User Reviews

My review of Claws (1977)

This movie was filmed in Juneau Alaska by Alaska Pictures Production Company. The Producer, Chuck D. Keen also wrote the script, was the chief cinematographer and also performed stunts in the film along with his brother Michael Keen. Keen lovingly shoots gorgeous images of the Alaskan wildlife and this part of the movie is on par with some of the classic 1960's Disney nature documentaries. Some of the footage of the bears fighting with each other had to be dangerous to capture as it appears that one of the bears banged into the cameraman during the fight. The rest of the film though is marred by a cast of mostly inexperienced amateurs. Some of the actors for the major roles would have been familiar to the 1977 audience as frequent one-shot actors for popular television shows. But, the only actor that was in anything relevant to me was Myron Healy who played the Sheriff in this movie and then about five years later played a minor character, anthropologist Arch Quinton, in the 1983 NBC mini-series "V".

Released just two years after the Steven Spielberg block-buster Jaws, the producers of Claws attempted to translate the man-meets-deadly-animal theme to Alaska. The names of the movies are not the only comparison to be made. Both movies feature scenes where college scientist come into town with fancy equipment and underestimate the danger of the wild beast. Both films feature anxious public officials trying to keep the panic level down in the face of sensational journalists. Both films feature animals that seem to have anthropomorphic intelligence and reactions to the heroes' attempts to hunt them down. While there are many more comparisons to be drawn, the one I found most striking was the way both the beasts in Jaws and Claws essentially blew themselves up after attacking inanimate objects containing highly flammable fuel that were then ignited by the heroes' gun shots. Shockingly, this was the second movie made by an independent production company that attempted to rip-off the Jaws formula with a killer bear. In 1976 the movie Grizzly became a $39 million dollar success with the tagline "The most dangerous jaws in the land". In fact, Claws was released in some countries as Grizzly 2, even though Claws was not a sequel to Grizzly. So Claws is an attempt to mimic Grizzly which was in and of itself a rip-off of Jaws.

This movie does do a little better job than Jaws explaining why this wild animal is so different. It's not just a bear but a malignant Indian spirit known as the "Quistica" or "Kustaka" or "Kooshdakhaaor" or in this movie simply called "Devil Bear"". There actually is a native Alaskan myth involving a a cross between a man and an otter ("Kustaka" = "land otter man") that is either helpful or preys on the lost; tricking them to their death . The writer of this movie, Chuck D. Keen, seems to have converted that myth into a bear man. Native Alaskan mysticism is further utilized in the script by the guide, Henry's, hallucinations. I wondered whether the images of the two rams butting heads was intentionally symbolic of Jason and Howard's competition for Christine's affection.

One of the major disappointments of this film was the inconsistent script. It is filled with weird plot holes and ineffective story devices. To name a few: * Howard is not really a bad guy. He tried to protect the boy scouts at the campfire from the bear. He seems to genuinely care about Christine and her young son, Buck, and have their best interests at heart. That is why it is so shocking when after he dies in the woods, Howard is never spoken of again for the rest of the movie and Christine quickly moves on to tongues swabbing Jason's mouth.

*Jason Evers makes such a big deal early in the film about how the bear maimed him and caused him to lose function in one of his arms (which has caused him issues with his logging business), yet later in the movie both arms seem fine and fully functional.

* I visited Alaska, so I know that prices there are expensive because everything is shipped there from the mainland, but still the prices quoted in this 1977 film seem awfully high. $5000 to shoot a bear? $15,000.00 for an old beaten up Truck?

* Are we supposed to believe that the Bear after attacking and killing the college scientists and the hunting guide managed to hang the dead black scientist upside down from the rafters of the cabin and prop the door partially open so that the dead black scientists' body would drop down booby trap-style when someone opens the door to the cabin?

* I thought the movie had way too many flashbacks. Immediately after Jason Evers is attacked by the bear, the picture cuts ahead five years, and shows us news wire service stories showing that the "Devil Bear" continues to kill. This clumsy time jump fragments the story and forces the writer to employ flashbacks to tell the backstories for the main characters. There has to be a better way to tell this story than to continuously flash back to years earlier.

* This movie appears to have been made with the intention of getting a PG rating, yet features one of the dirtiest bits of dialogue in any PG movie from the 1970's: Jason: "I don't owe you no favors, and I aint your son old man" Ben the Forest Commissioner: "No but you could have been, your old man and I came up to this country together. We jizz-balled all over hell and back" Does this mean that the old Ben banged Jason's Mom? Is that what he is trying to tell Jason?

*Chris could not manage to pull the trigger in the very slow motion climax. Somehow, Jason pulls himself up from the ledge (with one functional arm) and grabs the flare gun and ignites the gasoline soaked bear, all before the bear can kill Chris after he knocks her down.

When I was 9 years old our den leader took our cub scout troop to see this movie in the theater. I was pretty terrified by it, and I couldn't sleep alone for a couple of years afterward.

