Grizzly II: The Predator

Grizzly II (1983) is a movie that I recently watched on Prime. The storyline follows Yellowstone National Park setting up for a concert when a killer bear starts collecting victims. The bear 🐻 is so huge it threatens to kill everyone at the concert. Can anyone stop a monster this huge?

This movie was directed by André Szöts in his directorial debut and stars John Rhys-Davies (Lord of the Rings), George Clooney (From Dusk till Dawn), Laura Dern (Jurassic Park), Louise Fletcher (Flowers in the Attic), Charlie Sheen (Major League), Deborah Raffin (Death Wish 3) and Dick Anthony Williams (Edward Scissorhands).

The history of this movie is crazy. Charlie Sheen turned down the lead role in the Karate Kid to be in this movie. This movie was filmed in Hungary and ran out of money before it began, so Clooney, Charlie Sheen and Dern carried the equipment and helped with set setup. The infamous concert was a lie where they told the locals Nazareth was performing. They played Nazareth songs, the entire concert was fake and the audience didn't know it wasn't actually Nazareth performing. When the movie team ran out of money, and didnt pay the Hungary for the time in the park or anything else they promised, Hungary seized all the film equipment, the rights to the movie, sets, and footage and sold most of it to get some of the money they were owed. Thirty-seven years later the movie showed up illegally on the internet and is now available to be seen. A huge robotic bear was built for this movie but it never worked, so you only see it the last few clips of the movie.

Sheen, Dern and Clooney are barely in the movie; however, the cast is really good overall. The cinematography is solid but the CGI and special effects are awful. The entire movie you're waiting for something to happen, it doesn't until the end. The concert scenes are way too long. The bear scenes at the end are funny and you never really get to see the bear attack and eat someone the entire film. The ending is a fairly ridiculous but as you'd expect for this genre.

Overall, this movie had potential but is dreadful. I would score this a 3/10 and strongly recommend seeing this monstrosity once.

Oh this was bad.

Right, well I was lured in by this 2020 release of a movie that apparently was made 37 years prior to being released. Now, how or why something like that could or would happen is simply beyond me. But I think a movie such as "Grizzly II: The Predator" is one that should just have remained buried and unreleased, given whatever problematic circumstance prevented it from being released 37 years earlier.

I was, of course, intrigued when I saw that the movie had Charlie Sheen, George Clooney and Laura Dern listed on the movie's cover/poster. And yeah, sure they were there, all young and such, but come on. They weren't even in the movie for a good whole 5 minutes. Then aside from them having something less than a cameo in the movie, "Grizzly II: The Predator" boasted the likes of John Rhys-Davies and Jack Starrett. So this wasn't really a star studded movie after all. I will say, though, that it was actually a blast to have Jack Starrett in the movie, just a shame he didn't have a bigger role and more on-screen time - but then again, most performers in the movie had little screen time, as it was eaten away by pointless concert footage.

And not once did director André Szöts actually convince me that there was a huge and mean grizzly bear within close proximity of any of the actors or actresses, and it never felt like anyone was in any real danger. As such, the movie just failed to provide entertainment and didn't pass as being believable.

While we are on the topic of entertainment, then "Grizzly II: The Predator" is showing an abundance of pointless concert footage that served as nothing but filler in the movie. It was horrible and laughable.

This movie is without a doubt a complete and utter waste of time. It is not even a campy guilty pleasure movie. Nay, "Grizzly II: The Predator" is just downright boring and pointless.

My rating of "Grizzly II: The Predator" lands on a two out of ten stars. I would say that it is hardly worth the time, money or effort.

Grizzly II (1987)

Ahh, don't you just love lost movies? This sequel to William Girdler's 1976 cult favorite GRIZZLY was a Hungarian production that started filming in 1983 but for some reason it was never fully completed. Rumor has it that something illegal was done during the production and local authorities pretty much shut the film down. For nearly two-decades this film was surrounding in quite a myth as many believed it was never actually filmed while others thought they simply ran out of money and couldn't complete it. Then around 2005 or so, a workprint turned up and thankfully the majority of the film was complete. Being a killer grizzly film I guess it's fitting that the only thing actually missing are the bear attacks. Apparently the producers were going to film everything involving the bear in the final weeks of production so this never happened. The rest of the movie is pretty much complete but whenever something with a bear is about to happen the footage is simply missing. You still see the people attacked but there's just no actual footage of the bear doing it. With that said, if GRIZZLY II were to be released, completed or not, it would become an instant cult classic. Hell, it already is even with the missing footage. Let see what all this film has to offer:

* Academy Award winner Louise Fletcher.

