Trilogy Pics Return with:

THREE MOVIES YOU CAN WATCH WHEN YOU'RE BABYSITTING (WITH INTENT TO TRAUMATIZE)

It's the summer! Put on your bathing suits and get yourself all tanned up, because here comes the return of Icons of Fright's Trilogy Pics. If there's one thing I can remember about summer is that when you're a kid and there's no school that often means plenty of time for Mom and Dad to get out of the house and relax, and that meant sleepovers at a friends or at a relatives house.

Being 30 years old I don't find myself discharged on Aunt Denise or grandma's porch anymore while Mom and Dad go off to catch “Porky's Revenge” at the Westbury Drive-In, but sometimes I do find myself with of some of the younger members of the family in my charge. Yes, now I get to play the part of the older sicko relative that none of the kids want to visit because he smells bad, likes weird music, and has a too many scary things on his wall, like autographed photos of Joyce DeWitt. Ah, the childless existence of the elite horror journalist. But I digress...

If you should find yourself in the care of small children you may find yourself saying, “Oh damn it, now I have to hide all of my DVDs because what should happen if they accidentally pop in 'Cannibal Holocaust'? Aunt Bedelia would never forgive me.”. I say no! Certainly there are movies that in these sensitive times you would never show a 6 year old, but I say what's childhood without a healthy dose of cinematic trauma? And you likely own at least 3 movies you could, say, tell old Aunt Bedelia, as her children run screaming back towards her bosom the next day, “I don't know what happened, they were all rated PG!” Might I suggest the following movies you, the horror fan, can enjoy while scaring the crap your little nieces and nephews? (I am not a nice person.)

GRIZZLY: (1976)

I only caught this for the first time a few months back, but I was really surprised to find it was rated PG. It's one of the first films to come out in the wake of “JAWS” that was directly inspired by Spielberg's snappy little fish movie. Released only 11 months later in 1976 and directed by the late William Girdler, who also helmed 2 “Exorcist” rip-offs, “Abby” and “The Manitou”. Hey, Spielberg had to deal with a vicious and unruly 25 foot mechanical shark, but William Girdler got himself one of them actual real-life bears.

Ok, so he photographed the real life bear from behind an electrified fence and the “claw” close ups are an obvious puppet but if you're a kid you can suspend your disbelief, can't you? As a “Jaws” rip-off it's not too bad either, and it rarely betrays its small budget even with the ridiculous exploding bear at the end. It's got 70's genre staple Christopher George doing the bit as the ranger who knows there's a killer bear in those woods, while Richard Jaeckle does his best as the bear expert who's out to help stop it. Seriously, it's “Jaws” with a bear, plain and simple, but where Grizzly goes from thematic rip-off to traumatic rip-offs is one scene involving a kid and his leg. (Hooray!)

Now, if I wanted to traumatize a child with a nature run amok film I had a few choices from the 70s. I could have just gone with “Jaws”, there's the kid on the raft, and later in the movie the two kids nearly eaten by the shark. I could have gone with “Piranha”, where the ferocious fish feast on day campers but...I don't know too many kids with rafts, and I don't know too many kids who go to day camp. However, I do know a lot of kids with backyards, so when that bear decides to come and visit a 6 year old kid in his backyard a teddy bear picnic is not what's on it's mind. This kid that old Grizz has a little chat with won't be kicking anything, anymore, if you know what I mean. Your charges won't feel safe in their own yard for weeks to come.