Grizzly II: Revenge (1983) – Review

When it comes to sequels the time between the original and the following chapter often varies, from a quick cash-grab release to an entry that comes out many years later to cash in on its nostalgic value, in the case of Grizzly, which was released in 1976 as a cash in on the Jaws craze, but while this sequel was initially produced back in 1983 it took almost four decades before it saw the light of day and after watching this entry it’s clear that unlike a fine wine Grizzly II: Revenge did not get better with age.

While this film may, in fact, be titled Grizzly II: Revenge it is not what one could call a proper sequel as there isn’t a single actor or character to make an appearance in this travesty and the only similarity to the original film is in its ability to badly rip off Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, and certainly not helped by the fact that movie remained unfinished after production wrapped prematurely in 1983 after the producer vanished and the funds dried up, only to be unceremoniously resurrected decades later. The plot of this cinematic travesty starts off with a poacher killing a grizzly cub and wounding its mother, thus getting the revenge element of our movie properly set up, then after killing the poacher it proceeds on a murderous rampage that includes a trio of hikers Ron (George Clooney), Tina (Laura Dern) and Lance (Charlie Sheen) who blissfully walk past a sign that states “Danger All Area Beyond This Sign is Closed Because Of Bear Danger” and I’m more concerned with this park’s flagrant use of bad grammar than any possible threat from bears.

“Well, George, at least we got a trip to Hungary out of this.”

It’s at this point that we are introduced to the actual stars of this film, first, we have park ranger Nick Hollister (Steve Inwood) as the film’s ostensible hero and then we have Samantha Owens (Deborah Raffin) the parks director of Bear Management, who is adamantly opposed to hunting down and killing the grizzly bear, hoping to tranquillize and relocate the bear before it can do any more harm, not that she seems all that concern with the bear’s extracurricular activities because as the body count rises she remains hellbent on not harming a hair on this rampaging beast’s hide.  While this conflict adds a little tension to the plot we also have Superintendent Eileene Draygon (Louise Fletcher) refusing to halt a concert being held within the park despite the danger. What the film fails to do is have this concert and the threat of a bear attack actually matter, and sure, the finale does have the grizzly arriving at the concert but it occurs backstage and so none of the fifty thousand concertgoers even become aware of the threat, all the arguments between Hollister and Draygon about security and needing more men are made pointless, as was the entire concert subplot.

Note: I hope you don’t mind bad 80s glam rock because to reach its “feature-length” of 74 minutes they had to use a lot of footage from a concert show in Hungary, which stops the movie dead in its tracks multiple times.

The never-ending intrusion of concert footage not only interrupts the momentum of this “Man against Nature” story but also allows for an additional plot element surrounding Hollister’s teenage daughter Chrissy (Deborah Foreman), who is excited about being hired by concert manager Charlie Hill (Dick Anthony Williams) as a gopher, and what the film later alludes to a supposed romantic entanglement with the lead singer of one of the acts, and like many things in this film this element has no proper setup and no payoff. And finally, we have the only memorable element in this movie in the form of the world-famous French-Canadian grizzly expert Bouchard (John Rhys-Davies), who can apparently smell a bear from miles away, and by memorable, I mean he is so over-the-top cartoony that you expect him to be accompanied by music from the Merrie Melodies and thus is impossible to forget.

Don’t ask why he’s cos-playing Paul Bunyan.

Our trio of heroes traipsed around the dangerous forest, where the filmmakers randomly cut in daylight shots, night shots and day-for-night shots as if to keep the viewer off balance enough so they won’t realize what they are seeing doesn’t make a lick of sense, but if that were their actual strategy I would applaud them, but in reality, it’s all due to the fact that they were making a film based on incomplete footage and the end result just doesn’t even remotely hold together. And just before the audience is about to slide into a boredom-induced coma the movie concludes with the grizzly being lured into high voltage cables by Nick, with it then bursting into flames as it is electrocuted, much as how the shark was killed at the end of Jaws 2, in fact, the producers actually “borrowed” two very quick shots of flame and teeth from that film to make this “exciting” conclusion.  What’s even sadder is this is also our first really good look at the grizzly and it is so terrible and would make for an example of what a bad night at Disney’s Country Bear Jamboree would look like.

“It was a poor budget that killed the beast.”

Stray Observations:

• That George Clooney, Charlie Sheen and Laura Dern are given” above the title” starring credits but are then killed five minutes into the movie, which has to be one of the grossest bits of false advertising I’ve ever seen.
• There is new footage added to patch up some of the holes and these moments stick out like a sore thumb when placed next to the film stock of the original 1983 footage, also, the CGI blood hits are so bad and distracting that you start to wonder if you’re watching a cartoon.
• One of the park rangers asks, “Why is Draygon allowing a concert in a national park, it’s for money isn’t it?” But what concerts aren’t put on for money, even charity concerts are intended to raise money, so this is about the stupidest question to ask, which is on par with the bulk of this script.
• The only way you can consider this a sequel to the 1976 film is that they both rip off Jaws by using the “We can’t close the beaches, it’s the Fourth of July” trope, only here it’s a stupid concert they want to be kept on schedule.
• After finding the three mutilated campers Samantha Owens still wants the bear captured alive, stating to Hollister that “I feel as bad as you do, but this grizzly is not truly guilty of anything, she’s just behaving according to her natural instinct” but as her natural instinct is now “kill anyone she encounters” the idea of letting this creature roam free is patently ridiculous.
• For no apparent reason Bouchard changes out of his Paul Bunyan costume in favour of Hawkeye from The Last of the Mohicans costume.

This is Grizzly II’s version of Quint and it’s hilarious.

That this film’s original producer left after the first day of shooting, leaving them with no funds to continue the film, can certainly explain some of the disastrous results of Grizzly II: Revenge but not all of this can be blamed on money as the script is godawful and simply bursting with every clichéd character that they could cram into its meagre 74-minute running time, then there is the fact that this is clearly an uncompleted film as it is quite obvious that shots and even whole scenes are missing, for example, we get a moment between Chrissy and the lead singer of one of the bands that allude to the pair having some sort of relationship but it’s nothing we the audience get a chance to see, and the hackneyed editing does the film no favours as missing shots result in people randomly popping off with non-sequiturs, answering or responding to things said but that was never shot, and the end result leaves the viewer confused and bewildered as to what anyone is talking about.

One has to appreciate a bear who stages its kills like Jason Voorhees.

This film is a disjointed mess that is only notable for its incomprehensibility and the brief appearance of Clooney, Sheen, and Dern in these “before they were famous” roles, which now exist to be used as answers for pub trivia contests. It should also be noted that the grizzly has even less screen time than those three stars and its animatronic creation was so bad it couldn’t even be used in conjunction with the actors, other than a brief shot of John Rhys-Davies scaling what appears to be a fur wall, and pretty much all of the attacks happen off-screen and thus we only get to see the aftermath and not the kills themselves. It’s hard to describe just how bad Grizzly II: Revenge is and the only possible reason to check this movie out is to see random good actors popping in and out of what is otherwise an utter waste of film stock, and even with that motive on hand it’s really not worth it.

“We can’t shut this film down, it’s the Fourth of July!”

To be fair, Grizzly II: Revenge was rocked by many production woes, a producer vanishing to later be found in jail was only one of many issues that plagued this movie, yet even without these obvious setbacks this “In Name Only” sequel fails on practically every level, from a terrible script to the bad acting to a killer grizzly that comes across about as menacing as a moth-eaten bear rug, and while a proper budget may have solved some issues it doubtfully would have made this thing anything more than a shiny turd in the punch bowl of cinema.