GRIZZLY
and the Stupidity of Children
Starring
Christopher George, Andrew Prine, Richard Jaeckel, Joan McCall, Teddy
the Bear. Directed by William Girdler. (1976, 91 min).
Kids
are dumb. I know this because I teach middle school.
I
begin each day of my 7th grade English class with a warm-up writing
exercise, where students respond to a prompt on the screen. It's
mostly silly stuff, like 'write about a time you were scared,' or
'what would you do with a million dollars?'. But occasionally, I
throw them something a little more challenging, one of my favorites
being 'name the greatest American who ever lived.' I get an amusing
variety of responses with that one. Sure, there are a few who
actually think hard about the question and provide such reasonable
responses as Lincoln, Washington, Kennedy and King. As of this
writing, a lot of kids select Barack Obama, probably because he's the
one modern president they're familiar with.
Then
there are the wacky answers, such as Michael Jackson, Justin Beiber,
Lebron James, etc. My all-time favorite was, 'I
don't know who the greatest American was, but I know the dumbest...my
brother.'
Several
years ago, one girl responded with Mike Tyson.
After
reading her response, I said to her, "So let me get this
straight...you believe Mike Tyson, a disgraced athlete who once bit
off an opponent's ear and went to prison for rape is the greatest
American who ever lived."
She
sheepishly shrugged and replied, "Yeah...we named our dog after
him."
For
some students, I guess my warm-up questions are above
and beyond
challenging.
Further
evidence that kids are dumb is when I ask them to write about the
best movie they've ever seen. Seems simple enough, right?
I
don't expect them all to have experienced The
Godfather, although
there's the occasional kid who mentions Grease,
The Wizard of Oz or
the original Star
Wars. But for the
most part, less than 1% ever write about a movie that came out before
they were born. That's to be expected; even though I'm getting on in
years, there are very few movies made before I popped from my mom
that I would list among my all time favorites.
One
year, several boys responded with Alien
vs. Predator, which
briefly oozed into theaters the previous summer. I offered my two
cents, saying it didn't hold a candle to the original Alien.
One
kid's stunned reply was, “There was another Alien
movie?”
Okay,
I understand that, since I'm used to the common middle school
philosophy that nothing ever existed before they were born. But I
won't ever forgive this other punk who had seen the original and
proudly stated Alien
vs. Predator was far
better because it was newer, therefore more realistic. This was one
of those times that I wished they still allowed paddling in schools.
Year
in and year out, most kids tend to equate the best movie they've seen
with the last
movie they've seen. This used to bug me until I took a good look back
at my own past. Like everyone on Earth except my high school History
teacher, I was a kid once...and just as dumb. Maybe even dumber
because, after seeing 1976's Grizzly,
I initially declared it to be bigger, better and scarier than Jaws.
Jaws
is obviously considered one of the greatest movies ever made (the
greatest, in my humble opinion). It's on several AFI best-of lists in
various categories. It was nominated for four Oscars, winning three
(losing Best Picture). It also was the first film to earn over $100
million at the box office and, adjusting for inflation, is still the
seventh biggest movie of all time.
Grizzly,
on the other hand, is a low-budget Jaws
knock-off. In fact, it is
Jaws, only with a
bear instead of a shark, a national park instead of an island, a park
ranger instead of a sheriff, a chopper pilot instead of a boat
captain. Even several scenes are nearly identical...shots from the
beasts' POV, climaxes where said-beasts explode, dumbass authority
figures proven wrong by our hero, Susan Blacklinie as a victim
(though she's uncredited in Grizzly).
The
movie's poster art also was similar. '18
feet of gut-crunching, man-eating terror!' touted
the tag-line in ads back in 1976, roughly a year after Jaws
first scared the living shit out of everybody with a pulse. That was
enough for me to check it out when it hit the 69.
I
thought Grizzly
was awesome. Sure, it was just Jaws-in-the-woods,
but Grizzly
was brand new and Bruce the shark was a distant memory. In 1976, when
they didn't show-up on-demand or on disc a few months after their
theatrical runs, movies became distant memories really fast,
especially when you were 13 and stupid. So for a long time, Grizzly
was the better of the two movies, though not necessarily scarier. In
fact, the co-feature playing with Grizzly
at the time, a William Castle cheapie titled Bug,
disturbed me a lot more (especially a scene where a fire-spewing
cockroach barbecues a cat...man, I was days getting over that).
Grizzly
was simply better because it was new. When you're young & stupid,
you don't notice the dumb dialogue, how cheap the movie looks or that
Christopher George is no Roy Scheider. You sure-as-hell don't compare
director William Girdler's meager talents to those of Spielberg (in
fact, you don't even know who the hell Spielberg is).
But
my eyes were opened a few years later when Grizzly
aired on TV, retitled Killer
Grizzly, apparently
to avoid confusion with the huggable, fun-loving bears that play with
our kids in the back yard. It was the same old film, only this time I
could see it for what it was...a cheap knock-off of a classic.
I'm
making it sound like the movie is garbage, but as Jaws
imitators go (and there were a lot of them back then), Grizzly
isn't bad at all. It's pretty fun & fast-paced, reasonably
well-acted by its B-list cast and makes the most of its limited
financial resources. In fact, I'd say more creativity and care was
put into this Jaws
rip-off than any of
that film's official sequels. As for me, the movie holds a great deal
of nostalgic value. I still pluck it from my DVD shelf now and again
to enjoy a good laugh...not at the movie (though it's sometimes
unintentionally funny), but at my younger self for ever thinking
Grizzly
could be a better film than Jaws.
I'm
sure when that maladjusted Alien
vs. Predator-loving
student of mine pulls his head out of his ass later in life, he'll do
the same thing. Kids are dumb, but most aren't dumb forever.
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