I can vividly recall some of the scary scenes. The bear dragging away a cub scout in a sleeping bag, his bloody hand sticking out of the back. Someone opens the door to a cabin and a bloody body falls down on them. The bear coming through a wall. The bear taking off a horses head. A man climbs a tree to escape the bear, but the bear knocks the tree down and gets him.

I'd really like to see this movie again as an adult given how it traumatized me as a kid.

Claws is set in the Alaskan wilderness & opens to a red tinted shot of a Grizzly Bear walking around a bit, as the credits roll. Then we see two Grizzly Bears fighting each other as three big game hunters look on. They try to shoot one of the Bears but only succeed in wounding it, all three decide to split. Meanwhile, further down the road a logger named Jason Monroe (Jason Evers) & his wife Chris (Carla Layton) are heading back home in their truck when the radiator breaks. While attempting to walk back to town Jason is attacked by the wounded out-of-control Grizzly & although he survives the attack is badly injured. Claws then has a few paragraphs of text that appear "Admiralty, Alaska July 27. Local logger seriously mauled by rampaging Grizzly Bear near this community. Bear believed wounded by un-identified hunters." Then "September 2. State surveying party attacked by Grizzly Bear. Two killed one seriously injured. Reports confirmed after being wounded, giant Grizzly turns rogue killer" appears." Even more text flashes up on screen "November 14. two hikers killed by Devil Bear near this Alaskan community yesterday. Tracks of rogue killer disappear in fresh snow below Devils Paw mountain. Hunt called off." Finally "5 years later. Admiralty Alaska, again stunned by savage Bear attacks. Local logger says Satan Bear has returned to this community" appears & we can get on with the film proper! Jason Monroe still has nightmares about the day he was attacked, an attack that meant he could no longer continue his job, it also cost him his marriage & young son Buck (Buck Monroe, which means this kids real name is exactly the same as his characters!). Local scout leader Howard Lockhart (Glenn Sipes) is taking his teams of boys for a weekend of camping in the Alaskan forests. They are attacked by the Grizzly and Buck is badly mauled. The forest commissioner Ben Jones (Leon Ames) sets up a posse of men to try & track the Grizzly down, including Gil (Wayne Lonacre), Marshall (Bill Ratcliffe) & a guy named Virgil who was sadly left off the credits I'm afraid, who all think they can trap the Grizzly in a special cage. They fail & are killed by the Grizzly in the process. Since the Grizzly mauled his son Jason now feels even more anger, hate & bitterness towards the Grizzly & decides to go after it himself when all attempts to find it & stop it fail. Along with Ben who also feels responsible, Howard who funnily enough also has a grudge towards the Grizzly & an old Indian guy named Henry Chico (Anthony Caruso) who, yeah you guessed it, has personal reasons for going too, Jason sets out to kill the Grizzly killer once & for all (and make everyone's personal problems just disappear)! Directed by Richard Bansbach & R.E. Pierson Claws is a sorry excuse for a film. The script by cinematographer & producer Chuck D. Keen & Brian Russell is as boring, as clichéd & as padded out with unnecessary scenes as you would expect a cheap no-budget Jaws cash-in to contain. Claws has it's fair share of melodramatics between the dull characters & even relies on heavy flashbacks to expand upon these unnecessary sub-plots. The Grizzly Bear & it's potential victims are virtually never in the same shot, this makes for some very awkward looking attack sequences of which there aren't many anyway. And the dull as dishwater ending is mostly in slow-motion which becomes incredibly annoying. There's no blood or gore either so forget about that. On a technical level Claws is very poor, editing, lighting, continuity, acting, direction & production values throughout are certainly nothing to praise. One thing I will praise in Claws though is the cinematography by writer Chuck D. Keen it captures some of the beautiful untouched Alaskan wilderness extremely well, unfortunately this has the effect of the viewer thinking their watching some sort of nature programme rather than a horror film! Every other shot seems to be of an animal, tree or Alaskan landscape. Claws as a horror film fails to generate any atmosphere, scares, excitement, originality or memorable sequences. Definitely one to avoid unless you want to sit through 90 odd minutes of travelogue footage of Alaskan mountains & forests, which I most certainly don't!

