I watched Grizzly last night on You Tube - on the TV! Not Grizzly Adams, although I did enjoy that series and regret not getting any of the toy figures, but Grizzly the wilderness 'horror' film of the 1970's.
As you can imagine its about a Grizzly bear running amok in an American National Park and eating the campers. There are some tense moments amongst the ranger chatter, especially as the beast approaches its prey and virtually no-one goes home without a bear hug.
It was panned at the time of its release as a brazen JAWS clone and to be fair there are many elements that the director has nicked from Speilberg: the der-der music during stalking, the flying severed arm and most starkly, the ending, which I've leave at that in case you watch it!
But I enjoyed GRIZZLY. I always wanted to be a National Park ranger in the UK. I studied nature conservation for 3 years including national park management but alas in the 80's all the jobs were in Cities and I ended up part of the urban conservation 'industry' and got based in a Leeds environmental charity, where I stayed for 20 years! I am a creature of habit if nothing else! I certainly never came across any Grizzly bears.
I also like GRIZZLY because it captures something I imagine has gone in the US, the atmospheric olde-worlde mountain restaurant where the walls are made of redwood logs and the big wood fire is always burning, casting a soft light onto healthy-looking hikers sipping brandy from huge bowled glasses. Aah.
It also reminds me of two other films I enjoyed; Prophecy about a mutated bear monster and the very similar Snowbeast repleat with chisel-jawed mountain men too. Grizzly was very successful financially and I bet it beat these two into a cocked hat.
GRIZZLY had one 'official' bit of merchandise as far as I can tell and its quite sought after by the looks of it: the GRIZZLY rubber bear by Imperial Toys [yes, they who brought us Apollo Moon Exploring!].
The Imperial bear seems to have been an example of the 'hey, quick, slap a header card on that old toy and get it in the shops and we'll make a few bucks!" school of marketing!
They already had a growling polar bear in stock and when GRIZZLY came out they painted it and shipped it out. I imagine the header card was the first thing to go and few will have survived unlike the tough rubber bear.
Having said that I found this pic online of three Imperial Grizzlies all with their 'official' card labels present and correct! Looking at it again I see that the word Grizzly, in its correct film font, is TM'd on the card. Could Imperial have actually got a licence for this toy?
Did you or do you have a Grizzly?
What a bizarre toy. There seem to be several toys or toy lines based on horror movies, or violent action films, which seem to be an unlikely basis for a toy - although I suppose it depends on what age group they were aiming at. He is certainly mean looking, how tall is he ?
ReplyDeleteNot sure how big he is Paul. I haven't got one. I doubt he's very tall, that would mean excess rubber! Yes films are odd things. Kids shouldn't have seen Jaws really but they did in their millions!
DeleteThe official US classification for the original Jaws was PG, and in Britain it was A, which basically meant the same thing. More suitable for older age groups, but children were not excluded. But even some films with much higher ratings got their own toy lines. The weird world of film censorship being another of my interests. I still have not seen any of the Jaws movies, but I did see both versions of Piranha.
ReplyDeleteyes, I'm interested in classification too Paul, mostly the Video nasty crisis in the 1980's in the UK. I've managed to get hold of quite a rew books on the subject including an early one. As for Pirahna, I love the original. I've got the large cinema poster framed on my bedroom wall!
DeleteI do not have any film posters, although I do have a book on James Bond posters, and a couple of books on the video nasty covers, which are very interesting. Also several of the video nasties themselves on DVD, nothing on video. Some are good, some are very badly made. About three of these once banned films are now down to a 15 classification in Britain. Still, it is interesting to see what all the fuss was about.
ReplyDeleteyes, a fuss for which some people were jailed!
DeleteGrizzly was supporting Star Wars when I saw it in 1977 at St Albans Odeon - I was 7 and was smuggled in among a crowd of adults haha.
ReplyDeleteFenton
ha ha, great memory Fenton! What a double bill! Did you like Star Wars more than Grizzly?
DeleteTough call - Star Wars obviously had plenty to amuse a 7 year old lad what with lasers , space ships and aliens etc , but Grizzly probably (at the time !) felt more of a big deal because it was a film I'd managed to see that I really shouldn't have been allowed to !
ReplyDeleteFenton
ha ha, I like it Fenton.
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