It's a generous description ofterror. Unlike Jaws, in which Stephen Spielberg took the time to build suspense, 1978's Grizzly seems well aware that everyone in the audience has seen Jaws. It gives us a freak-of-nature predator who attacks a group of people. A government official who selfishly/greedily/diabolically sabotages early efforts to keep as many people safe as possible is another villainous figure.
A setting change that facilitates just enough newness to keep things interesting is what it succeeds by. The film was made on a smaller budget with less prestigious talent. The dialogue is extremely 1978 and contains some absolute howlers, which makes it a gold mine for viewers.
Jaws tied its action to a specific resort island community, but Grizzly kept things vague and brought us into a national park. In the end credits, there is only one mention of the location as north Georgia. Christopher George, whose other credits include City of the Living Dead and Graduation Day, is the head Park Ranger. The Town That Dreaded Sundown's Andrew Prine plays Don, a macho helicopter pilot who calls women "fillies" and gets the "quint moment" where he spins a tale. Kittridge, the park's supervisor, is trying to use his position to further his political career, but he conflicts with Kelly from the start, and their relationship is mostly "You listen!" Arguments about not listening.
There is a real star of the film, the bear itself, which is said to be 15 feet tall and weighing 2,000 pounds but is represented mostly through POV shots and a team of foley artists, who load up the soundtrack with heavy breathing, snorts, grunts. As the film enters its later portion, we are rewarded with actual bear footage, which is very carefully framed in shots that distance the furious beast from actual humans. One way to avoid prop malfunction is to deal with a live bear.
If you have seen Jaws or are familiar with its plot, you know what to expect in the movie, which was created by Neal Adams. It becomes a head-butt between Kelly and a small child when the bear starts snacking on campers, hikers, park rangers, and a small child and his mother. Quotables like "Remember, we're probably not looking for a full body" and "That thing seems to know what we're thinking" are included in choice dialogue. It moves briskly and its conclusion is even more bleak than the end of Jaws because it knows what we are thinking.
Shudder is rolling out Day of the Animals on the same day that it adds Grizzly to its selection. It is an animal attack movie but it is also a sci-fi movie that imagines that animals will turn into violent maniacs at high altitudes due to ozone-layer depletion. Spielberg was 27 when he made Jaws, and Girdler was 29 when he came out, so they were both Spielbergian wunderkinds. His last film was released posthumously after he died in a helicopter crash at the age of 30.
Shudder was hit by two movies on June 20.
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