Reel Animals, Part 3 Click here 1 Part The classic Grizzly
of
William Girdler and the genre of animal Horrors, Part 3 A review of
i -
ming BLOCKBUSTER PETZ
Grizzly was at a mere $ 750,000 cost of production a huge success. He played around 40 million at the box office and became not only the most successful independent film of 1976, but until then the most successful ever. Two years later, John Carpenter him the title with Halloween again and keep him until 1999, when Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez's The Blair Witch Project came out. May is Grizzly compatible have been for the mainstream as other independent films and B-movies of the 70s and was therefore not so popular: its look is much smoother than many of his contemporaries, there is an orchestral soundtrack to the listening habits of a mass audience equivalent, there are many beautiful nature scenes, and especially Grizzly had a PG-13 certificate, a moderate Platinum, which allowed it to demonstrations outside the station Cinemas and Grind House.
In contrast, the independent production conditions typical for a company: The script was not ready at the start of filming, and many Dialogues were improvised, therefore, the helicopter scenes are written in the summer, presenting the other scenes in the forest because of a delay in the timetable, however, until the autumn, which meant that the forest seen from above with full foliage, from below, however, the few remaining leaves other colors show. All this, however, are things that are not noticeable at first glance, absolutely.
ELECTRIC WIRE AND ANGEL FOOD
striking is because even the appearance of the eponymous grizzlies. The construction of the animal consists of five components that are to jointly create the illusion of a Killer bears:
- a Grizzly of 3.30 meters in size (one to the family of brown bears), who hears in real life on the name "Teddy"
- one black bear of 2.10 meters in size
- 1 man in a bear costume
- 1 bear paw gloves
- 1 "Grizzly cam" in POV style including wheezing, which both strongly reminiscent of the Point-of-view settings in slasher films that should be so popular a few years later, and the shark Jaws in perspective. In the book of the film by the way, there were passages in which the bear acted as narrator: perhaps an attempt to Transcription the magnificent grizzly cam?
Top left: the glove component The illusion seems sometimes inconsistent, most clearly when a bear costume and claw gloves come into play, but the interface takes the viewer is always quick on the meta-level back in history. Comical effect the discrepancies in size and color between black and brown bear, which can be a puzzle to which dramatic Bears are right now. Analogous to the story, is being questioned in the presence of a grizzly bear in the woods for a long time is concerned, they enable a nice side effect: we spectators also doubt long in it, whether we actually have a Grizzly have seen. The real Bears have also never worked with the actors directly, an electric fence has separated the human and animal performers from each other for security reasons. In order to manipulate the direction of the bear, were marshmallows with a cord tied to a stick and in front of his nose held, which meant that the bear walked sometimes on his hind legs through the forest, a rare behavior in the wild.
GREAT BROWN
model of
Grizzly is Steven Spielberg's Jaws
whose plot structure he copied exactly, while exchanging a few screws to make the construction cost. We see
Grizzly his economic approach, formally installed at each individual setting: It is
Jaws , reduced to essentials. That the production company Film Ventures International (FVI) is not sued by Universal was amazed leaves. But it is this audacity of
Grizzly traces its predecessor, which makes him so likeable and his stolen items, for all its very own magic awards:
Grizzly elevates the art of plagiarism, he is in perfect imitation. He also he gives no trouble, the fact of being plagiarized to hide. On the contrary, he wears it proudly in front of it: The working title was
Claws, and thus it really all paying attention to the tagline "Jaws with claws," was created.
With the similarities between the films would fill pages, from the topos of the advance of a predator in a haunted human area (camping areas in the forest vs. Shallow waters near the beach) on the constellation of characters (rangers, scientists, helicopter pilot / war veteran vs. policeman, scientist, boat captain / veteran) to basic plot elements (the competent authorities want the affected areas for fear of lost revenue can not block the high season for tourists), narrative elements (Quint's famous story about the sinking of the battleship "USS Indianapolis" is in
Grizzly its counterpart in a campfire story told by a group of Indians who were eaten by a pack of grizzly bears) and technical details such as the animal POV-shots.
As part of the "Animals on the rampage" hysteria in 1977, directed by Richard Bansbach and RE Pierson even a rip-off made by Grizzly
that actually bore the name
Claws . The shaft was a long time and influenced the genre today. None of the successor, however, reached the complexity, the sophistication or the psychological aspects of
Jaws .
Also Grizzly threw all that overboard and left to what was for the exploitation cinema of the era most importantly, the pure fun of it with the option of a good deal.
The original artwork for the poster of Grizzly is from Neil Adams THE CAPTAIN AND THE sinking ship
Grizzly was produced by FVI, a U.S. independent company, originally of Atlanta, later active in Hollywood, led by Edward Montoro. FVI earned his living mainly in the distribution and the production of B-movies in the horror field and was famous for his brazen rip-offs of successful large-budgeted genre contributions. Thus, the company drove the highly successful US-Italian co-production
Beyond the Door , which paved the way for many other clones of William Friedkin's The Exorcist
, including
Abby by William Girdler and
L'Anti Christ by Alberto De Martino . Warner Bros. had FVI namely sued for plagiarism and had failed in court, so that other producers now imagined the way, prepare the material again.
