Directors: Richard Bansbach and Robert E. Pearson
Cast: Jason Evers, Leon Ames, Anthony Caruso, Carla Layton

Several years ago, a few months after my father passed away, my sister texted me with an interesting story to tell. She had been visiting my father's house regularly as part of ensuring my father estate would be properly maintained for what all three of us would eventually do with it. The news that she told us was that my father's property now had a new tenant, though not only was the tenant living there unasked, it also wasn't human. The new tenant was a black bear. Evidently, the bear had exited the wilderness that started several kilometers away, walked a great distance into human suburbia, and found its way to my father's house. Having found the location desirable as a base of operations, the bear would go out during the day to a nearby apple orchard to feed on apples that had dropped to the ground. After eating its fill every day, the bear then would wander back to my father's property and squeeze under the house's balcony as a safe cave-like place to sleep for the night. My sister was understandably a little unsure of what to do about this bear, especially since workmen would come every day to the house to do renovations. So she made a call to the local conservation office to get some guidance. The person she talked to said that she shouldn't have to worry about anything, and instead keep as good a distance as possible from the bear, making sure to tell the workmen and the neighbors about the bear. The conservation person assured her that eventually the bear would hear the call of the wild and wander back into the wilderness.

A few weeks later, that's apparently what the bear did, since it had suddenly disappeared. We were all relieved the bear did not get hurt or killed. However, the bear had been using the space under the balcony also as a toilet, and my sister was pretty grumpy about having to clean up every day when the bear was away. This certainly was an interesting experience for my sister, but I have my own interesting experience with bears. Well, maybe actually two. The first time that I saw a bear was when I was about ten years old, when my family travelled to Glacier National Park in Montana. In the middle of the park, we stopped for a spell so that all of us could observe a bear far away on a mountain making its way very casually to whatever destination it was headed to. It was neat to see a wild bear in the middle of its homeland. Though it wasn't so neat with my next experience with a bear, which happened a few years later. I was riding my bicycle in my neighborhood, and I took a turn onto a dead-end road that ended at a local park with many trees packed together. When I got to the end of the road, I stopped for a moment to rest a little. Though my rest break turned out to be much shorter than I originally anticipated, because right then I saw a black bear exit from the trees. Needless to say, the sight of that seriously freaked me out, because I knew that any bear is a wild creature and could be very dangerous. So I immediately turned around on my bicycle and I rode away as fast as I could pedal. It was quite a scary experience, though I was later disappointed when I told my parents my story and it seemed they didn't really believe my experience.

Needless to say, my close-up encounter with the bear at the park is an encounter that I will remember for the rest of my life. Whenever I think about it, I start to think of things like what might have happened had the bear and I bumped into each other closer than we actually did. It could have been deadly - for the bear at least. All kidding aside, I think that you will agree with me from all the true stories about bears we have encountered over the years, bears have the potential to be formidable foes towards humans. It would then seem logical that there would be a lot of movies made concerning killer bears, but that hasn't been the case. The reason is probably because portraying a killer bear would be difficult - bears are hard to train, and special effects portraying a killer bear would be expensive. Probably the only killer bear movies you can think of are the 2023 Cocaine Bear, the long-shelved Grizzly II that finally came out in 2020, and the 1970s movies Grizzly and Prophecy. But actually, there is a third killer bear that came out of the 1970s, and that is Claws. It also seems to be the first feature length movie to come from Alaskan filmmakers, and that fact along with the movie being such a rare killer bear movie that's also almost totally unknown made me give it a look. As suggested, the events of the movie take place in Alaska. Somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness, several men illegally hunting find two grizzly bears and shoot them. While one of the grizzlies dies, the other escapes wounded, but its wounds have aggravated it so much that it decides to go on a bloody rampage against all humans. This includes attacking a logging business owner named Jason (Jason Evers The Brain That Wouldn't Die,) though he manages to survive the attack while other people in the area aren't as lucky. A few years on, Jason's marriage to his wife Chris (Carla Layton) is on the rocks mostly because of the trauma he got from the bear attack, but also because Chris has left him, taken their son Bucky with her, and starting an affair with Scout leader Howard (Glenn Sipes, PT 109) But things become worse when the still rogue grizzly suddenly reappears to create more havoc, attacking and severely injuring Bucky while he's out in the wild with Howard and other Scouts. While Ben (Leon Ames, Tora! Tora! Tora!), the chief wild animal commissioner of the area tries to make some sort of peaceful plan to hunt down and kill the grizzly, Jason no longer wants to wait around. Jason eventually teams up with Ben, his Native American friend Henry (Anthony Caruso, Mean Johnny Barrows) and Howard, and the four set off into the wilderness to track down and kill the bear. But Native American folklore suggests that the bear might not be just any regular out of control bear, but instead possessed by a cunning spirit that might just make it unstoppable.

