20 Exploitation Films You Must See Before You Die

When “eighteen feet of gut-crunching, man-eating terror” runs amok in his national park, Warden Christopher George attempts to evacuate the area but is overruled by his boss, who fears bad publicity, so he turns to an eccentric bear expert for help and together with an eccentric adventurer they venture into the wilderness to trap and kill the beast, ultimately blowing it to smithereens.

If the plot of William Girdler’s movie sounds familiar, that’s because it was patterned after Spielberg’s blockbuster to cash in on Jaws, a move that paid off to the tune of $36m in worldwide grosses, making it one of the most profitable independent films of all time and Girdler’s biggest success. It was producer Edward L Montoro’s biggest hit, too, so a year later he reteamed the filmmaker with Teddy the “trained but untamed” bear for Day of the Animals, another nature-fights-back yarn.

You might anticipate a fast-and-cheap exercise in hucksterism, but like most of Girdler’s output, Grizzly’s a perfectly solid b-movie. For the budget and schedule, it’s well shot, tightly edited and goes about its business with the kind of simplicity that seems lost on modern filmmakers. Sure, it’s a knock-off, but it’s not the worst of ‘em.