* Deborah Raffin from DEATH WISH 3.

* John Rhys-Davies from the Indiana Jones series.

* Charles Cyphers from HALLOWEEN.

* Deborah Foreman of VALLEY GIRL.

* A soundtrack that illegally uses countless Michael Jackson songs.

* GRIZZLY star Christopher George was signed to play the lead but died of a heart attack shortly before production.

Wait there's one more big thing.......

* George Clooney, Charlie Sheen and Laura Dern in the same scene together.

GRIZZLY II has a, what else, grizzly eating people just as a State Park is about to hold a major concert. The owner (Fletcher) refuses to alert the media about the bear fearing it won't sell tickets so she demands the lid be put on it. Soon enough a group of rednecks (led by Cyphers) are trying to track down the bear while innocent campers (Clooney, Sheen, Dern) are eaten alive. Unfinished or not, GRIZZLY II is a must see for fans of bad cinema or just those who enjoy the "nature attacks" genre. There's so much wackiness in this movie that it really does seem as if you're watching about twenty-different campy movies rolled into one. You can start with the god-awful "concert" footage, which actually takes up a very big portion of the running time. The music is so awful that you can't help but have a good time with it and even though you'll want to cover your ears you just can't simply because of how funny it is. The men dancing around in tight shorts isn't any better and the silly redneck hunters are just downright crazy. There's one hilarious scene where one of the hunter's loses his brother to the bear and the only thing his buddies can do is tell him to just forget about it so they can go make money. More campiness arrives when the big three are out campy. Dern does a striptease for Clooney who is in a sleeping bad. The scene has them both cuddling in the bag when they're attacked by the bear. Just watch how Clooney appears more interesting in touching Dern than actually fighting the bear. This is followed up by Sheen getting attacked and just wait until you hear that scream of his, which has to be one of the worst in film history. There are so many campy moments in this film that you really can't help but just sit back and enjoy them. It's really too bad that the film was never completed but looking at the movie it probably wouldn't take too much money or time to fill in the missing pieces. The attack sequences really wouldn't take that long to film and when you see how many known stars are in the movie you can't help but think they'd have a terrific selling point. GRIZZLY II, so far, remains unreleased and it's a real shame because camp fans would have another classic to add to their library.

...is so obviously hilariously NOT from the original 1983 footage. (For those that care, they're called The Dayz and have an Instagram page; kudos to them for being one of a BILLION bands to be randomly selected for a very hyped cult film release! Perhaps they know the producer??) It's obviously a modern day band (the sound is different, they didn't even ATTEMPT to make it sound like a live performance), the hair styles and clothes are different (a man bun? A dude in a backwards baseball cap and a shirt that says GREENPOINT?? In 1983 when no one outside Brooklyn had even heard of Greenpoint??) and the footage of them playing is clearly not at a concert! They're playing in a studio or perhaps warehouse. Furthermore they keep using the SAME shots (guy on saxophone! Female member headbang in slow motion), with quick cut aways to wide shots of the actual 1983 live audience in hopes you won't notice. Well, we did!

I don't have the whole story, but my father was sent to Budapest during filming to represent an investor in the film. He has a poster for the concert that featured Nazareth (the rock band) that was part of the film. I know he also has hidden somewhere still pictures of the filming and events surrounding the making of the movie. He came back home early from Hungary because of events described in other notes and incredibly disappointed that the investor he represented lost a great deal of money that was never recovered because of certain folks taking advantage of the investors involved. My dad still talks about how he thought it was a great script and a high quality movie with a quality cast. Two big mistakes: producer didn't take care of the investments of others and they didn't use a real bear for some of the scenes opting for a mechanical puppet that didn't operate the way they hoped. I don't know much about this, but I assume that many creative types are not good business people and many can't manage a budget wisely. Is there a copy available for public viewing at this point? It would be interesting to see the attention it would receive with a cast that includes George Cluny, Charlie Sheen, and Laura Dern from the beginnings of their careers.