Well, this is my first time owning
Grizzly, thanks to a review copy sent from 88 Films, but it's far from my first time seeing it. I grew up on these movies on TBS back in the 80s. They kind of run together a bit for me: very talky, made-for-TV feeling animal attack films with a batch of commercials every three minutes. Not exactly cutting edge
Hellraiser, but they were pretty much your only free, daytime horror options as a kid. I can still remember
Leslie Nielsen ripping off his shirt in the woods, deciding he had become a killer animal, too, and he was going to rip apart all his fellow campers who dared to question his leadership. Unfortunately, this isn't that movie, but it's a close second.
Update 9/1/18: Adding the Scorpion DVD, which has some special features not on the 88 blu.
Update 4/23/26: It's Update Megaweek, and today I'm adding Severin's latest blu-ray from 2021. I was going to let this be a secondary post this megaweek, but actually comparing the discs for the first time today, I was surprised how drastic the improvement was, so I wanted to give it its moment at the top of the front page. Scroll down and see for yourself. Oh, I've also just added Sony's 2005 DVD to my
Oliver! page.
A lot of these movies take heavily from the popular disaster genre of the 70s, like
The Poseidon Adventure and
Avalanche, combined with the radioactive giant critter films of the 50s, like
Them or
Beginning Of the End. But coming immediately on the heels of
Speilberg's 1975 box office sensation,
Grizzly sticks very closely to the
Jaws script, and with taglines like "the most dangerous Jaws on land" and "not since Jaws has the terror been like this," they're not shy about it.
Christopher George is
Roy Scheider, the official in charge of keeping the park safe for the public. He catches onto the
shark grizzly killing vacationers pretty quickly, but people don't want to believe him and the guy in charge refuses to shut down the park despite George's warnings. So he assembles a 3-man team, with
Andrew Prine as
Richard Dreyfus and
Richard Jaeckel as
Robert Shaw. It's all here, dragging a bloody corpse to lure the beast to the animal's POV shots lurking up on its victims. There's even a sequence where the music mimics
John Williams' famous "duh-nuh, duh-nuh" theme as the bear sneaks up on an camper.
But in the end, the
Jaws angle isn't what sells the movie, at least not decades later now that we're hip-deep in
Jaws knock-offs. It's the wildly satisfying bear attack sequences. They're surprisingly graphic and ambitious. The bear swats one woman and her arm goes flying across the clearing. A small child is mauled on screen. A horse is beheaded with one, clean swipe! And I won't even begin to spoil the conclusion that could still make audiences break out into cheers and applause. The rest of the film is about as flat and dull as you'd imagine: wooden dialogue, excessive pseudo-scientific exposition, and completely uninteresting subplots that never affect the story... I suspect there's an earlier draft where
Joan McCall's role as a reporter was going to lead her to investigate the camper deaths and, you know, get endangered or something.
Yeah, the bulk of
Grizzly is awfully generic, but it really knows how to deliver the goods. All the helicopter shots and variant locations don't add much by way of thrills, but they at least belay a healthy budget. More impressively, they make great use of a real bear though there are of course a few scenes where actors are clearly mauled by a PA in a fuzzy glove. Actors are harnessed up to portray massive
Rawhead Rex-style bash-ecutions. It helps a lot that they play everything deadly straight, unlike the goofy
Sharknado outings of today.
Grizzly never goes camp or winks at the audience, except for one scene that sticks out like a sore thumb, where a female ranger, on the hunt for the man-eating grizzly bear, decides to take an inexplicable break to strip down and bathe in a small waterfall... where of course the bear is hiding! But even that just manages to add to
Grizzly's only-in-the-70s charm.
