It can be challenging at times to find adventures for all three of our teenagers to simultaneously enjoy. Thanks to Tide Rip Grizzly Adventures out of Telegraph Cove Resort, our family jumped on a boat to the mainland for our very own adventure. That didn’t stop us in going on a Vancouver Island Grizzly Bear Tour! Especially on Vancouver Island, as there are no full time resident grizzly bears. In a useless aside, both Prine and George posed for nude photos of themselves in the 70's, but here nary even a chest is in sight.Grizzly bears are among Canada’s wild land animals that are seldom seen. There are worse "Animals on the rampage" flicks, but this is hardly a strong piece of movie-making. One is when the bear wants one victim so badly, he levels a towering ranger station! Among the sillier moments is one in which a female ranger says she is going to soak her feet in the stream, yet proceeds to strip down to bra and panties and let her hair out of its ponytail! There are campy bits like heads, arms and so forth being yanked off (mostly suggested rather than explicitly shown) and plenty of fake blood spewing here and there. WHERE was Lynda Day George? Though the formula of "See camper, See camper die" gets more than a little tiresome, there are a couple of memorable moments. Looking like a less-surgically-enhanced Katie Couric and with a voice twice as grating, she is a big debit to the film. Not only does her character have nothing to do with the plot or the title beast at all, but the actress is so annoying that one keeps hoping she will be next in line for the human buffet. By far the worst presence in the film is that of McCall as George's love interest. Prine affects a spotty cornpone accent that does little to bring his sketchy character to life. It's a little sad to see George literally chain-smoking through the film when he would be dead of a heart attack in just 6 years at age 54. The three lead males do an okay job with Jaeckel scoring the most points with his quirky portrayal. Some of the scenery in the film is nice, though apart from the credit sequence, it is hardly ever exploited to its full potential. ![]() Meanwhile, the body count rises and rises as victims fail to notice a 15 foot, 2000-lb grizzly bear coming up to them from nowhere! Finally, just when the cast is dwindling to that of a one man show, the climactic showdown between man and beast occurs with the bear getting a similar comeuppance as Bruce the shark did in "Jaws". When he isn't head-butting with the park supervisor (Dorsey), he's calling upon buddies Jaeckel (a naturist who prowls around with pelts on his back to better study the animal kingdom) and Prine (a helicopter-piloting Vietnam veteran) to help him track down this man-killing beast. (This approach was also utilized in the 1976 "King Kong", so the derivation continues.) George plays something akin to Head Ranger of the forest in question. Rather, the audience is treated to perspective shots of branches and foliage being shoved away as he approaches the next morsel.er.camper. ![]() Like Bruce the shark, Grizzly doesn't make his full appearance right away. (There's even a lodge owner with the same type of glasses William Holden wore in "Inferno".) The film follows the basic formula (which would be copied in dozens of films thereafter) of "Jaws" with innocent people being mauled and devoured by an unseen enemy. ![]() It has also taken a page from "The Towering Inferno" with opening credits that are so similar in their presentation that it's laughable. To say that "Grizzly" is a rip-off of "Jaws" is only going part way to describing the genesis of the film.
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