Grizzly 2: The Predator (also known as Predator: the concert)

From wikipedia: Grizzly II: The Predator 1987 (also known as Predator: The Concert) is an unreleased horror sequel to the popular film, Grizzly. The film is notable for featuring early appearances of future superstars George Clooney, Charlie Sheen and Laura Dern in small supporting roles. Despite a large amount of footage being shot, the film has never been officially completed, or released in theaters or on home video. The version that exists is a workprint featuring the original temp soundtrack with songs by Michael Jackson.

Synopsis
The film centers on Park Ranger Hollister (Steve Inwood), who is at odds with the Park supervisor (Louise Fletcher) over a large rock concert that is going to be held in the area. Hollister fears that the local grizzly population might be a danger to the attendees. When a grizzly kills a local poacher and three teens, Hollister begins to track the bear with the help of a bear activist (Deborah Raffin) and a local bear hunter named Bouchard (John Rhys-Davies). In addition, four poachers set out together to try and trap the bear, hoping to gain the $100,000 reward money. But the alleged 18-foot grizzly makes its way to the rock concert, making the climatic showdown all the more personal for Hollister as his daughter (Deborah Foreman) is working there backstage.

Production
Grizzly II was shot in Hungary in 1983. Principal photography was completed for the most part with the grizzly effects to be added in later. According to special effects man Nick Maley, the "main unit shots were essentially complete and we had not started to film the effects miniatures that we were planning when we were suddenly told the movie was pulling out of Hungary."

Reaction
Grizzly II is often considered an urban legend in horror film history with false reviews popping up. One of the mistaken reviews is the fact that in 1977, an independent horror film titled Claws starring Jason Evers and Leon Ames which is about a killer grizzly bear in Alaska was re-released in 1978 in Canada and Mexico as Grizzly 2, in an attempt to capitalize on the success of Grizzly even though it had no direct association. Grizzly II, despite not being finished however, a workprint of the film did surface in 2007. This rough version features all of the live action footage but is missing nearly all shots of the bear. A review of the workprint appeared on the genre review site Critical Condition. The film is described as interesting for the sole fact the "cast contains such well-known names as George Clooney, Charlie Sheen, Louise Fletcher, Laura Dern, Deborah Raffin, John Rhys-Davies, Dick Anthony Williams, Charles Cyphers, Marc Alaimo and Jack Starrett." The workprint was also spotlighted on an episode of The Cinema Snob, where host Brad Jones poked fun at the long stretches of concert filler, the lifted Michael Jackson soundtrack, and the numerous missing shots of the bear.


Thanks for the link, Henway)

OMG - It's a good thing it wasn't released. It would have killed his career before it started. hahaha

Some plot, a grizzly with a bad cold and a huge appetite !

Just saw this on MSNBC....kinda glad this movie wasn't released...really cheezy

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By Gael Fashingbauer Cooper


If this video goes viral, don't blame us, blame "Mystery Science Theater 3000" host (and now, "Rifftrax" commentator) Michael J. Nelson.

He's the one who dug up clips from the never-released 1983 movie "Grizzly 2: The Predator," which would have been the first major movie release for both George Clooney and Charlie Sheen, had it not apparently been so awful it was hidden away from theater audiences.

But it's 2011, and everything gets out on YouTube. Nelson linked to this clip on Facebook and we just had to share it.

Not only does the film feature Sheen and Clooney, but Clooney's girlfriend is played by Laura Dern. It's horribly muddy and hard to watch, but some highlights:

--All three future stars miss the subtle orange sign warning of "bear danger."

--Dern apparently camps in matching bra and panties, which she displays for the camera after shedding her hip shredded top. That was pretty much required in this kind of film. (So kids, don't watch this!)

--Clooney gives his mullet a dry run as he preps for his later "Facts of Life" role. Also, denim vest!














.
--Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" wails in the background as Sheen tells Clooney and Dern not to make too much noise snuggling in their sleeping bags.

--The awesome bear's eye view as the grizzly, possibly on wheels, decides to make a snack out of the three name actors.

--Not in this clip, but preserved for posterity here, is a scene where the most 1980s concert ever is given, and approximately 10 minutes are spent with the camera focusing on one woman's aerobicized butt. Cameramen knew their jobs in 1983.

One of Nelson's Facebook friends notes, "They say Sheen gave up 'Karate Kid' for this."

