This is kind of a rare occasion for me to do this, but I'm going to talk to you today about a movie; not just any movie, but a movie that no one bothered to finish.
Now before you get yourself in a nerd wedgie, let me clarify: The Day The Clown Cried I reviewed, yes, but that was a script review, since Jerry Lewis all but ignores my phone calls. This movie is something that was filmed...but never produced, finished and sent along for distribution. In fact, this is what is referred to as a workprint.
from Wikipedia.org: A workprint is a rough version of a motion picture, used by the film editor(s) during the editing process. Such copies generally contain original recorded sound that will later be re-dubbed, stock footage as placeholders for missing shots or special effects, and animation tests for in-production animated shots or sequences.Workprints are commonplace in the Hollywood filming community. This is so producers, studios and the suits in charge can track progress, see if scenes work and make executive decisions on the film in question, as it were.
If that's the case, Dope, then why are so many bad films made and released?
The short answer is because Hollywood just won't read my blog and listen to reason. But that's another rant for another time....
Right now, we're going back to 1976, a year that saw the release of film classics such as Rocky, King Kong, Logan's Run and In Search Of Noah's Ark, not to mention the William Girdler classic Grizzly, which was to bears, parks and Richard Jaeckel what Jaws was to sharks, oceans and Richard Dreyfuss. Give or take. Needless to say, it was the biggest money-making film of the year that dealt with killer grizzlies. So as is dictated throughout history, a sequel is in order.
However, Girdler felt not the need to rush into production. For one thing, he had a lot of other irons in the fire and other subjects to focus his camera on, such as Project: Kill (1976), Day Of The Animals (1977) and The Manitou (1978) before dying in the Philippines.
After Girdler's tragic passing, talks came and went, ideas came and went and the notion of a sequel mostly went by the wayside to be forgotten in favor of dozens of other sequels to come....
...and NO, Prophecy was not a sequel to Grizzly. That was a different project about a different kind of grizzly bear done by a different director. John Frankenheimer, in fact...whose track record has been duly noted here.
It wouldn't be until we got into the next decade that another director would go into another woods to film what would become a sequel to Girdler's 1976 work containing more woods, more campers, more deaths, and another bear.
...and a rock concert.
A rock concert. In the woods. With a bear.
And I haven't even gotten to the interesting parts yet.
This film was to be called, naturally, Grizzly II, but also would come to be known by other names - as is par for the course for the movies 'round these here parts - such as Grizzly 2: The Predator and Predator: The Concert. Which, from the sound of it, would bring to mind vicious alien headhunters from a warring planet coming to Earth to rock out with their pincers out. Not the case here, of course, but what we get here is something almost as alien in looks and - though a workprint - something that looks as alien as anything involving predators and rock concerts.
For as much as we get here, a plot rundown seems almost impossible, but: a poacher kills a grizzly cub to sell its organs for medicinal purposes, only to be killed by the cub's mother and subsequently go on a murderous rampage through the woods, killing every human she comes across.
At the same time, a huge rock concert is being prepped in a few days which will draw in thousands. The park ranger, Nick Hollister (Steve Inwood) wants to bring in the National Guard to help his already-overburdened men but park superintendent Eileen Dragan (Louise Fletcher) insists on keeping things under wraps until after the concert for the good publicity it will bring in general.
Besides which, Hollister's girlfriend, head of "bear management" Samantha Owens (Deborah Raffin) wants the mother bear captured alive since it is only demonstrating the grief any mother would show if their child were killed.
...by mauling and killing every human being in sight.
With the death toll mounting quickly and Dragan refusing to surrender any of Hollister's men from guard duty at the concert, Hollister and Owen call in French grizzly trapper Bouchard (John Rhys-Davies) in an attempt to track down and capture the monster before any further damage is done.
While all of this is going on, Hollister's daughter Chrissy (Deborah Foreman) gets a job as a go-fer at the concert, where she almost immediately falls for a conceited British rock singer and discovers the heartbreak of young love. And the remaining group of poachers (whose number includes First Blood's Jack Starrett and Halloween's Charles Cyphers) also try and track the bear to avenge their fallen comrade and earn the $100,000 bounty on the grizzly's head while tension, mistrust and greed mounts amongst them with every passing moment.
There's no inkling as to who the director of this thing is, not that the IMDb is any help in the matter either, but we at least can find from there that the writers of this thing were none other than longtime Wiliam Girdler associate David Sheldon and lesser-writers Joan McCall and Ross Massbaum. It would seem in a world where the powers-that-be insist on hiding the identity of the director of a workprint, they are more than happy to admit who wrote it. Jerks.
Okay, what I mentioned here sounds like a pretty straightforward story in general. And it is - I'll admit that the script by Ross Mossbaum, Joan McCall and David Sheldon had moments that at least gave the viewer their daily requirements of foreboding, drama and impending doom...and some of the dialogue actually had good lines in it. Forgetting for a moment that this was a sequel to a movie that itself was a parallel of Jaws, this does have good scenes sprinkled through it. For what it is.
I already mentioned some actors here that will give the well-seasoned pause - there are names here you recognize, right? But I haven't even mentioned three less-than-key players that all but have cameos in Grizzly II as campers. They are George Clooney, Laura Dern and Charlie Sheen. Heard of 'em? Now remember, this was filmed in 1984, so we're basically catching this dynamic trio in what amounts to their "early works". Up until now, Clooney's biggest part was as an extra in 1978's TV miniseries "Centennial", Sheen's was as a kid in 1974's "The Execution of Private Slovik" and Dern's biggest accomplishment was...well, she at least had SIX credits under her belt prior to this, including roles in such movies as Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Foxes and Ladies And Gentlemen The Fabulous Stains. Still, you gotta play the small joints before you get to Carnegie Hall.
