Widely considered a Jaws rip-off, Grizzly used many of the same plot devices as its shark predecessor, which had been a huge box office success during the previous year.

The next day, Scott, tracking on horseback, finds the remains of the deer carcass and calls Stober and Kelly on the radio.

Kelly and Stober discover Scott's mutilated body and, in despair, return to the helicopter to track the grizzly from the air.

For several seconds, Kelly sadly stares at the burning remains of the grizzly before walking towards Stober's mutilated body.

The idea for Grizzly began when the film's producer and writer, Harvey Flaxman, encountered a bear during a family camping trip.

Co-producer and co-writer David Sheldon thought the idea would make a good film following the success of Jaws.

Within a week, Girdler was able to obtain $750,000 in financing from Edward L. Montoro's Film Ventures International movie distribution company.

The crew was protected from the bear by a piece of green string running through the shooting locations and a ticking kitchen timer.

[citation needed] The original artwork for the Grizzly film poster was created by popular comic book artist Neal Adams.

The film featured the role of the female park ranger played by Victoria Lynn Johnson, who would go onto becoming the August 1976 Penthouse magazine Pet of the Month and the 1977 Pet of the Year, appearing in Smokey and the Bandit, as well as Angie Dickinson's nude body double in Brian De Palma's 1980 thriller, Dressed to Kill.

A movie tie-in novelization by Will Collins (a pseudonym of Edwin Corley) was published in 1976 by Pyramid Books and accompanied the film's release.

He wrote, "Grizzly, which opened yesterday at the Rivoli and other theaters, is such a blatant imitation of Jaws that one has to admire the depth of the flattery it represents, though not the lack of talent involved.

[6] Despite the negative reviews, Grizzly was the top grossing independent film of 1976, earning nearly $38 million worldwide, and held the record until Halloween was released two years later in 1978.

The three sued Montoro and he was eventually ordered by the Los Angeles County Superior Court to pay Girdler, Sheldon and Flaxman their share of the profits from the distribution of the film.

[9] On April 21, 2017, RiffTrax released a video on demand of the film with comedy commentary by Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett.

It was directed by André Szöts from a screenplay by David Sheldon and his wife Joan McCall, with Suzanne C. Nagy as executive producer.

The film, about a giant female grizzly bear who seeks revenge after her cub is killed by poachers, features Steve Inwood, Louise Fletcher, John Rhys-Davies, Deborah Raffin and Deborah Foreman, with special appearances by George Clooney, Laura Dern, Charlie Sheen and Timothy Spall.

Prior to its official release, a bootleg version of the footage shot for the film, not always coherent at times, circulated on VHS and DVD over the years.