Hollywood, why are you keeping this movie out of theaters? Release "Grizzly 2"!

Yes it izzzzz ! I can make a movie like that one too !

oh....

funny!

Thanks for posting Airmid and welcome to the forum! I've moved your post here, where we're already talking about this film.

Another article about Grizzly II.  George "sings" and gives a moon shot in his underwear!!!

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Clooney and a killer bear — the movie you may never see


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Inside a bank vault, collecting dust somewhere in Manhattan, lies a fascinating pop-culture curiosity from the 1980s.
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The poster for “Grizzly.”



It’s the sound recording from a B-movie called “Grizzly 2.”
You’ve probably never heard of the film. You’ve certainly never seen it. But the story behind it is bizarre, even by Hollywood standards where bizarre is the norm, and the tale involves — among other mishaps — stolen money, malfunctioning special effects and a script that was rewritten by none other than its Hungarian caterer.
It also holds the distinction of being quite possibly the only time in history when two Academy Award winners have starred opposite a giant, mutated bear.
And that’s probably why anyone still cares about “Grizzly 2” some 30 years after the movie it was originally shot but never released.

As the title suggests, “Grizzly 2” was a sequel to “Grizzly,” a low-budget 1976 horror movie about a bear terrorizing a state park. It was basically “Jaws,” but, you know, on land. With a bear.
It was directed by someone named William Girdler, who three years earlier had helmed “Three on a Meathook.” Despite its lack of pedigree, “Grizzly” became a financial winner.
“It was a huge success, earning 50 times the cost of production and was the top-grossing indie film of the year,” says David Sheldon, the movie’s screenwriter/executive producer.
“Grizzly” raked in $39 million, prompting producer Ed Montoro to approach Sheldonask about a sequel. Sheldon and wife Joan McCall penned a script, but Montoro couldn’t raise the funds.
That’s when another producer, Joseph Proctor, stepped in. Sheldon agreed to move forward on the condition he could direct.
The movie’s plot was pretty straightforward. Music lovers gather in a national park for a massive, Woodstock-like concert. Nearby, a giant, 20-foot-tall grizzly has gone goes on a murderous rampage after poachers kill its young. As the bear threatens the concert, disemboweling people along the way, the park’s superintendent (played by Louise Fletcher, who won an Oscar for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”) is determined that the show must go on.
A French hunter (John Rhys-Davies from “Raiders of the Lost Ark”) is sent to kill the bear, but the animal makes it to the concert anyway. It’s finally electrocuted on stage and killed.
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Laura Dern and George Clooney had a steamy love scene in “Grizzly 2.”

But what’s most remarkable about “Grizzly 2” is who played the young teenage victims: Laura Dern, Charlie Sheen and George Clooney, in his big-screen debut. The trio played campers who are killed by the monster. Dern and Clooney — in classic horror tradition — have a love scene before they meet their bloody end.
“Clooney was charming and had charisma,” Sheldon recalls. “Sheen was handsome, was the son of Martin Sheen, who we knew, . . . and it looked like he was going to make it big. Dern was simply terrific and the daughter of Bruce Dern.”
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Laura Dern remembers it well.


“I mean, I’m 16 years old, it’s six weeks in Budapest, Hungary . . . and it’s me, George Clooney, and Charlie Sheen,” Dern she told The A.V. Club in 2011. “I’m not gonna say another damned thing. Except that it was the craziest time. And the paprika chicken was outstanding.”


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Not all the Derns were happy about Laura’s role, Proctor claims.


“Her father, Bruce Dern, threatened to kill me over the part . . . LOL,” Proctor he said in an e-mail.
(Through his agent, Bruce Dern said, “This is totally not true” — though Dern had to be reminded his daughter was even in “Grizzly 2.”)
If there was tension, it might have arisen from Dern and Clooney’s love scene with Clooney.
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“I heard from one of the producers that [Laura] had been asked to do a nude scene and refused,” Sheldon said. “They then told her that they would use a double to do the nudity.”
Total screen time for Dern, Clooney and Sheen is about five minutes. And yet, incredibly, Sheen turned down the lead in “The Karate Kid” to take this role on the advice of his father. Charlie lamented the decision on his 2011 “Torpedo of Truth” tour.
One of the bigger challenges with the 1983 production involved staging the concert. The filmmakers decided it should be shot overseas, so Proctor partnered with Suzanne Nagy, a Hungarian economist-turned-producer.
“This movie would never be able to get a permit in the United States,” says Nagy, now an artist and gallery owner living in the West Village. “To make a huge concert on film in a rural area, it was almost impossible. Getting all the environmental permits, etc.”
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George Clooney in the 1980′s “The Facts of Life.”[size=11]Photo: Getty Images[/size]


