would rather capture the bear for publicity purposes.

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Review

Or Jaws on land. Grizzly was one of the first post-Jaws animal-on-the-loose flicks and it's basically a shameless rip-off with a different beast, however a surprisingly decent rip-off at that. I don't know whether the film was already in pre-production when Jaws was released or whether it was dreamt up in a few months after Spielberg's classic but there's not a lot of difference between the two films at all. Even at such an early stage, the standard formula had been developed to an extent it would change little over the next forty years. Characters are pretty much the same: Head Ranger/Chief of Police, Naturalist/Scientist, Park Supervisor/Town Mayor. The film follows the same sequence of events with a few kills leading up to pivotal moment where the trio of main characters head off into the woods to hunt the monster. The film even uses Jaws in its many tag lines - "Not since Jaws has the terror been like this!" and so forth. Talk about cashing in! Though it worked and Grizzly become the most successful independent film of all time when it was released, only to lose the title to Halloween two years later.

Like I said, Grizzly is surprisingly decent. It's not on for as long as Jaws but it certainly makes up for it with a constantly quick pace. There's never too long to wait between kills and the bear does get well fed. It is the main focus of the film here too, as the characters aren't given as much development as I'd have liked which is one of the trade-offs for the quicker pace. That means it simply does not have the runtime or frankly the script to develop the heart, the soul, and the deep lingering character development that made Jaws a timeless classic. You aren't getting that quiet, haunting, unforgettable scene of the men comparing scars around a table at night before listening the Indianapolis monologue. You’re right to question the depths as the characters are undeniably thin, but the counter argument is that Grizzly compensates for that lack of emotional resonance with pure relentless momentum. The threat of the bear is always lurking so even when it's not on screen, you know you're moments away from another mauling.

Speaking of which, the film is pretty bloody! The bear here isn't picky about its next meal and again, I like it. Too often do these films feed the monsters pointless or clichéd characters like the dumb blondes, the slimy businessmen, the jocks, etc and leave the decent folk unscathed. The monster acts as a sort of grim reaper for bad behaviour, while the decent, wholesome folks are left completely unscathed. Not here I'm afraid! The bear mauls several minor characters as well as a family with a small boy and his mother. The bear does get quite dirty with its kills and, in the best moment of the film, isn't fussed about lopping a horse's head off with one swing of its huge paws. But beyond just the shock value of a decapitated horse, Grizzly does something incredibly smart. It actively subverts the standard cliches of the monster movie genre. If you think about typical 70s and 80s horror or creature features, the monsters usually have a very specific, almost moralistic palette. If the mother and the small boy aren't safe, then the audience realises that nobody is safe. The rules are gone. The safety net has been removed. By the time you reach the final third of the film, all bets are off. Even the main characters, the ones you traditionally expect to miraculously survive the ordeal, learn a lesson and walk away into the sunset, aren't guaranteed to make it out alive. It keeps you entirely off balance. I like a bit of unpredictability in this type of film and Grizzly certainly delivers in the kill section.

Ah yes, the bear. No models or stuffed animals here. The bear is just a normal grizzly bear which doesn't look anywhere near as big as it's supposed to. At no point do I get the feeling it’s eighteen feet tall; eleven at a push. But even then, I wouldn't want to greet that in the dark woods. Rather than showing the bear from a distance, the camera literally becomes the bear with plenty of POV shots. It moves through the trees, looking down at the victims through the branches, showing the audience what the monster sees. This technique successfully gives the impression of the bear's immense height and scale without actually having to show an eighteen-foot animal on screen. Not only content with killing people, the bear smashes up log cabins and pulls down spotter towers too to really sell its size and power. Some consistency needed to be maintained as to how big it is meant to be and settle on a size because depending on what the script needs it to do will depend on how big it’s portrayed.

Head Ranger Michael Kelly is an absolute carbon copy of Chief Brody. He's the solitary voice of reason. He's the authority figure who intimately understands the danger but finds himself constantly kneecapped by local bureaucracy. Christopher George is no Roy Scheider but he does well in the lead role. You can see the gradual strain of the mounting kills telling on his character throughout the film, eventually leading to an outburst of insubordination to his boss. Instead of separating the expert roles like Jaws did by giving us Matt Hooper, the wealthy scientist, and Quint, the grizzled working-class shark hunter grizzly, streamlines the process, Grizzly introduces a naturalist character who basically functions as a Hooper and Quint hybrid. Richard Jekyll brings a fantastic energy to it. There is a standout acting moment from him that genuinely elevates the B-movie material. It happens when his eccentric confidence completely and utterly crumbles. There is a split second when he is finally, physically confronted by the reality of the bear, and you can see the sheer, unadulterated terror wash over his face. In that single look, the audience sees the realisation dawn on him that his entire plan was arrogant, and he was doomed to fail from the start. A performance like that goes a long way in selling the genuine threat of the monster to the viewer. And then of course you have Joe Dorsey as the park supervisor operating exactly like Mayor Vaughan. It's the classic “We can't close the beaches for the 4th of July argument,” just transplanted to a campground. “We can't close the trails for the camping season!”

Filming for a sequel, Grizzly II: The Revenge started in the 1983, but it was never entirely completed. An original work print of the film illegally surfaced on the Internet in 2007 and the film was finally released in 2021, though I have not heard good things about how they’ve managed to fill the gaps since initial filming took place – George Clooney and Laura Dern probably hoped the film would never see the light of day!

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Final Verdict

Although it lacks the heart and character of Jaws, Grizzly is one of the better rip-offs out there and certainly holds its own in the action stakes. It could have aimed a bit higher but why did it need to? It was there to cash-in on the biggest box office hit of all time and it does everything it needs to do. For a mindless, painless and entertaining ninety-one minutes of bear-hugging, cabin-smashing, deer-dragging action, Grizzly delivers.

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Grizzly Director(s): William Girdler Writer(s): Harvey Flaxman (screenplay), David Sheldon (screenplay), Andrew Prine (Indian Story) Actor(s): Christopher George, Andrew Prine, Richard Jaeckel, Joan McCall, Joe Dorsey, Charles Kissinger, Kermit Echols, Tom Arcuragi Duration: 91 mins