Grizzly II: Revenge Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

Grizzly II: Revenge Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 15, 2021

Grizzly II: Revenge is the sequel to the 1976 film Grizzly and a sequel few had ever seen before...until now. Shot in the early 80s but shelved for decades, the film is just now being "officially" released, complete with new, digitally photographed inserts to make the movie "complete." Why anyone bothered is a mystery; this is a poor film in every way: an unbalanced, meandering, messy, and misguided film that shows flashes of something worthwhile but suffers from horrific pacing, terrible editing, and an obvious lack of know-how of even cinema basics. The film, now released on Blu-ray, at least looks fairly good but this is a curiosity, at best.

The plot is razor-thin: poachers have killed some cubs and mama bear wants revenge. It just so happens she lives near a target-rich environment where she kills off some random hikers (including George Clooney, Laura Dern, and Charlie Sheen) in short order. Nearby, a massive concert site is being erected. Soon, it will be filled with thousands of people too attuned to the music to notice that a dangerous grizzly is on the prowl, willing to kill anyone and everyone in attendance. Some of the concert promoters and security personnel bring on an expert tracker, played by Indiana Jones' John Rhys-Davies, to kill it before it can do serious damage to the innocent concert attendees.

It's quite impressive that a film of this obscurity and low budget roots, and one shot in Europe at that, finagled together a trio of would-be A-listers, then actors nobody had really heard of, to die off at the beginning of the movie. Here's a pre-ER George Clooney, a pre-Red Dawn and Platoon Charlie Sheen, and a pre-Blue Velvet Laura Dern. Grizzly II seems to exist on the marketplace now in large part to sell its inclusion of this cast, even if they barely appear at film's start and play no real vital role to the larger story other than serve as the introductory sacrifices for the bear's vengeful consumption and destruction. So for audiences expecting to find these actors playing key roles in the movie, forget about it. But it does feature John Rhys-Davies as the coolest character in the movie: a French-Canadian Paul Bunyan type. So there is that.

With the name draw wiped out in mere moments, it's up to the rest of the movie to keep audiences involved. Oops. This is one of the most inept, incompetent, and inane films that ever had the displeasure of being made. It's not so much that the story is bad -- a bear on a rampage and the desperate efforts to stop it before it can slaughter countless scores of people packed together at a concert -- but it's awful in terms of structure and editing. There are some decent performances in here, even when discounting the A-listers at the beginning; Davies is fine as the woodsman hero and several of the main cast deliver perfectly passable performances. But the momentum is stalled at best and killed at worst by horrific editing and pacing and an excessive focus on the concert itself; various stage performances seem to occupy much of the runtime (it's impossible to say for sure without suffering through the film a second time and putting a stopwatch on it, but a good guess would be full one-third of the runtime). And the musical performance, whether those shot for the film in the early 80s or dropped in more recently, are not at all engaging. The camera work isn't bad but there's no engagement from the audio end and it's just disruptive to the movie's flow. A few breakaway shots to set the scene? Sure. A full third of the film? No way.

Grizzly II: Revenge Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Anyone going into the movie armed with the understanding that it was shot in the early 80s will be confused when plainly obvious digitally captured footage greets the viewer. Though lower end it's plainly not from film stock; that technology simply didn't exist (at least as it is today) decades ago. But, of course, these are inserts which have been newly created to finish the film. These brief interludes, seen at the beginning and also interspersed throughout the film, deliver satisfactory color and crisp clarity. They're mostly of trees but also a few shots of grizzly bears, too, the former yielding perfectly clear foliage and the latter appropriately sharp fur and facial features.

The film-sourced content begins inauspiciously when the characters played by Clooney, Sheen, and Dern are introduced (and quickly killed off). Here, there's a fair sense of textural adeptness at work but the nighttime black levels are hideously flat and pale and the picture suffers from the worst of its banding and compression artifacts. As the film moves forward, audiences will note fairly stout textural details. The picture is sharp and clear. But grain sometimes has the look of being frozen in place. The image has not been scrubbed, but there's a definite lack of organic granular movement on the screen. Perhaps this was done to help better "match" the digital inserts. Regardless of why, there has been only little impact on overall textural definition. Colors are flat and lifeless. There are sometimes obvious green or blue filters at work that dampen other tones and emphasize those, but much of the film seems to be fairly neutral for color output, which can be very pleasing in the aggregate, particularly concerning reds and skin tones. Blacks never gain perfect depth but they do generally improve upon the disastrous open. A light, but steady, barrage of pops and speckles also accompany, as does the odd vertical line. The picture in total is not at all poor. There are areas of concern, areas for improvement, and areas where some of the faults might have been deliberately integrated. All in all, though, and particularly for a low budget "lost" film with a history as checkered as this, the end result Blu-ray is rather impressive.

Grizzly II: Revenge Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Grizzly II: Revenge growls onto Blu-ray with a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. The track is fully adequate for the material, which is underwhelming in its original sound design. The copious concert sequences, particularly the ones shot back in the 80s, highly favor lyrics over music; there's a surprising lack of verve to these elements. They're very front-heavy, and front-center heavy at that, with lyrics that seem almost isolated from music. Very strange not to find more energy here. The new concert footage (see a song at the 58-minute mark) is a little more balanced. Score offers slightly better spacing and balance. The track offers decent, if not scattered , woodland ambience that somewhat immerses the listener into the chief setting. Dialogue is appropriately center positioned and clear.

Grizzly II: Revenge Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Grizzly II: Revenge contains no supplemental content. The main menu screen offers only options to play the film and toggle subtitles on and off. No DVD or digital copies are included with purchase. This release does not ship with a slipcover.

Grizzly II: Revenge Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Grizzly II: Revenge does have some, er, grisly gore effects in store for viewers and there's some fun to be had here. But goodness gracious is this thing just so poorly put together that even when there are some legitimately passable moments in the movie -- and there are more than a few -- they're killed by absolutely horrid pacing and structure. It's no wonder this movie was left unfinished. Even with the newly inserted footage there's not a movie here; just the shell of one, and in dire need of lessons in pacing and editing at that. As it is it's barely coherent footage plopped together. The featureless Blu-ray does deliver problematic, but ultimately very watchable, 1080p video and serviceable 5.1 lossy soundtrack. Skip it; even as a curiosity it's a tough watch and a tougher sell.