A logger's life is turned upside down after encountering an enraged grizzly bear, wounded by big game hunters, leaving him with a bum arm and bad marriage. The bear continues a rampage attacking any human it comes in contact with, Jason(Jason Evers) remaining haunted by nightmares, unable, though, to leave the wilderness, a place that has always been his home. When his son, Buck, is viciously attacked by the "devil bear" while on a camping trip with mom's new boyfriend, Jason will brave the wilds of the Alaskan wilderness with one goal in mind and that is getting revenge. When an attempt to capture the bear fail(..the bear outsmarts two scientists and a hunter with tracking devices), Jason will be accompanied by Forest Commish Ben Jones(Leon Ames), old Indian pal Henry(Anthony Caruso), and his ex-wife's new boyfriend Howard(Glenn Sipes) on the grand trek through the woods and up mountains to seek out and destroy the bear once and for all. The movie shows how the bear seems wiser and more cunning than those hunting him, often surprising victims from behind, with them unable to defend themselves. Bullets upon bullets are fired into the bear and, despite it's size, those after it lose him multiple times. A good bulk of the film has the four hunters into the wilderness, and the pace drags quite a bit, not to mention, the attacks are few and far between. It's also really difficult shooting an effective scene where a man and bear are at war, because of the danger involved, while trying to prevent any harm to animals in the process..so many scenes where a bear and man are trying to find each other, they are heavily edited with repetitive images(..of the bear mostly)replayed over and over. There are some good jump scenes where a victim believes the bear is not nearby, only to be startled as it carries them off-screen. There's emphasis on the struggling relations between Jason and his wife Chris(Carla Layton)due to the overwhelming thundercloud of the bear's presence hanging over them. A little too overlong(..there's a decent 85 minute movie here, padded longer than need be)with little real action. Try GRIZZLY instead.

Just like Grizzly, Claws knows that it's Jaws and goes for it.

It was also released in Canada and Mexico as Grizzly 2, but it's not a sequel.

It was also called Fauces, which means Jaws, in Spain.

A bunch of poachers come to Alaska and decide that they want to hunt a grizzly bear. They should have killed it, but no, they just wound it instead. Now the bear wants revenge - yes, this time it's personal - and it goes all in on bear-on-human violence.

Only hunter Jason Monroe (Jason Evers) and an Alaskan named Henry (Anthony Caruso) can stop this wild beast. But do we want that? Humanity has it coming. Even if the bear once attacked Monroe, I'm always going to be on the side of the bear.

I mean, they call it the Satan Bear. I'm not sure I could love this bear any more than I do.

Jason has gone a little Ahab on this whole thing and his obsession with the bear has caused his wife Chris (Carla Layton) to leave him and start sleeping with their son Bucky's (Buck Monroe) Boy Scout leader Howard (Glenn Sipes), which is the ultimate slap in the face to a rugged outdoorsman like Jason. There are a ton of flashbacks to better days, but do we care? No. Would we rather watch the bear kill a sheriff and some scientists dumb enough to think their inventions could stop nature's perfect land-based predator? Yes.

By the end, Jason, Henry, Howard and forest commissioner Ben Chase (Leon Ames) are in the woods, putting their lives on the line and man, Jason has to be conflicted here, what with trying to kill the animal that has ruined his life and having to save the life of the man who is balls deep in his estranged wife when he's not galavanting through his woods.

This was directed by Richard Bansbach (who did the editing on the American opening of Terror of Mechagodzilla) and Robert E. Pearson with a script by Chuck D. Keen (who was also the cinematographer and he made a lot of outdoor bear-related movies such as Challenge to Be Free, The Timber Tramps and Joniko and the Kush Ta Ka) and Brian Russell (The Annihilators, Beyond Death's Door).

Honestly, it makes Grizzly look big budget, but I'm all for animal attack movies. It doesn't matter how much it costs, I'm here for the body count.

*****SPOILERS*** Released a year after the very successful killer bear movie "Gizzly" the film "Claws" is about a wounded grizzly bear who's been terrorizing the Northern Alaskan territory for some five years killing and wounding dozes of people in the process as well as eating them. It's mountain man and professional hunter Jason Monroe, Jason Evers, who feels responsible for the bear's , who's been nicknamed Kushtaka by the local Indian tribes, actions since he was one of the hunters who five years ago wounded him and didn't bother to track him down and finish him off for good.

Now with the bear or "Devil Bear"" as he's now called in full rampage mode Jason takes it upon himself to correct the mistake, by not killing the bear, that he made five years ago. It was when the bear attacked a boy scout troop badly mauling Jason's 12 year old son that he decided to come out of retirement, due to injuries he suffered in a bear attack, and finally finish the "Devil Bear" off. Together with Forset Commissioner Ben Jones, Leon Ames, and both Indian scout Henry Chico, Anthony Caruso, and fellow hunter Holitzer Howard , Glenn Snips, Jason goes into the mountain regions of Alaska to find the "Devil Bear" and finally put an end to his reign of terror.

****SPOILERS**** Despite it's meager budget and production values the movie "Claws" makes the most of the striking Alaskan nature scenery as well as the very effective bear attacks, done in super slow motion, that makes it more then worth watching. The final sequence with Jason and his estrange wife Chris, Carla Layton, who left him after he ended up becoming a hermit after he developed a drinking problem, in failing to put down the "Devil Bear" and being mauled by it five years ago, is as exciting as well as effective as the endings in both the movies "Jaws" and "Grizzly". And like in the movie "Jaws" it was the "Devil Bear" himself who unwittingly, by getting himself doused in gasoline, who turned out be his own worst enemy.