Let me cut right to the chase - Claws is simply not a good movie at all. In fact, it is pretty unsatisfying in just about every aspect that you can think of. Though I would like to leave it at that, I know I have to thoroughly dissuade people who might still be curious about it. The first and most obvious is regarding the depiction of the bear. The depiction ultimately fails because you don't get a sense of the alleged ferocious personality of the bear, even though it's stalking and killing people. There are several reasons for this - the bear is offscreen for long periods, the bear footage is often so rapidly edited from close-up shots that it's hard to absorb its full menace in these particular scenes, and there are obvious uses of tacky-looking bear puppets and costumes. I realize the difficulties that would come up for the filmmakers due to the fact that bears are hard to train, but I still think they could have done a better job. There are feeble attempts by the human characters to portray the bear as an incredible menace ("As big as a house!"), but it simply isn't convincing at all. In fact, the human characters are as feeble as their words. The acting, even by the actors who managed to build some screen credits before this effort, is extremely amateurish. When Jason and Chris, for example, are engaged in playful banter at the beginning of the movie, it reminded me of when I was in acting class back in high school and watching my classmates improvise on the spot. You know the drill - a gee-whiz and slightly overexaggerating tone that people in real life never engage in. Apart from some amusement seeing actor Glenn Sipes add a little touch of Paul Lynde in his speech from time to time, nobody seems to be making any effort, even in a misguided manner.

Thinking back to the movie, I think the actors might have felt a little defeated because the script didn't give them much to work with. The character of Jason has such an obsession with the bear that it gives him very little to do when it comes to dealing with his son Bucky, his wife, and his wife's lover Howard. He doesn't really ever lash out at Howard, his wife does most of the talking in their few conversations, and he has almost no screen time with Bucky. And Jason happens to be the most well-rounded character in Claws. Other characters don't get to reveal much; Henry, for one thing, likes whiskey and sticking to his beliefs that the bear is some kind of evil spirit... and that's about it. You've probably correctly concluded that the dialogue between these characters isn't much to write home about. There's awkward exposition, but even worse is that there are many scenes where characters just yak and yak about much ado about nothing topics that could have easily been condensed to a few sentences. Actually, I think all this tedious talk is a feeble attempt to try and make the movie seem it's moving due to the fact there is not much going on in-between the dialogue. The movie could have put in more bloody action, but due to a limited budget or other reasons, it really cheaps out. After Jason is attacked, the movie cuts to telling us what happened over the next five years (more bear attacks) via the use of onscreen newsroom text with the sound of a teletype machine chugging away in the background. Also, several times there are dream sequences and flashbacks, which gives the movie the opportunity to reuse footage, and with not much thought. During the final confrontation, Jason has flashbacks to events earlier in the movie where he was not around.

It's possible that the production of Claws suffered due to the fact that two directors are credited; I'm sure at some points there were clashes between both of them. I don't know who directed which parts (or if they were always together during the shoot), but the end results are directed in a uniform fashion - uniformly bad. The only praise I can give the direction is that towards the end of the movie, the action moves to an area with a breathtaking mountain range backdrop. As for what to criticize about the direction, the main reason for its failure is the fact that the movie is devoid of suspense, scares, and gory violence. The long slow slog of every passing scene drains out any possibility of raising tension. The scenes where the bear pops up to do his close-up and rapidly edited thing are telegraphed way before they happen, resulting in no surprises when they start up. As for the aftermath of the attacks, the most damage we get to see are a few corpses that have been splashed with a little red paint. The main selling points of the movie are definitely bungled up, but the movie doesn't even get it right for the incidental details. Night sequences are so dark that you can't tell exactly what is happening, the photography during the day sequences is nothing to write home about, and while the movie always seems to shoot on location (indoors and outdoors), a rustic atmosphere has for the most part never felt so cheap and tacky. Hopefully I have dissuaded you by now, so I'll start wrapping things up by saying you shouldn't scratch your horror movie itch with Claws. If I were to be pressed to say anything else nice about it besides those mountains, the only thing I could come up with is that it's the best movie I have ever seen that was made by Alaskan filmmakers.

(Posted August 6, 2025)