Claws

A lot of people confuse this movie with "Grizzly". "Grizzly" has Christopher George AND Andrew Prine AND Richard Jaekl AND a female park ranger who decides to take time out from hunting an 18-foot killer grizzly bear to strip off all her clothes and take an impromptu shower in a waterfall (guess what happens?). "Claws" has none of these things, just a lot of travelogue footage of the Alaskan wilderness and some Native American nonsense about a "spirit bear". Neither movie is particularly scary. They both contain a lot shots of a disembodied bear paw flying through air, lopping off heads and limbs edited together with close-ups of the face of a real bear who looks only mildly annoyed. There is one pretty good scene where the bear menaces a boy scout camp, but it's only good because it's dark and you can't really see the bear. Actually, you can't see a lot of things in the very murky existing prints of this hard-to-find movie. It probably doesn't merit a DVD resurrection, however, because I have a feeling that what you can't see would still suck. "Grizzly" is so bad it's good; "Claws" is just bad.

Notable for it gratuitous use of flashbacks, even by 70's standards. This is a pure drive-in flick, the one your parents didn't want to stay awake for, so they drove home halfway through it. Right off the bat, you're introduced to bad stock footage, interesting color changes during scenes, and a so-called SATAN BEAR! Cheezy and vaguely energetic enough to be funny for awhile, halfway through it begins to lull the mind into a satisfying sleep. However, impressionable young minds might actually be frightened by this flick, since getting mauled by a rogue bear during a boy-scout outing is actually quite a plausable fear; as opposed to, say, getting mauled by Bigfoot...

But that's a different movie.

CLAWS is another grizzly bear attack horror film, packed with footage of a grizzly going on the rampage and butchering a number of innocent folk. It was recently shown on TV here in the UK to tie in to the cinema release of THE REVENANT, along with NIGHT OF THE GRIZZLY. This low budget effort is the worse film of the two, thanks to a very undistinguished execution. There's virtually no characterisation, no attempts at suspense, just a lot of repetitive scenes instead.

The whole film feels sluggish and rather dull despite the proliferation of outdoor nature footage (the movie was shot in Alaska). I appreciate that a real bear was used for many of the shots, but the whole thing is directed in such a matter-of-fact way that it gets rather boring very quickly. The one point at which things do get exciting is at the over-the-top climax, but by then it's too little, too late.

If "Grizzly" was the B-grade answer to "Jaws", then "Claws" in my opinion, is the next generation answer to "Grizzly". Despite a top- notch cast (Evers, Aames, Caruso, Young & Healey), "Claws" lacks the technical expertise William Girdler displayed in conjuring his spin-off, the bear attacks and aftermath here, a lot less bloody and realistic.

The acting of the veterans isn't bad at all, though Evers does at times seem more than a little self-righteous as he mentally deteriorates years after being attacked by what has now become the local folklore of "Devil Bear". Estranged from his wife & son due to his obsession with locating and killing "Devil Bear", Evers teeters on the brink of insanity, until, "Devil Bear" appears again to wreak havoc and give Evers the chance to avenge the livelihood he lost when his hand was crippled years before (he was a lumberjack by trade, until "Devil Bear" tossed him around like a rag doll).

Clichéd and overly intense, "Claws" reminds me of "Snowbeast" both in terms of tone and production quality, it's a very distant standard to Girdler's "Grizzly" despite the obvious homage. Both Aames and Caruso have reasonably good dialogue and deliver earnest, watchable performances - I couldn't really say the same for Layton nor Sipes who both look decidedly amateurish by comparison. As aforesaid, I'm not sure who's more dangerous, "Devil Bear" or Jason Evers' maniacal stare.

The slow-motion climax was a bit absurd and Evers' supposedly crippled hand seems to make a miraculous resurrection, but otherwise, it's what you'd expect in a film of this genre, but firmly on the C-scale.

Its pretty obvious where this one got its inspiration from - Claws even sounds like Jaws. After Spielberg's big fish classic became one of the ultimate blockbusters, many films followed in its wake, with tales about animals going on the rampage. This is one of the ones involving a grizzly bear. In it, a massive bear is shot by illegal hunters, instead of going off to die it instead goes completely radge and becomes a local menace for several years. This leads to a group of hunters going out to track it down - you know the drill. This one is a bit scrappy in some ways but benefits quite a bit from its on-location shooting in the Alaskan wilds.