Pretty Good

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I know I saw Grizzly long ago, so long ago that I forgot everything that was going to happen. This is an obvious homage/ripoff of Jaws, possibly the first of its type, coming just a year after that shark movie, the lead characters are hardly disguised at all. But this movie has some great kills, most of them unexpectedly horrific, not expecting that from this movie.It's got its flaws, such as the sequence where the bear destroys a cabin in order to kill a very bad actress. Not long after, the body is found, and the cabin is intact. Apparently, this bear wanted to cover its tracks.Overall, this is a very entertaining 70's killer bear movie, although missing some suspense of later killer bear movies like The Edge or Backcountry. I especially thought the ending, where the bear is killed with a bazooka and explodes, to be pretty kickass, especially considering it was only 1976.

A marauding Grizzly eating his way through a public campground and the authorities don't evacuate and close the park to the public? I'm losing count of the different lawsuits that could be and would be filed against various Government agencies.....also.....POOR Bear cub!! :-( (The acting is also abysmal! How did this break box office receipt records until the premier of "Halloween"?? Good blood and guts flick though.

I grew up watching all these movies back in the 70's and think they are awesome. You do not need a complicated script or CGI out the ying yang to scare you. Simple, unadulterated fun so please try not compare it to today's standards. It makes it that more enjoyable. I always try to watch old movies as though I have traveled back in time and are experiencing them for the first time.READ THIS BOOK: Night of the Grizzlies by Jack Olsen.Jack Olsen's true account, traces the causes of the tragic night in August 1967 when two separate and unrelated campers, a distance apart, were savagely mangled and killed by enraged bears.Enjoy!

I remember, as a kid, seeing the box for this movie in my local videostore. That incredible Neal Adams artwork drew me in. My childhood brain reasoned that a movie with art like that about a killer bear must be the most awesome horror movie ever. Time and again, though, my mother refused to rent it for me and I never did get to see the movie as a kid. It always kept a little place in the back of my brain, though, where I was certain that somewhere out there was still the greatest animal killer movie ever and one day I would get to see this treasure.The truth is that I was so wrong. So very, very wrong. Yes, this is JAWS in the woods only with bad acting, bad effects and a complete lack of quality script writing. Oh how I wish that I kept this movie relegated to the tantalizing possibility of how great it could have been, rather than viewing the awful reality.The movie goes to great lengths to mimic JAWS, not just in the ideas, but down to the characters and plot beats. Just about every memorable scene in JAWS has a duplicate in this movie. The deaths begin early on and copy the format of using a POV camera to signify the bear's arrival much as Spielberg used POV for the shark. The early kill scenes are probably the best because we don't yet see much. We close in with a POV on a lovely young lady, then an obviously fake arm reaches out and death ensues. The makeup efx are bad. I mean, there isn't even any attempt to create scratch wounds or flesh tears or anything. They simply paint fake blood on the victims in the form of five nail scratches and that's about all you get. Sadly, it gets worse from there. As the deaths ratchet up, we still see little of the monster, but the victims start thrashing around in ways that seem implausible and don't make much sense in terms of a bear attack. Then, we finally meet the bear. Thankfully, there are shots of a real bear and not some horrible animatronic, but the death scenes get worse from there. Now, we get kills where we cut from closeups of the bear's head as he growls into the air and then cut back to a guy in a suit bear-hugging the victims to death. The movie cries out so much for a believable bear killing, teeth rending, nails tearing, knock down the victim death. Instead, it pretty much all boils down to bear hugs.The three main characters are total facsimiles of the three characters in JAWS: the sheriff in over his head, the grizzled war vet who will lead the hunt and the animal scientist. Problem is that none are really good in their roles, mostly because they're given the worst script ever. Don't even get me started on the "herd of grizzlies killed some Indians" speech given by the copter pilot as a poor imitation of the USS Indianapolis story in Jaws. I knew, at this point, this wasn't going to be a gem, but was hoping for some trashy 70s horror fun. Instead, I spent most of the run time just hoping it would be over soon and wishing I was really watching JAWS instead.