Before achieving
cult infamy with his bizarre and psychedelic 1978 horror film The Manitou,
director William Girdler was known as the guy who ripped off of The Exorcist
with Abby before going on to rip off of Jaws with the killer
bear film Grizzly. Girdler’s most
successful project of his short-lived career, Grizzly was a simple and
direct animal attack exploitation flick about a giant wild grizzly bear
terrorizing the residents of a national park.
Borne out of writer-producer Harvey Flaxman’s own encounter with a wild
bear during a camping trip and coasting on the crest wave of Jaws’
success, the film concerns a park ranger named Michael (Christopher George) who
joins forces with two hunters, Don (Andrew Prine) and naturalist Arthur
(Richard Jaeckel) in an effort to track down and subdue the bear.
Replete
with a similar string of animal attacks from the nude girl to the young boy
with a middle aged mother as well as a corrupt park supervisor keen on keeping
the park open for business against the wishes of the chief park ranger, the
only thing differentiating this from Jaws is that it’s a bear instead of
a shark this time. Even the score by
Robert O. Ragland blatantly imitates John Williams’ original score for Jaws,
right down to the soaring adventurous chase music though to be fair the
recording performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra is quite good. Also, there are some close ups of the bear
lunging for the camera that look curiously like a guy in a furry costume. Christopher George is mostly fine in the lead
role though when he and Joe Dorsey spar he comes pretty close to achieving
Charlton Heston levels of overacting.
Much
like Jaws, this PG rated flick gets away with murder literally and
figuratively. Within the opening
minutes, we’re treated to limbs being hacked off by the bear which fly across
the panoramic widescreen. Fairly bloody
too with one female character falling hands first into a pool of blood left
behind from a recent kill. Unlike Jaws
which only hinted at its animal attacks on children, Grizzly startlingly
goes for the jugular with a young child’s arm casually torn off though the film’s
occasional shocks are offset by phony looking bear paws ripping off a horse’s
head with one swipe. All things
considered, this very obviously R rated film came out at a time when softer
ratings were granted to such fare.
Despite
opening to almost entirely negative reviews, up until Halloween in 1978 Grizzly
held the record for most successful independent film production of all
time. Costing a mere $750,000, the film
went on to earn $39 million worldwide though the filmmakers had to sue the
distributor for trying to pocket all the profits. Not long thereafter, Girdler would reunite
with George on the animal attack epic Day of the Animals before
directing his final film with the utterly insane The Manitou.
Further still, Grizzly spawned a
sequel which began shooting in 1983 but was never officially completed until 2020. As it stands, Grizzly is one of the more
serviceable Jaws knockoffs, a B movie with a little engine that
could. Yes the film is hokey and an
obvious clone of Spielberg’s epic and the grand finale is completely absurd but
as a killer animal movie from the guy who would eventually make one of the
weirdest horror films in cinema history, Grizzly gets the job done.
--Andrew Kotwicki
