Grizzly

This film ended up becoming the most financially successful independent film of 1976, earning an impressive $39,000,000 worldwide in box office revenue and breaking several other records as well. It held this particular record for two whole years until the first version of the film Halloween (1978) broke the record.

A grizzly bear who was nicknamed "Teddy" played the titular role in the film. "Teddy" was 11 feet tall when standing on his hind legs, was the largest grizzly bear in captivity at that time, and was untamed, but trained by an expert bear trainer. The film's cast and crew were both protected from "Teddy" by only a thin green electrical wire that ran throughout its forest locations and, in addition, a mechanical bear was used for the scenes when the grizzly bear attacked people in it.

A separate and unrelated independent horror film about a killer grizzly bear in Alaska, Claws (1977), was re-released in 1978 in Canada and Mexico as "Grizzly 2" in order to capitalize on the success of both this film and the earlier film Jaws (1975).

After the film had been distributed worldwide and had grossed $39,000,000, which made it the most financially successful independent film of 1976, its executive producer/distributor, Edward L. Montoro, decided to keep the profits all for himself without paying its co-producers and co-writers, David Sheldon and Harvey Flaxman, and its director, William Girdler. All three of them sued, and Montoro was eventually ordered by the Los Angeles County Superior Court to pay the box office proceeds that were due to Sheldon, Flaxman and Girdler.

The film was shot on the week before Thanksgiving Day and the five weeks after that, and "Teddy" by now was getting ready to hibernate for the winter. At times, he was grumpy because of this. During one long dolly shot for it, his trainer dangled a big fish on a pole in front of him, then switched it out with a smaller fish at the end of the run. Bears are normally not all that intelligent but, by the film's seventh take of this trick, "Teddy" had finally figured out what was going on literally right under his nose and he suddenly wheeled around toward the camera, ran about 30 feet, stood up on his hind legs and snatched the big fish off of the pole, all of which took about three seconds to do.