This is hardly
Grizzly's first time at the rodeo. Shriek Show first rescued it from the dark sea of grey market DVDs with a nice, 2-disc special edition. Scorpion released it as a somewhat strange, limited edition blu-ray release in 2014. They included two transfers (yes, it was a BD50), unfiltered or DVNRed, sold with the warning that,
"This Blu-Ray of GRIZZLY is not up to our usual standards for a Blu-Ray release. However, due to the overwhelming request for this title, we are presenting the film to you in the best way possible in HD. Although there are many imperfections with the materials, we hope you can still enjoy the presentation as it is while viewing. Thank you." Their DVD counterpart, on the other hand, just features the one transfer. Also curious: they didn't include the audio commentary from the DVD, even though
Walt Olsen (president of Scorpion) was one the participants. Anyway, it was released on blu more broadly in 2018 in the UK from 88 Films. That's the edition most of us got our hands on until 2021 when Severin issued it in the US with an all-new 2k scan.
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| 1) 2014 Scorpion DVD; 2) 2018 88 Films BD; 3) 2021 Severin BD. |
Presented in a very wide, 2.40:1 aspect ratio, 88's disc clearly uses the same master as Scorpion's (also 2.40:1), but thankfully they've opted for the non-DNR version. This is a very grainy transfer, probably taken from a print. But while there are occasional white flecks and minor blemishes - even a little soft flickering in one or two scenes - for the most part,
Grizzly's in much cleaner, more attractive condition than I was expecting. The colors are strong and very natural, and the aforementioned grain is very distinct and crisply rendered. I'm surprised Scorpion got self conscious enough to issue a disclaimer over this master.
But now we've got a fresh 2k scan from the internegative, and man, it looks so much better. I mean, just look how much more distinct those colors are! Looking at them side by side, it really brings up how red the previous master was. Also, the AR is roughly the same at 2.39:1, but look how much more image is in the frame. Who knew what we were missing before now?
Audio-wise, the Scorpion DVD has the mono and, surprisingly, a 5.1 remix. 88 drops that, but we get a healthy, lossless LPCM 2.0 mix. No subtitles, but then the Scorpion and Shriek Show releases didn't have any either. Severin does, though, as well as the original mono in DTS-HD.
Here's where things get even more interesting: special features. The Shriek Show set was pretty full, with the audio commentary, plus a nearly 40 minute retrospective documentary, a screening Q&A, vintage 'making of' featurette and some other little odds and ends. Scorpion carried over some of that, but lost the commentary and vintage featurette (though they did add their
Katrina intro, if you're interested in that). And 88? Well, disappointingly, they've included none of that. But they did produce their own, all-new exclusive 23-minute featurette. It's an interview with
David Del Valle, who's basically here as an expert to give us a little of the backstory for the film. But he knew Christopher George, so he's able to give us some unique personal anecdotes, and it winds up mostly being about him. Quite interesting and definitely worth the watch. Besides that, we get the theatrical trailer and, if you get the first pressing, it also includes a limited edition slipcover and booklet where
Calum Waddell rather generously compares the film to
George Orwell's
Animal Farm, and gives a little history to the "animals run amuck" genre, with quotes from
Joe Dante and others.
And Severin? First of all, the commentary's back! And they've got a new one with experts
Nathaniel Thompson and
Troy Howarth. Honestly, it's kinda silly and skippable; but it's great to have the original again. The making of and vintage featurette are here, too; though the Q&A is gone, as is the Katrina bit, naturally. 88's original featurette isn't here either. But we get some great, new interviews with co-producer
J. Patrick Kelly III, a conversation between Sheldon and McCall, a fun one with actor
Tom Arcuragi and a lengthy one with expert
Stephen Thrower, which unlike the new commentary, you shouldn't pass over. There's also a second trailer and a couple radio spots. It has reversible cover art and was originally sold with a slipcover.
So,
Grizzly is entertaining, but not what you'd call, you know, a good
movie. It's definitely worth watching once for the highlights, but beyond that, for me, it's the kind of movie you get as an impulse buy or not at all. Maybe you see it cheap and pick it up on a lark, or include it in a big order when a site is having a sale... For most viewers, I'd imagine whichever blu-ray is in your region will do. But if you are seeking the full
Grizzly experience, Severin is the answer in all departments. Hold onto your older copies for their exclusive extras, but Severin has the best overall package; so there's really no need to get more than one edition of this.
