Too many fans seem to be blown away

Excellent, a Must See

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

For anyone still doubting the cruelty of show business, consider this tacky thriller was directed by John Frankenheimer, once an A-list filmmaker of merit reduced in 1979 to making a monster movie. Tenement doctor accepts a government job easing tensions in the forests of Maine, where lumber czars are taking land away from the Indian tribe; meanwhile, toxic waste attributed to the business has created its own rampaging monster, which looks like a melting grizzly bear and walks upright like a man. Depressing, distress-laden nonsense. One figures screenwriter David Seltzer had to be kidding; he's so heavy-handed with his messages, he even gives the doctor a pregnant wife afraid to tell her husband of her condition (he thinks there's enough people in the world already!). Good actors Robert Foxworth (looking a bit like Grizzly Adams himself), Talia Shire and Armand Assante are wasted. Assante, the stern, solemn mouthpiece for the Native-Americans, fights everybody in his path and gets kicked in the crotch for his trouble. Seltzer seems to be asking, "Who's worse, the lumber lunkheads or the beast in the forest?" Save a kick for Seltzer, who must have penned this for the paycheck. * from ****

I love the look of films from this time period. This is another take on poisoning the environment that leads to nature fighting back (ex. Empire of the Ants, Squirm, Ants, Kingdom of the Spiders, Day of the Animals, etc.).The movie starts off good enough, but unlike Jaws when it was horrifying when you first saw the shark, this movie has the opposite effect when the grizzly bear is revealed. The bear is too fakish to scare. It looks like it has no skin and should have died of an infection a long time ago. But since the bear looks terrible, it makes the end of the movie disappointing and not terrifying like Jaws was.Other problems: For an Indian tribe ingesting mercury all this time, not one Indian showed any deformity of any kind in the village (effects dept. ran out of money?).Why did Foxworth need the 2 cubs to prove the poisoning? Couldn't he used the giant tadpole or catch one of the giant salmon to prove it? It sure would have been more safe than dealing with Mama bear.The movie showed other animals became aggressive like the raccoon (how did Foxworth know it wasn't rabid?) Why weren't there other attacks by other animals on people? Would've made the movie better.How was Talia Shire happy in the end when her cello got destroyed? And when she played the cello, why didn't one of the insane animals attack her? The paper mill owner never reached the tower to radio for help, so how did the plane know to come the next day to pick up the survivors? What talent agent believed Armand Assante would pass for an Indian? With mercury in the ground at the mill, how did none of the workers get sick or have deformed kids? If I saw a salmon the size of Jaws out in the lake, I would quickly get back to shore and report right away! Not keep fishing like the Dr.How did the bear know to destroy the car so no one could drive away? All those guns at the camp in the end and not one able to shoot the bear? But yet the Dr, the most unskilled shooter gets 2 shots off into the bear. Also, the bear dies from being stabbed numerous times in the face by an arrow? Really? That bear would've of crushed him in a second.With that bear mutilating its victims, how do the authorities believe its the Indians r doing the killing? Wasn't it plain, even back then, when someone gets killed by an animal? Funniest part: Dr going on and on and on and on and on about the effects of mercury to a fetus. Classic! In conclusion, with today's advancement in effects and with an R rating, this could easily be remade into a much better, scarier, and effective movie.

This film could have been much scarier and some segments hinted at its potential. But I didn't find myself bored. I'd say about 30% of the scenes (in isolation) were quite good but got tainted by weaker scenes throughout. The acting was average.I liked the all-too-common message of corrupt polluters looking the other way, even though the outcome was exaggerated vs. real life. Methyl Mercury can cause deformities but probably not gigantic creatures. The bulbous Katahdin "bear" was possibly meant to be supernatural, though. It's predictable that a number of people disliked this movie because of its ecological tone, and I wish we could ship them to another planet to ruin in isolation.I was inspired to write this review to point out one of the biggest flaws: If you see a mangled baby something-or-other (bear?) with sharp teeth and claws, you don't stuff it inside your jacket and care for it like a puppy! The woman found this out toward the end when it started gnawing on her neck, but that was oddly downplayed. I didn't understand the urgency of keeping it alive since the corpse would have sufficed, unless they thought the lumbermen might have taken it for a hoax.Anyhow, this movie is worth watching but could have been more polished and realistic.

The number of oddball directorial touches in this lame-brained thriller is mind boggling. Health official Robert Foxworth and cellist wife Talia Shire move to the Maine woods to help mediate trouble between a paper mill and the local Indian tribe. Foxworth soon realizes that mutant animals are afoot thanks to mercury poisoning (courtesy of the mill, of course). The primary monster looks like a large, bloody sausage and sounds like a distressed sheep! An awful B-movie in the guise of an A-movie with the great John Frankenheimer at the helm. Frankenheimer, director of classics like THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, SEVEN DAYS IN MAY and SECONDS, really mis-steps here. Each scene ends and begins in a dissolve, there's no suspense to be had, the acting is atrocious and the music by Leonard Rosenman is so heavy handed, it's unbearable. Foxworth seems to be giving it his all and Shire, with very little dialog, seems lost. A dull eco-horror story that is laughable instead of scary.