From the late 1970s until the first half of the 1980s drove many illustrious title FVI with great success the U.S. market, which have gained cult status, including William Lustig's Vigilante
, Joseph Ellison
Do not Go in the House and Juan Piquer Simón Pieces, at the FVI-production was also involved. There are different versions of how and why exactly it came to the end of FVI in 1985, two aspects are adequately supported by evidence: First, had Montoro for FVI in 1980, the U.S. rights to the Italian Jaws rip-off
Great White clone of King Enzo G. Castellari acquired in 1978 the original Inglorious Bastards
had sent into battle (which in turn owed their existence
Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen 1967). After a locally limited but successful release of
Great White and an expensive promotional campaign to inflatable swimming white sharks with title lettering Universal sued the Italian producers and stopped the distribution by the companies that had acquired the rights already. The copies were made and the money was lost. Whether the Italian producers now Montoro had stood up to just
Jaws rights holder Universal would have no objection to
Great White and his hungry white shark nothing, or whether it was the thing to hear Montoro like to, will probably no longer clearly can be clarified.
And here we come to point number two in the history of bankruptcy FVI: Montoro, who had actually always dreamed to become a pilot of a passenger plane, but then survived a plane crash and will be patched up in lengthy operations had been abandoned by his longtime wife. The divorce law in California would have awarded the ex-wife half of Montoros entire property, thus the half of FVI. At that point, the movie just FVI
Mutants 2/Night Shadows, directed by FVIs staff director John "Bud" Cardos produced, the production costs could not be moved by the theatrical release and thus costing the company in an imbalance brought. Then, Montoro ill and had to be hospitalized for months intensive treatment. After his recovery he made a decision: He took a million dollars in cash from the company's assets and put away, no one knows where. To date, his whereabouts a mystery, for he could never be traced. There are rumors here and there: He had fled to Mexico, he would be somewhere in South America and he died a few years ago. We will likely never know. I like to think that the old crook Eddie, he was now 82, 80s and 90s, has spent his embezzled company funds financed by private plane on the tourist landscapes fly to Costa Rica.
Enzo G. Castellaris L'ultimo Squalo BAD MOVIES VS. GOOD BAD MOVIES
would secure many people
Grizzly how well all the movies from Girdler, just as bad, second-rate movie, or call the imitation of inferior quality. As part of the categories of
Cinema Bizarre or a target
aesthetics of trash cinema however, can be differentiated approaches and strategies unlike the reception on an intellectual level and develop direct experience on an emotional level. The so-called trash film can thus be both a cinema for the head and body as cinema interpret. The apparent and obvious defects and fractures of the productions possible and force the active participation of the public not only about the content of the history and nature of their characters, but also on a meta level, fill to the viewers the drama, technical and otherwise kind gaps independently need to avoid being catapulted from the film.
On the other hand, the Trash Cinema, notwithstanding the inclusion of intellectual participation always body cinema, because it rise through the breaks, which manipulate the audience to participate, involuntary physical reactions can. The classical reactions of the spectators body to body cinema are laughing, crying, nausea and agitation, the classic body-genre comedy, melodrama, horror and pornography are aimed at precisely that. In the trash cinema, there is a possibility that the audience all these reactions are elicited, the term "trash" is limited ultimately not in a particular genre. Whether the reactions are always intended, is not really important, but attributes this issue to the complexity of intellectual reception: Was the body's response plans while viewing a particular scene in this form, or did I react in this way, because I already own interpretive have components added, and thus reception are already back with his head rather than with the body?
form the openings in the Trash Cinema interpretive gaps and confront the viewer with entirely different challenges than mainstream or art house. An aesthetics of trash cinema should therefore make every effort in my opinion in any case, to develop their own categories and assessment criteria which allow such fractures are not easy to dismiss as a flaw or defect. Vielmerh should describe these fractures as constituent elements of a specific aesthetic form to the public as to the physical reaction, a large number of intellectual ideas and insights possible. What is the trash film often interpreted as failure is, in fact, may chance.
I'll close this review with a somewhat longer quote from
Stephen Thrower who has some wonderful thoughts about the aesthetics of trash cinema, which may provide a basis for further considerations:
"has often been said before, bad movies that have interfaces with the surreal. (...) The filmmakers come rather randomly on techniques that are usually attributed to the avant-garde, but they achieve this in their stubbornness or helplessness never safe Port of aesthetic theory. Clever ideas are found encrusted in trite expression, sometimes completely meaningless films capture fleeting crystal clear truths. Bunuel, for example, shied away from even the most ridiculous of all ideas not return his feelings because he said that in art which is considered low and is considered an idiot, would be hidden gems of knowledge. (...) You can laugh at the obvious defects in a B-movie, a light up more, more sensible and more entertaining way of seeing it would be, imagine how connect to Alice through the looking glass into a world where movies just to be so in of all its technical shortcomings in truth artistic success are. Why are these errors and deficiencies are not seen as a kind of art in the negative, where deviations from the norm, accidentally or not, created a parallel movie universe. (...) Let's make this journey into another world, then we can get to enjoy Bad Movies and discover their aesthetics "(translation of the author)
definition of the breaking point Trash / Art / Body.
the great Divine (1945-1988)
terror at Dammtor: Kongula - monkeys of the Colossal Beast 
A monster to Hear: Gualagon - Frankenstein's horror giant 
