Thehibikiew Not even bad in a good way

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Alistair Olson After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

scottyprice 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!

Jonathan C Most every review you read of this movie points out that it is a rip-off of Jaws, so I won't belabor the point. The interesting thing, however, is that much of the movie is so implausible that you wonder if perhaps the writers are doing it for laughs. The best bit is of course the female forest ranger who strips down to bra and panties to go skinny dipping while hunting a dangerous bear that has killed two people, but there is also the park manager who decides that the best way to combat the bear is to open the hunting season and let the masses of hunters go after him. This is COMPLETELY unrealistic. I can only guess that the film is employing a certain exploitative impressionism, kind of like when you are telling your five-year old a story and you exaggerate stuff for the fun of it. As a result, this movie is actually fairly entertaining, sort of like bedtime horror story for adults.

Thom Sirveaux Grizzly is, as many reviewers have noted, basically Jaws on land. Except cheaper. And not as well written. And not Jaws.It is wonderfully fun for what it is. The gore effects aren't too over-the-top, but they represent the budget this movie must've been made on back in 1976.One thing that's really worth noting is that the color effects are delightfully 60s-70s. The colors are rich and vibrant, with strong dark contrasts. The visual texture of the film has a very gritty feel to it, a heavy realism that is both reminiscent of filmstrips and such of the 60s and 70s that were used well into the late 80s. It's a rich color that becomes nostalgic for the time period.The writing and characters are often what you'd expect, with a couple surprises, but the actors take their roles seriously and some of the over-the-top clichéd dialog is delivered with such a straight face that it's actually good. Exchanges like "Listen -" "NO, YOU LISTEN!" carry a lot of acting talent with them - even if they were clichés then - they're played straight and played well. There is a lot of manly manliness in the movie, but none of it is parody, and that gives it a wonderfully dated charm as well.Richard Jaeckel's character is great every time he's on screen. His proto-Timothy Treadwell is a great addition to the story, and is a lot of fun.The monster effects, like the gore effects, are limited by a small budget, but they're adequate for the story, and are still fun.The ending is unintentionally wonderful if you watch it as a bad movie, and adequate if you watch it as a good movie.Overall, if you like bad movies, you'll be pleasantly surprised by this as a really good bad movie. If you like good movies, you'll be pleasantly surprised with the earnestness of the film, and you'll enjoy the visuals as well as the often quite good acting.

Chase_Witherspoon Perhaps the first in a long procession of rip-offs that borrowed from the epic creature feature, "Jaws" does a pretty fair job of exchanging the perils of the ocean for those concealed in the dense forests of northern America. A perpetrator of similar proportions with an equally prodigious voracity for female bait pursues the offerings of a national park as a frantic ranger and his two motley companions battle with the chief park supervisor and themselves to arrest the carnage. Christopher George as the head ranger Kelly is the suave and rugged everyman determined to protect his park and its visitors, while Joe Dorsey is the Murray Hamilton-esque park supervisor Kittridge whose political ambitions inhibit Kelly's attempts to cut off the bear's food supply, resulting in a high body count.Director Girdler, prolific in his brief career before his untimely death in 1978, shows scant regard for convention in electing to depict the mutilation of a child as one of the bear's hapless victims. The boy's death signals the end of Kittridge's stalling, and Kelly and his companions (naturalist Jaeckel and Vietnam vet chopper pilot Prine) embark their own expedition to hunt and destroy the title beast. It's all very familiar though co-producer Harvey Flaxman explains in his DVD doco that the story emanated from a personal experience, and bared no intended similarity to that of "Jaws". Unlikely, but who cares –"Grizzly" is entertaining in its own right, and has the distinction of being the top grossing independent film of its year of release.The script shows sporadic signs of wit and is generally realistic, save for the occasional corny line (victim's widow chokes back the tears as he tells how "I loved her mister and she loved me back"), while Jaeckel and Prine have a likable chemistry, their contrasting characterisations adding much needed depth to the picture. Photography is often praised (not only in this film, but in other Girdler outdoor adventures, such was his intuitive understanding of the lens and its capability in projecting scale) and the scenery is first class for such an inexpensive picture; scenes in which the bear's size is emphasised, are well scaled and the interactive attack sequences are well staged and shot."Grizzly" will forever be remembered as the first cab off the rank after "Jaws", and especially so as it did for camping what "Jaws" achieved for swimming in the sea, for its audience. Any film that can command that kind of influence, is surely a success, critically, commercially or both. A sequel was partially filmed in the mid eighties under the working title "Predator: The Concert" but was never completed, although rumours of its release often circulate.