Grizzly (1976) Review

CLAYTON'S CREEPY CINEMA

WEEK 3: HAIR-RAISING HORRORS

Grizzly (1976)

This week I’m looking at seven movies featuring werewolves or other furry fiends. First up is Grizzly, a film about—yeah, I know it’s a tough guess—a giant killer Grizzly bear. Given the concept, you would expect it to be at least half decent, but it doesn’t even manage to achieve that.

The terror takes place in a grand National Park untouched by logging. Two hikers are attacked and viciously killed by a Grizzly. Their remains are later found by the chief park ranger, and a doctor identifies a bear as being responsible for their deaths. A naturalist in the area claims it’s a prehistoric type of Grizzly, but no one believes him. The bear continues massacring campers and hikers, and the ranger thinks they should close the park and evacuate everyone in it before there are any more casualties. It isn’t until a mother and child are brutally attacked that they put the plan into action. They set a trap to catch the bear, but the beast proves craftier than they anticipated.

If some of the plot points in Grizzly sound familiar, there is a very simply reason. Maybe if the plot points don’t seem familiar, the central concept of a killer animal does. You see, a movie about a big shark called Jaws came out the year before, and Grizzly is unfortunately one of the many copycat films to cash in on its success. Grizzly hits many of the same points Jaws does—an animal familiar to the area, but a particularly large and ferocious specimen, locals considering closing the area to keep the general public safe, setting up a trap and trying to catch the creature, and even the ending is a Jaws rip-off (spoilers ahead). In Jaws they blew up the shark, and in Grizzly they do the same thing, only with an RPG rather than shooting an air tank. You would hope that despite its unoriginal plot the bear might provide some scares or thrills, but most of the kills are censored and some of the effects are simply unconvincing. The bear itself (played by the mother of Bart the Bear, the most famous bear to appear in movies) delivers a toothy performance, but like the shark in Jaws, the grizzly gets limited screen time, and the bear is depicted at times by a guy in a bear suit which looks really bad. To be fair, the final fight scene is actually fairly exciting, and some of the cinematography of the ominous forest using shots from a helicopter is well done.

You might be a fan of Grizzly if you saw it at a young age back in the day or watched it before Jaws, but for anyone who hasn’t seen it, I would say if you’ve seen Jaws, then you’ve seen Grizzly. If you want a good killer bear film, go watch The Edge with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin—a Bart the Bear-starring thriller superior to this shoddy seventies cash-in.