Grizzly (dir. William Girdler, 1976) - An entry into the "animal terror" genre by the "Three On A Meathook" director, which takes more than a few cues from "Jaws". In an un-named US state forest/park, a previously-unknown grizzly bear is on the rampage, attacking first campers and hikers, and then seemingly anyone else in paw-shot. One of the park rangers (Christoper George) is in charge of sorting out this bear menace, and gathers up a posse of self-styled bear hunters to bring the grizzly terror to an end, with various levels of incompetence at hand. As pressure mounts on George, the bear becomes more confident in striking out, until finally, in a one-on-one encounter, George finally brings all this ursine tomfoolery to a drawn-out conclusion.
Made with a fairly high budget for the time, and certainly aimed for a mainstream audience, "Grizzly" bears (groan!) all the hallmarks of 1970's exploitation film incompetence. The script (cobbled together by 3 writers) is low on suspense but high on predictability, and this film contains many moments of dull, pointless exposition sequences. Christopher George seems to spend an inordinate amount of time smoking ciggies, moaning at everyone, and generally letting that damn bear get to him.
The terror sequences themselves are utterly inept, to the point of laughability (an off-camera stagehand waves around a manufactured "bear paw" randomly at each victim, point-of-view style), and when the actual bear finally puts in an appearance, it outclasses and out-acts everyone else. The bear in question looks thoroughly bored by the whole proceedings, and being in a film like this, who can blame it?
There's many moments of unintentionally funny dialogue, and the park commissioner gets pretty much all of the best lines ("Kelly! I want that bear!"). The bear hunters all seem to be under the influence of skunk weed, as they stumble around randomly all over the shop, and even have problems figuring out just what sort of bear it is that they're meant to be hunting. The incidental music for the terror sequences rips off "Jaws" so ridiculously (and badly), that John Williams should have sued the producers of "Grizzly" into next Christmas. And at dead on 90 minutes, this film really knows how to outstay it's welcome.
"Grizzly" has pretensions of being a semi-serious effort, but truly, this one has "total turkey" written all over it. Avoid!
(Note: the poster art for this one at the time emphasised the "total terror" aspect ("18 Feet Of Towering Fury!"), but the MPAA gave this a "GP" rating at the time, meaning that the US censors thought "Grizzly" to be as scary and terrifying as an average episode of The Simpsons!)
