Grizzly (film)


Grizzly is a 1976 American thriller film directed by William Girdler, about a park ranger attempts to halt the wild rampage of an tall, man-eating grizzly bear that terrorizes a National Forest, having developed a taste for human flesh. However, a drunken hunting party complicates matters. It stars Christopher George, Andrew Prine and Richard Jaeckel. Widely considered a Jaws rip-off, Grizzly used many of the same plot devices as its shark predecessor, which had been a huge box-office success during the previous year. The giant grizzly bear in the film was portrayed by a Kodiak bear named Teddy, who was 11 feet tall.

Plot

The film opens with military veteran helicopter pilot and guide Don Stober flying individuals above the trees of a vast national park. He states that the woods are untouched and remain much as they did during the time when Native Americans lived there.
Two female hikers are breaking camp when they are suddenly attacked and killed by an unseen animal. The national park's Chief Ranger, Michael Kelly, and photographer Allison Corwin, daughter of the park's restaurant owner, decide to follow a ranger to the primitive campsite to check on the female hikers. There, they discover the mangled corpses of the two girls, one of which has been partially buried.
At the hospital, a doctor tells Kelly that the girls were killed by a bear. The park supervisor, Charley Kittridge, blames Kelly for the attacks, saying that the bears were supposed to have been moved from the park by Kelly and naturalist Arthur Scott before the tourist season began. Kelly and Kittridge argue over closing the park, before deciding to move all hikers off the park's mountain while allowing campers to remain in the lowlands. Kelly calls Scott, who had been traveling with a deer family. Informing Scott about the bear attack, Kelly also tells him to come back.
During a search of the mountain, a female ranger stops for a break at a waterfall. Deciding to soak her feet and finally taking off her clothes and showering in the waterfall, she is unaware that the grizzly bear is lurking under the falls, and she is attacked and killed. Kelly recruits the helicopter pilot, Stober, to assist in the search. Flying above the forest, they see what they believe to be an animal, only to discover the naturalist Scott adorned in an animal skin while tracking the bear. Telling them all of the bears are accounted for and this specific bear is unknown to the forest, Scotty informs them that the animal they are looking for is a prehistoric grizzly bear standing at least tall and weighing between. Kelly and Stober scoff at the notion.
At the busy lowland campground, the grizzly bear tears down a tent and kills a woman. Kelly once again insists on closing the park, but Kittridge refuses. The attacks are becoming a national news story, and to counteract this, Kittridge allows amateur hunters into the forest. Now a team, Kelly, Stober, and Scott are disgusted by this development. Later, a lone hunter is chased by the grizzly bear, but he manages to escape the animal by jumping into a river and floating to safety. Later that night, three hunters find a bear cub that they believe is the cub of the killer grizzly bear, so they use it as bait for the mother. However, the grizzly bear finds and eats the cub without the hunters even noticing. Scott thus concludes that the grizzly bear must be a male, as only male bears are cannibalistic. Kelly assigns fellow ranger Tom at a fire lookout tower on the mountain. However, he is attacked by the grizzly bear. The animal tears down the tower and kills Tom.
Kelly and Kittridge continue to argue over closing the park. Frustrated by the politics of the situation, Scott sneaks away to track the grizzly bear on his own. On the outskirts of the national park, a mother and her young child are attacked by the grizzly bear. The mother is killed while the child survives, albeit severely mutilated. Stunned by this development, Kittridge finally allows Kelly to close down the park and ban all hunters.
Stober and Kelly now go after the elusive grizzly bear alone, setting up a trap by hanging a deer carcass from a tree. The grizzly bear goes for the bait, but suddenly retreats. The men chase the animal through the woods, but it easily outruns them. When they return, they discover the grizzly bear tricked them and took the deer carcass anyway. The next day, Scott, tracking on horseback, finds the remains of the deer carcass and calls Stober and Kelly on the radio. He plans to drag the deer carcass behind his horse and create a trap by leading the grizzly bear towards them. However, the grizzly bear ambushes Scott, killing his horse and knocking him unconscious. He subsequently awakens to find himself alive, but half-buried in the ground. Just as he finishes digging himself out, the grizzly bear returns and kills him.
Kelly and Stober discover Scott's mutilated body and, in despair, return to the helicopter to track the grizzly bear from the air. They soon spot the grizzly bear in a clearing and quickly land. The grizzly bear attacks the helicopter, swiping at the craft and causing Stober to be thrown clear. The grizzly bear kills Stober before turning on Kelly, who frantically pulls a bazooka from the helicopter. Before the grizzly bear can reach him, Kelly fires the bazooka at the grizzly bear, killing the animal instantly. For several seconds, Kelly sadly stares at the burning remains of the grizzly bear, before walking towards Stober's body.

