Unseen Terror 2013: Day 10

In a peaceful forest park, two female hikers are found ruthlessly slaughtered and torn to pieces, and the kills are discovered to have been committed by a massively large grizzly bear. Soon afterwards, a forest ranger, a pilot, and a naturalist team up to bring the beast down. Meanwhile, the forest park's own supervisor, fearful of causing a public uproar and stirring up public suspicions, attempts to keep the ranger quiet and tries his best way to fix this newfound "problem" before it gets out of hand.


So, it only took one year for Steven Spielberg's Jaws to spawn its first wave of imitators, eh? I can see it now: somebody said "Hey, why not set this film on land and call it 'Paws' in order to make it more marketable?" Okay, that last part may been slightly fabricated, but it may not be far from the truth. I figured that I'm always in need of more good old fashioned animals-killing-hapless people films to add to my "seen it" list, so I might as well take a good look at one of the more infamous of these. I say infamous, because this film actually held the distinct honor of being the highest grossing independent film of 1976, taking in $39 million worldwide, holding that record for two years until a little film by John Carpenter broke its record. From the moment that the opening credits are being flashed (with music composed by Robert O Ragland, who could have led a pretty awesome alternate life in pornography with a name like that), you know what you're in for.


The cast of characters are nothing special, and in fact there may be almost too many of them for you to keep track of if you're just looking for mindless violence (which I have to confess I might have been doing). Setting that mindset aside, those that we do see and get to know decently well are near-duplicates of the characters found in Spielberg's film. But who gives a damn about the characters? We're here for the bear and kills delivered by said bear! Right? Well, the bear kills, rarely seen as they may be, are pretty rad. At the time of Grizzly's filming, the bear used was the largest in captivity, though they don't give you any clear, full shots until about the fifty minute mark or so. Speaking of the bear and shots, easily the funniest thing I've seen on this year's countdown occurred during a moment where the grizzly turns into a peeping tom-type slasher, watching a woman take a casual stroll towards and into a waterfall before, naturally, slaughtering her. So awesome. Never saw that in Jaws, did we?

Oh, did I mention that Grizzly desperately wants to be Jaws? Because by the half way point, it clearly doesn't give a damn anymore, with the creative juices running on nothing but Dr. Thunder and Mr. Pibb, embracing the knockoff factor. The confrontations between certain characters feel exactly the same as they did in the killer shark film, and I'm sure Murray Hamilton and Roy Scheider would have had a ball watching the bits of dialogue between actors Christopher George and Joe Dorsey. Shit, even the final action sequence plays out the same way as its influence did, though it ups the ante in terms of "explosiveness" and firepower for which I will give it a lot of accolades for. True, it also makes it exponentially more stupid, but this film had dived into the territory of stupid FAR before its own conclusion was set up.

From a filmmaking standpoint, this is very, very bad, but my goodness, you'll have a lot of fun with it, especially if you or your friends are familiar with the concept of "riffing" certain motion pictures. The kills are fairly solid, the plot is ridiculous, the acting is corny, and its tone gives off the vibe of "don't take this too seriously." Plus, I can't imagine that any horror film with a poster drawn by comic book legend Neal Adams can't be filed under any category other than "campy." You can actually seek this bad boy out on Youtube of all places by doing a quick search if you're interested!



Tomorrow, the animals take to the skies with PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING!