Yet again, critics call this "nature gone bad" movie a rip-off of JAWS. So, once again I should be inclined to bitch and rave about how this is NOT JAWS, because JAWS was about a shark, while this is about a bear, but no one listens to me, and I wasted wnough space on this topic in my review for KING COBRA (shameless plug there), so I won't bother with it here. One last mention in this paragraph: GRIZZLY was edited by a guy named Bud Asman, who's lucky, because he's just one letter away from being traumatived! HAHAHAHA! Fuck you Assman!

Alright, as for the movie, it's like an episode of "Wild America" gone bad, going all out, even including the cheesy nature show theme music! It's the beginning of camping season, and in a horror movie you know that's an open invite for flesh hungry animals, menacing escaped science projects, or serial killers in sportswear! This time is no different, as a quaint little national park is turned into a badly done bloodbath by a 15ft Grizzly Bear! Business is booming, as there are "more back packers in the woods then there are racoons" as one ranger puts it, obviously devoid of a sense of humor, or at least any skill in pulling off a decent joke. Soon than later, a couple of suck-ulent campers of the vaginal kind are given a rude welcome to Jell-O Stone by one pissed off Yogi! Hungry for more than pick-a-nick baskets, Yogi tears the girls apart, ripping the wall off of a cabin to get at one of them! Now, it's all up to head ranger Mike Kelley (well, is he Mike or Kelley?!) and his fellow state funded employees to track down the angry mammal before he starts mauling others! Can they do it in time? Well, I've got an arsenal of Yogi Bear jokes to last us till they do... actually, it's just the same two jokes repeated, but you'll never notice the difference.

The rest of the movie plays as anyone would suspect: Yogi (or at least a furry claw on a stick) goes around the mountains hacking and slashing and gnashing (oh my!) campers left and right, throwing nature's instincts to the winds as he leads the rangers on one wild goose chase after another. Also, to make it easier for the bear, the rangers do the ever reliable "split up at a REALLY bad time" routine, making them vulnerable and labeling them "Bear Chow". Once in a while we see more than Yogi's cheep looking claws, but not often. Eventually, after some researching, it appears that Yogi is the sole survivor of a grizzly bounty hunt from several years ago. He's also 15ft tall (though I'd say he never looks any taller than 8ft, 10ft tops), over 2000lbs, and hails from a giant bear species that supposedly went extinct over a millenia ago. Maybe he was just sleeping all this time and needed the motivation to attack. Like Godzilla, or the US, or Ben Stein... Also, a little test of nature proves that Yogi is in fact a male. No, there's no 30 inch bear schlong waving to the camera, but when some hunters bait a trap for the bear with a baby bear, Yogi gets territorial and eats Boo-Boo! Good, I always hated his nasally voice. As for the trap, it fails.

Having finally decided on a pattern the bear's following, Ranger Kelley and his Gung-Ho naturalist hippy-gone-bad pal try to head the beast off at the pass. Soon enough though, Kelley is the last mammal standing, after the bear kills the rugged hippy, forcing Ranger Kelley to resort to... a rocket launcher. Yep, apparently the US government decided that national parks are hot beds for heavily violent activities, and their rangers require extreme forms of artillery in case a situation such as this one would come up. Not only that, but I've seen an array of exploding forest creatures in my day, and that bear explosion was by far the cheapest! The special FX sould take a cue from Peter Jackson's BAD TASTE on the finer arts of mammal detonation.

Bottom line, the gore was okay (though for bear attacks, those severed limbs seemed a little too clean cut), the all around special FX were bad, though I've seen worse, especially when you think about WEREWOLF, which I try not to do. The acting was nothing memorable, the music was far too soothing, and the direction was bland and uninspired. You'd probably find more scares in one of the world satired "When Animals Attack Power Tools" shows or a Hanna-Barbera marathon, but in '76 I guess it was easier to make people lose bowel control.

Also Known As: KILLER GRIZZLY

Sequels: None

If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: PROPHECY (not the angel movie, the other one) or JAWS