Let's be realistic.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The acting in this movie is really good.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

CLAWS is another grizzly bear attack horror film, packed with footage of a grizzly going on the rampage and butchering a number of innocent folk. It was recently shown on TV here in the UK to tie in to the cinema release of THE REVENANT, along with NIGHT OF THE GRIZZLY. This low budget effort is the worse film of the two, thanks to a very undistinguished execution. There's virtually no characterisation, no attempts at suspense, just a lot of repetitive scenes instead.The whole film feels sluggish and rather dull despite the proliferation of outdoor nature footage (the movie was shot in Alaska). I appreciate that a real bear was used for many of the shots, but the whole thing is directed in such a matter-of-fact way that it gets rather boring very quickly. The one point at which things do get exciting is at the over-the-top climax, but by then it's too little, too late.

Claws (1977) 1/2 (out of 4) Even Alaska decided to jump in on the JAWS craze with this rip-off, which features a killer grizzly. Just the previous year director William Girdler made GRIZZLY and wouldn't you know it, this low-budget film would be released as GRIZZLY II in some parts just to try and cash in. The story is pretty simple as a couple hunters come across two large grizzly bears fighting. They decide they'll look good on their wall so they start firing but one of the bears is just hit and runs off. At the same time a logger is walking through the woods and gets attacked. Through a text on the screen we learn that in the next five years this bear attacks and kills countless people and becomes known as the devil bear. Then our film kicks back and we see a group of men going after the bear. I'm a major sucker for these "nature attack" movies but this one here is just downright horrible. This is an incredibly cheap production and it really doesn't help when the bear is never in the same frame of the actors. Yes, many low-budget movies used editing to fool the viewer but this film isn't fooling anyone and what's even worse is how dragged out everything is. Not much makes sense in this movie including the fact that the "events" take place five years after the opening. As I previous said, we're give some text to explain what the bear has been doing but why not just show this stuff and forget this incredibly stretched out sequences that we wind up getting? The majority of the 100-minute running time has a bunch of idiots in the wood trying to track down the bear with the help of a Native American magic man. All of the scenes in the woods are just way too long and you can't help but feel as if this thing was just meant to be some sort of travelogue for Alaska and at the last second they decided to add a killer bear. The attack scenes are extremely weak with the viewer really not getting to see much. Everything usually so dark that you can't see or they just have the actors fighting with a fake bear arm coming down on them. I guess the one highlight in the film is a rather silly sequence where the bear attacks some boy scouts out camping. The performances are all rather bland and forgettable but then again so is pretty much everything else in this film. Stick with GRIZZLY instead.

A lot of people confuse this movie with "Grizzly". "Grizzly" has Christopher George AND Andrew Prine AND Richard Jaekl AND a female park ranger who decides to take time out from hunting an 18-foot killer grizzly bear to strip off all her clothes and take an impromptu shower in a waterfall (guess what happens?). "Claws" has none of these things, just a lot of travelogue footage of the Alaskan wilderness and some Native American nonsense about a "spirit bear". Neither movie is particularly scary. They both contain a lot shots of a disembodied bear paw flying through air, lopping off heads and limbs edited together with close-ups of the face of a real bear who looks only mildly annoyed. There is one pretty good scene where the bear menaces a boy scout camp, but it's only good because it's dark and you can't really see the bear. Actually, you can't see a lot of things in the very murky existing prints of this hard-to-find movie. It probably doesn't merit a DVD resurrection, however, because I have a feeling that what you can't see would still suck. "Grizzly" is so bad it's good; "Claws" is just bad.

Okay CLAWS in which in GRIZZLY (1976) says that was a subtitle for the film for GRIZZLY. CLAWS is not as intense as GRIZZLY but to most people through the 70's they still think CLAWS is a true sequel to GRIZZLY. CLAWS is way different and no it is not the same story line as GRIZZLY, CLAWS is about a few hunters who are attacked by a grizzly bear and years later the bear goes on a killing spere. CLAWS is no follow up to GRIZZLY however Jason Evers does metion one of the characters in GRIZZLY Which is to believed to be Christopher George. CLAWS also has Leon Armes that late actor who died a few years later. CLAWS is a good film but I do not know who the director is, I have never heard of him before. Edward L. Montoro (Producer of GRIZZLY) later filmed a film in 1984 called GRIZZLY II THE PREDATOR that is the real unknown sequel to GRIZZLY which had Charlie Sheen and George Clooney in their big roles however the film was not released untill 1986.