So the production headed for Hungary. Only no one had told its supposed director, Sheldon.
“The cast and crew were flown to Hungary without our knowledge and we were left behind with no explanation,” Sheldon says. “They had engaged a Hungarian director who had never directed a movie before. See what’s coming?”
But no one could see what was coming.
Director André Szöts (who died in 2006 with “Grizzly 2” as his only directing credit) and the crew secured a Russian army base that was to serve as the concert venue. Instead of faking it, the filmmakers hired a Hungarian promoter to throw an actual concert.
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Laura Dern in 1986′s “Blue Velvet.”[size=11]Photo: Everett Collection[/size]


Some 50,000 fans showed up for the three-day event, paying around $15 per ticket, which was a lot of money in Hungary at the time. The middling bands came from Hungary, England and America, and included Toto Coelo, the forgettable New Wave group behind “I Eat Cannibals Part 1.”
Filming began, with one hitch: Some scenes needed to be rewritten, so the producers naturally turned to the most obvious choice: the movie’s caterer.
“The caterer rewrote the scenes, then started monkeying with the rest of it,” says original script writer McCall. “The result was so disjointed that they couldn’t cut the film together.”
That was hardly the only problem. Instead of using real bears, the production hired veteran effects man Nick Maley to create animatronic ones. Close-ups were to be shot with a man wearing a bear suit.
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Charlie Sheen in 1985′s “The Boys Next Door.”[size=11]Photo: Everett Collection[/size]


“The bears seriously did not work,” says film editor Ross Massbaum said.
As a result, the bear movie had no bear. All of the principle photography was eventually completed — without any shots of the grizzly.
Along the way, there was also the minor issue of much of the movie’s funds disappearing, which halted production until Nagy could raise more money.
Where did the money go? More than a few fingers point to producer Proctor, the most shadowy character of the saga.
“He disappeared on me,” Nagy says. “He took the entire fund, if I remember correctly. I had to go to Chicago to testify, because I had to prove that I was not part of it. He got a minimum of $2 million that he later took and disappeared from this country. The guy was nowhere to be found.”
Proctor, however, is much easier to find these days. He’s locked up in a Los Angeles federal prison, inmate #57751-112, serving five years for tax evasion.

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[size=11]Photo: Getty Images[/size]


He distanced himself from the “Grizzly 2” theft in an e-mail sent from prison.

“As for the money, only two people had access to all the funds,” Proctor wrote. “The investor and his accounting representative.”
Proctor says the movie was never finished because the investor ran out of cash and the artificial bears never worked.

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[size=11]Photo: WireImage[/size]


“Once I am resentenced I will be out and I can give you the true story, which is incredible,” he wrote.

Don’t hold your breath. It’s unclear if anything Proctor says can be trusted. In addition to failing to report $950,500 in income, for which he was sentenced to five years in 2012, Proctor, 68, was also accused by his former employer, PowerHouse Studios, of diverting “significant funds” from the company. And he was also rumored to have pulled a disappearing act similar to “Grizzly 2” on the 1980 Jerry Lewis movie “Hardly Working.”

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[size=11]Photo: Getty Images[/size]


Today, the footage continues to sit in storage at a Paris photo lab, as it has for decades, with the soundtrack in a separate New York vault. Nagy owns the rights and says she’d consider selling to someone who wanted to finish the film — as long as she doesn’t have to be involved. She long ago left the movie biz.

Co-producer Massbaum is more gung-ho. He approached Clooney’s agent earlier this year with a proposal for the actor to shoot new footage and finally — finally — release the film.
“That proposal received considerable interest at [Clooney’s agencyCAA] based on the actor’s expressed interest not to leave behind a picture made early in his distinguished career,” Massbaum claimed.
So it’s a go? Not so fast. A rep for Clooney said the actor has no plans to get involved with “Grizzly 2” again.
Horror fans probably have to face the reality that the movie will never be released. And that’s OK. The story behind “Grizzly 2” is probably better than the movie itself.