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An 18-foot tall grizzly bear finds its way into a state park and starts severing heads and limbs in this low-budget, unabashed Jaws rip-off. A park ranger (Christopher George), a naturist (Richard Jaeckel), and a chopper pilot (co-writer Andrew Prine) team up to find the beast before it kills any more campers, but their efforts are stymied by the park supervisor (Joe Dorsey) who’s afraid of scaring away the tourists. If that doesn’t sound enough like Jaws to you, there’s a speech just like Quint’s ‘U.S.S. Indianapolis’ story, and they even blow the bear up at the end.
A Jaws rip-off could still be entertaining, but Grizzly fails to generate any genuine thrills or chills. Even though the script cuts right to the chase with its body count, all the kill scenes are achieved through chaotic close-ups, shaky camera work, fake bear arms, and phony body parts. And there’s almost no variety to the kills, either. The characters aren’t remotely interesting enough to compensate for the sub-par effects, so all that’s left is some pretty scenery and a surprisingly good score by Robert O. Ragland. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to recommend this film to anyone other than devout lovers of late-night, B-movie fare.
Directed by William Girdler (The Manitou, ‘Sheba, Baby’). With Joan McCall and Charles Kissinger.