Or get booed in Detroit, whichever.
Something that is other-worldly in this movie, though, is the fact that bout 98% of the bear scenes in Grizzly II...have no bear in them. Every time we cut to a bear scene, all we get is a gray screen and some snuffling and growling. Otherwise, we're stuck with that good-old fashioned conceit of the camera moving though the woods with heavy bear-breathing and occasional shadows of the camera rigging hitting the forest floor. That's always fun. Maybe once we'll see a huge furry white bear arm swipe at someone, which looks like our grizzly got a prosthetic transplant from the Abominable Snowman, but anyway....
Oh, but by the end, we get some fleeting glimpses of a gigantic 18-foot tall animatronic bear with sneering head and the optional moving arms. And it at least has enough of a body for trapper Rhys-Davies to plunge his knife into it furiously before being animatronic-bear-arm flung into the air to be stuck on a piece of exposed metal rigging at the aforementioned rock concert.
Hmm? Yeah, the concert; I almost forgot.
If anything, you have to watch Grizzly II if just to catch the preparation for and the events leading up to the concert itself. As the roadies and go-fers and what-have-you build this huge outdoor amphitheater that looks like a giant nested bird for some reason the story doesn't really get into, we are treated to some background music that is, ostensibly, prep music for the concert dancers to practice their dances with. So what do they (and we) listen to? Oh not much...
...just Michael Jackson.
You heard me. The Gloved One. The King Of Pop. Mikey's nowhere in evidence physically, but his music sure is. We get to hear "Wanna Be Startin' Something" and "Billie Jean", more or less in their entirety several times. That's the thing about workprints: when in the pre-production stages, you can hear just about any kind of music in the background - even from top-selling artists - and it's okay because they'll just overdub it in post-production with a more generic selection - that is, unless they can dig up the extra green to buy the song in question.
Thing is, for a movie like Grizzly II, I kinda doubt they'd have been able to secure a song by TITO Jackson.
They DO use some musical artists that would probably have been able to be used for cheap. One of them is the five-girl music group featured in a few scenes named Toto Coelo. I don't know much about this group, not being from Europe myself (though I doubt that would have helped much, either). But it seems their biggest artistic conceit is hair color. We have one of each: blonde, brunette, redhead, mousy-brown and goldenrod. Other than that, "Milk From The Coconut", "Man O' War", "Pretty Boys" and "Livin' In A World Of Automation" are what we get from these ladies, for better or worse. Maybe worse, considering many of the scenes showing the huge audience for Toto Coelo have the audience members FACING IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION FROM THE GROUP.
(it's okay, girls; we'll fix that in post-production)
There is another headliner at this concert, however (named Barry for all I could garner). He seems to be a big deal since everyone fawns over him, he has a manager who is busy managing him and he seduces and strings along poor little Deborah Foreman while he jogs in the woods, lifts weights while light checks go on, walks around in short Eighties shorts that Freddie Mercury would look at and say, "uh no, a little too effeminate" and acts all British-y and condescending. He doesn't get eaten by a grizzly, but only because I think even bears have taste. His songs, "So Good So Pure So Kind So Impossible" and "Don't Give Me War, Give Me Action", don't really give much to the impression that Barry here is as popular as Michael Jackson. Or Toto Coelo, for that matter.
Then there's some other guy who wears a turquoise sweatshirt cut at the midriff and gray sweatpants who prances around onstage and sings a song that's probably called "Don't Stop" (my guess). I don't know who this guy is except that he sweats up a storm, grabs his crotch at one point and even manages to sneak some naughty words into his song - again, from what I could understand. Not that he adds as much to the movie as Barry or Toto Coelo add, but maybe he was an opening act or something. At least they don't cut to the audience looking away from him.
Anyway, this concert is something of a crux that all the action at the end centers on as the grizzly is drawn to the music and lights and there are flashes, smoke, fire, blood and stuff leading to the thrilling climax where...
...well...
THIS is where this weird movie gets even weirder. Because after the negligible editing and gray screen effects frames, the last ten minutes of this workprint show alternate shots, extra special effects shots, reaction shots with the voice of the mystery director giving mystery direction, some with sound and some without, then it's over.
Huh.
Seems that they were shooting the whole thing in Budapest, Hungary (which explains the foreign music acts, I guess) and someone forgot to pay some bills or clear customs protocol and so were made to clear out, Toto Coelo and all, while a lot of their stuff was seized. Probably including that big animatronic bear too...which is probably a big tourist attraction now in Budapest, I imagine.
I see what they were trying to accomplish with Grizzly II and I appreciate the effort, but this is only interesting in the way that true cinephiles (like me) get the thrill of seeing something that was never meant to be seen by the general public. Many people you talk to on the street will know there was a Grizzly movie in 1976 but will never have any idea that a sequel was even considered, much less started. If you're that kind of person, then here is the movie for you to watch as a triple-bill with the 1994 Fantastic Four movie and that Wendy's Grill Skill training video that no one outside of Dave Thomas and company were ever to see.
I guess that's all that I have to say about a grizzly movie that no one bothered to finish or even pick up the pieces of. So, in order to round out a review for an incomplete movie, the only thing I can do is to
