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The Night of the Grizzly
USA 1966
produced by Burt Dunne for Paramount
directed by Joseph Pevney
starring Clint Walker, Martha Hyer, Keenan Wynn, Nancy Kulp, Kevin Brodie, Ellen Corby, Jack Elam, Ron Ely, Med Flory, Leo Gordon, Don Haggerty, Sammy Jackson, Regis Toomey, Candy Moore, Victoria Paige Meyerink
written by Warren Douglas, music by Leith Stevens, song Tree Top Tall by Charlie Aldrich, Clint Walker
review by Dale Pierce
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Long before Jaws there was Night of the Grizzly, a
nature-strikes-back flick which was considered bloody at the time.
Though mild by today's standards and some of the special effects even
look tacky, the movie still endures and has some tense moments,
surviving the passage of time. An all star cast of veteran cowboy actors
(Clint Walker, Jack Elam, Keenan Wynn, etc) help carry this movie through. A horror film,
a splatter film (for the time period), a western and at times a comedy,
all rolled into one.
A Rancher (Clint Walker) moves his family to Wyoming, where he encounters a
gigantic bear unflatteringly named Old Satan by the local yokels. Like
the shark in Jaws and the angry killer whale in Orca several years
later, this animal is not only big and brutal, but offers itself as a
forbidding enemy, with almost human logic. Out of sheer anger, it
kills Walker's livestock, breaks out of a barn where it is imprisoned by
slamming right through the wall, and later starts to kill his friends. A
bounty hunter brought in (who has issues with Walker) ads some spice to
the film, as viewers wonder whether it will just be the bear or his old
enemy he decides to kill. In the end, the bear gets this guy too. Tough
guys just don't win all the time one has to suppose.
Walker, the hero of the story though, prevails and Old Satan dies, but
not before some tense moments.
Other killer bear films would follow, such as Grizzly and
Day Of The Animals, but this movie was the foreunner to both of them, and as a
whole to vindictive animal versus man type movies which would later
become a hot item.
It is odd to see Ron Ely as one of Keenan Wynn's punk sons in this. Ely
played Tarzan on TV during the 1960s. Likewise funny to see Nancy Kulp,
the secretary in the Beverly Hillbillies TV show, as storekeeper looking
to land a man for herself.
Jack Elam provides comic relief as a hired ranch hand, complete with the
one-eyed Popeye glare given at opportune moments (his trade mark)
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