Before Cocaine Bear there was JAWS on land with Grizzly
Does a JAWS rip off shit in the woods? It does if it is 1976's Grizzly.
The premise was simple, it was JAWS on land, but instead of a 25 foot long great white shark it was with a towering 15 foot bear.
Steven Spielberg's shark classic was – until Star Wars - the highest grossing film of all time and before long a wave of imitators followed, with the first to bound on the cinematic scene being Grizzly.
Grizzly was no Gentle Ben, and featured a giant bear that terrorizes a national park, killing campers and hikers with a flick of its paw and gnash of its teeth over July 4th...we mean Labor Day weekend.
The park's Chief Brody...we mean chief ranger, played by Christopher George, teams up with a helicopter pilot played by Andrew Prine (Quint, coughs) and a naturalist played by Richard Jaeckel (read Matt Hooper clone) to track down and kill the bear before it can claim any more victims. Something tells me they're gonna need a bigger helicopter.
The film was directed by William Girdler and produced by Edward L. Montoro, both of whom were known for churning out low-budget horror films.
From the very beginning, it's clear that Grizzly is trying to cash in on the success of JAWS, but you could hardly blame them. The film's marketing campaign emphasised the fact that it was "the most dangerous Jaws on land," and the poster featured a giant grizzly bear looming over a terrified camper. The film's tagline was "18 feet of gut-crunching, man-eating terror!" even though the bear was only supposed to be 15 feet tall.
Despite its shameless rip-off of JAWS, Grizzly managed to attract a decent-sized audience when it was released in theaters. The film was made on a budget of just $750,000, but it ended up grossing over $39 million worldwide, reportedly the highest grossing independent film until John Carpenter's Halloween on 1978.
When it came to bear effects, we weren't exactly talking The Revenant, The Edge or even The Great Outdoors; it using a combination of real bears, animatronic bears, and footage of a bear attacking a dummy to create the illusion of a giant grizzly on the rampage.
Smarter than the average killer bear movie? Although Grizzly was trying to be JAWS , it was perhaps more memorable for its budget and storytelling flaws.
The script was derivative and often predictable, with scenes lifted directly from JAWS, from the three men taking on the great brown bear, it taking place during a busy public holiday, a superior demanding that the forest remain open to tourists in true Mayor Vaughn style and even a campfire doff of the cap to Quint's USS Indianapolis monologue.
The film also gets its very own Chrissie Watkins, with this time a beautiful young woman meeting her maker in a waterfall that soon flows red, and instead of an exploding shark with oxygen tank we have Grizzly go boom thanks to a rocket launcher.
Like JAWS there were also behind the scenes problems with the mechanical bear, according to the book Jaws Unmade: The Lost Sequels, Prequels, Remakes and Rip-Offs by John LeMay, the bear was left out in the rain, and just like Bruce it didn’t take too well to water.
And like JAWS there were also real bear shots used, with the 11 foot tall Teddy on Grizzly duties, his roars dubbed in – beating out the roars in JAWS the Revenge by 11 years.
Grizzly remains a fun and entertaining creature feature curiosity that is worth watching for fans of the genre.
It being a shameless rip-off of JAWS may have been the key to its success at the time of its original release, and although it may not be as well-remembered as JAWS, Grizzly remains a cult classic that, in the wake of Cocaine Bear, deserves to be awoken from its hibernation and rediscovered by a new generation of horror fans.
Words by Dean Newman
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