Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

The Night of the Grizzly Blu-ray Movie Review

The Trouble With Giant Marauding Bears.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 16, 2012

Director Joseph Pevney’s name may not ring a bell with many reading this review, and yet if one were to mention a little creature that populated one of Pevney’s many television series credits, recognition would be virtually universal: Tribbles. Pevney, who started his career as an actor and worked with such iconic troupes as The Group Theater, ended up finding directing his true calling and went on to a solid, if not exactly stellar, career that saw him helming several major features as well as a glut of television series, including that very famously playful episode of Star Trek where Captain James T. Kirk and the rest of the crew of the Starship Enterprise were beset with the rapidly multiplying little furballs known as Tribbles. (I should state in the interests of full disclosure that I have worked with Pevney’s son, Jay, who did a marvelous job as Max Bialystock in a production of the musical version of The Producers I conducted. It may interest some to know that Joseph’s wife and Jay’s mother was Broadway star Mitzi Green, an actress who had the enviable position of having introduced two Rodgers and Hart standards, “My Funny Valentine” and “The Lady is a Tramp”. The set decorations in our production of The Producers featured a wonderful full page color photo of Green culled from a Life magazine that was used to adorn Bialystock’s office wall.) Pevney was working almost exclusively in television when 1966’s The Night of the Grizzly was released, and it in fact served as Pevney’s swan song as a feature film director, though he continued to work regularly in television for another two decades. The Night of the Grizzly is a fairly predictable piece, one that blends an animal on the rampage scenario with a traditional homesteader trying to make his way in the American West story, but if the results aren’t especially innovative, they’re no less appealing, courtesy of a game cast that perhaps not so coincidentally contains a number of familiar faces from television series.

Though it was before my time, I have it on good authority from someone who around in those days that there used to be a popular drinking game built around how many times in any given episode of Cheyenne star Clint Walker would rip off his shirt (often for no apparent reason) simply to expose his rather impressively massive pecs. (Aficionados of this game may be excited to learn there’s at least one opportunity to play in The Night of the Grizzly.) Walker was one of those hulking television Western stars of the fifties who never really seemed to be able to generate much interest in his film appearances, but he acquits himself quite well here as Big Jim Cole, an erstwhile rancher who has inherited a 640 acre spread in some undefined scenic expanse (the film was shot in San Bernardino National Forest, amid some spectacular vistas of meadows and mountains).

Jim, a former sheriff, has arrived in the rather anachronistically named town of Hope to claim his spread, accompanied by his wife Angela (Martha Hyer), their son Charlie (Kevin Brodie), adorable little girl Gypsy (Victoria Paige Meyerink), niece Meg (Candy Moore) and Jim’s former Deputy, Sam (Don Haggerty). Upon arriving, the arriving is immediately put into a tailspin when they’re told the property has a debt of $675 on it, a debt that the film’s bad guy, Jed Curry (Keenan Wynn), is hoping will be defaulted on so that he can reclaim land that evidently was once his, but which he lost to the relative of Jim’s who bequeathed him the acreage. Meanwhile Sam is distraught to find out from local General Store owner Wilhelmina (The Beverly Hillbillies’ Nancy Kulp), whom Sam nicknames Bill, that Hope is in a “dry county”, meaning Sam can’t get any liquor. Jed’s two sons (one of them played by television Tarzan Ron Ely in an uncharacteristic villain role) promise they can get Sam some drink for ten dollars, but of course simply abscond with his money, never delivering on their promise. Charlie isn’t having any better time of it, having gotten in a scuffle with a gaggle of Hope boys after they fire a slingshot rock into an unmentionable region of Charlie’s anatomy (okay, it’s his butt).

The rest of The Night of the Grizzly plays out with two incipient threats moving in on the Cole family from opposite directions. There’s the machinations of Jed Curry, who is intent on getting back his land at any cost, and then just as menacingly there’s a rogue bear that is devastating the farms for miles around. The film works up a fair degree of tension by not really divulging which threat, if either, will ultimately spell at least partial doom for Big Jim and his brood.

This is fairly innocuous entertainment, but it’s well crafted, and it features some nice supporting turns (including a nice bit by veteran Jack Elam as the town drunk). Pevney frames the action with a lot of location footage which admirably opens up the proceedings and helps to make the plight of the Coles seem at least a little more real than many sixties Westerns. That said, it should be said that Hyer’s glam look and sophisticated hairstyle is decidedly more 1966 than 1866 and is kind of disconcerting. Hope may have been a “dry” town, but they evidently had a really good hair and styling salon for the womenfolk.

The Night of the Grizzly Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Night of the Grizzly is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This is kind of a middling high definition presentation that has some persistent contrast issues and a bit more regular damage to the elements than we've seen in many other Paramount catalog releases that Olive has licensed. The contrast issue really creates two opposite issues at times. In some brightly lit day scenes, flesh tones almost disappear into the background, while conversely a lot of the night footage, much of it which features the dark black bear, suffers from negligible shadow detail and outright crush a lot of the time. Otherwise, though, this is at least a decently sharp transfer that offers its best fine detail in midrange and close-up shots. Colors are a bit pallid a lot of the time, though, perhaps due to age related fade. Damage is fairly noticeable throughout this presentation, with some rather large flecks of white and other scratches and blemishes dotting the frame with fair regularity.

The Night of the Grizzly Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Night of the Grizzly's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track suffices quite nicely for this film, with dialogue and effects nicely rendered and some rather surprisingly full sounding lower frequency, especially with regard to the marauding bear. Leith Stevens' colorful score is nicely represented, as is Clint Walker's homey rendition of "Angela", a Livington – Evans song interpolated into the action. The sound field here is obviously narrow and often fairly shallow as well, but there's no real damage to report and the results are pleasing if not spectacular.

The Night of the Grizzly Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Lo and behold, here's a rare Paramount catalog release from Olive that actually has an honest to goodness supplement!

• Special Feature (HD: 26:15). This generically titled featurette is actually a rather sweet interview with (now quite elderly) star Clint Walker, who calls The Night of the Grizzly his favorite film. He recounts the plot and reminisces about the shoot. He also talks about his real life exploits in law enforcement, something that helped him create his character of Big Jim Cole.

The Night of the Grizzly Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Night of the Grizzly may not be the most exciting Western ever made, and in fact even the bear segments are sometimes sillier than they are truly frightening. But there's a homespun quality to this outing, one that is, yes, redolent of television, but which goes down quite easily and presents a large and varied cast doing uniformly good work. One of the real calling cards of this production is the astoundingly beautiful location photography, evidently shot in the San Bernardino National Forest, which provides some lush scenery and gorgeous vistas of towering mountains. Walker is an appealingly low key presence, simply dominating in his physicality if not the nuance of his performances, and it's fun to see Keenan Wynn in a kind of "Snidely Whiplash" villain role. This Blu-ray has some video issues which videophiles may find troubling, so a rental may be the best course for those interested in this title so that they can see how they feel about it first before adding it to their permanent collections.