Cast

The idea for Grizzly began when the film's producer and writer, Harvey Flaxman, encountered a bear during a family camping trip. Co-producer and co-writer David Sheldon thought the idea would make a good film following the success of Jaws. Girdler discovered the script on Sheldon's desk and offered to find financing as long as he could direct the film. Within a week, Girdler was able to obtain $750,000 in financing from Edward L. Montoro's Film Ventures International movie distribution company.
Grizzly was filmed on location in Clayton, Georgia, with many local residents cast in supporting roles. Catherine Rickman, who played one of the first victims, was actually the daughter of Clayton's mountain man, Frank Rickman. Though unintentional, the casting of George, Prine, and Jaeckel marked the second time this trio of actors starred together in the same film. They had previously played supporting roles in the Western Chisum starring John Wayne. A Kodiak bear nicknamed Teddy performed as the killer grizzly bear. Teddy was 11 feet tall and was the largest bear in captivity at that time. The bear was rented from the Olympic Game Ranch in Sequim, Washington, where he was kept behind an electric fence. The crew was protected from the bear by a piece of green string running through the shooting locations and a ticking kitchen timer. This resembled an electric fence. Actors and crew members were instructed to always stay on the camera side of the string. The bear did not actually roar, so it was tricked into making the motions of roaring by throwing several marshmallows into its mouth and then holding a final marshmallow in front of its face, but not throwing it. The bear would stretch for it. The sound was artificially produced.
The original artwork for the Grizzly movie poster was created by popular comic book artist Neal Adams.
A novelization by Will Collins was published in 1976 by Pyramid Books.

Reception

Critical reception for Grizzly in 1976 was extremely negative, with most critics criticizing the film for being too similar to Steven Spielberg's thriller Jaws. Vincent Canby, from the New York Times, criticized the film's poor plotting, cinematography and editing. He wrote, "Grizzly, which opened yesterday at the Rivoli and other theaters, is such a blatant imitation of Jaws that one has to admire the depth of the flattery it represents, though not the lack of talent involved."
Donald Guarisco from AllMovie gave the film a negative review, criticizing the film's script, cheap gore, and overuse of clichés, and saying, "This energetic but clumsy horror effort is too contrived and poorly realized to be worthwhile for most viewers."
Film critic Leonard Maltin awarded the film two out of four stars, calling it an "OK rip-off of Jaws".
Despite the negative reviews, Grizzly was the top grossing independent film of 1976, earning nearly $38 million worldwide, and held the record until Halloween was released two years later in 1978. The film's executive producer, Edward L. Montoro, president of Film Ventures International distributed the film in the U.S. and Canada and sold the worldwide distribution rights to Columbia Pictures for $1.5 million. Montoro later tried to keep the profits to himself instead of paying the film's director William Girdler and producers/writers David Sheldon and Harvey Flaxman. The three sued Montoro and he was eventually ordered by the Los Angeles County Superior Court to pay Girdler, Sheldon and Flaxman their share of the profits from the distribution of the film.
The original music score by Robert O. Ragland has since been largely well received. Ragland commissioned the National Philharmonic Orchestra for the film's theme. The original soundtrack was finally released on CD and MP3 format in September 2018.
On the film review website Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 44% rating based on nine reviews, with an average rating of 4.6 out of 10.

Home video

Grizzly was released on VHS by Anchor Bay Entertainment. It was released in the LaserDisc format in 1984 by RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video, but only in Japan.
The DVD version of Grizzly was first released on December 2, 1998 by Shriek Show, and was re-released on DVD by Scorpion Releasing on August 5, 2014. Scorpion Releasing issued a limited-edition Blu-ray in September 2015 exclusively through Screen Archives Entertainment.
On April 21, 2017, RiffTrax released a VOD of the film with comedy commentary by Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett.

Sequel

A sequel, Grizzly II: The Predator, was filmed in 1983 in Hungary by director André Szöts, but was never released to theaters. Sheldon, the co-producer and writer of Grizzly, wrote the screenplay with his screenwriter wife, McCall, who also reprised her role from the original film. The stars were Louise Fletcher, Steve Inwood, John Rhys-Davies, Deborah Raffin and Deborah Foreman. The cast also included Charlie Sheen, George Clooney and Laura Dern, who were unknown at the time, despite being from families of popular stars. It also featured live performances by Toto Coelo, Landscape III, and other musicians.
The main scenes for Grizzly II: The Predator were completed, but before special effects featuring a huge electro-mechanical bear could be used, the executive producer, Joseph Proctor, disappeared with all of the funds, with some sources saying that he was jailed during the time of the filming. Filmed footage of a live bear, however, attacking a live rock concert, was shot in Hungary. Attempts have been made to re-cut and film more scenes but, to date, the film has never been released. A bootleg version with the original workprint was released in 2007.
Co-producer Suzanne Csikós Nagy gained full control over the movie in 1988 and purchased both the Grizzly II title and the sequel rights.
In 2019, GBGB International took over the completion of the film. The new title, , is an upgrade from the previous version. Only 75% of the original movie which was shot in Hungary in 1983 was used and 25% was added in. The film will be shown for the first time in the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival on February 17, 2020 at 11:15 A.M.
Suzanne Csikós Nagy is now the executive producer.
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