Claws

I'm gonna level with you guys right out the gate...this is the funniest fucking cover I've ever seen.

That bear doesn't look frightening or intimidating in the slightest, if anything, he looks like he's happy go lucky and waving to goodbye to his new human friends with a big ol' grin on his face as he heads home for the night after their long day of human/bear woodland adventures together. This bear, this fucking bear? Downright ADORABLE, son. So Willard here - that's his name now, we're calling him Willard - is the star of a movie trying to capitalize off the success of Jaws. That would be evident even without the obvious rhyming name and the flat out admittance on the back blurb. And even if Willard was remotely frightening, which he so obviously isn't, is isn't like the guys on the back cover look very scared themselves. They look more mildly upset that they have to wait for this helicopter to land or they aren't getting better reception on their walkie talkie. They certainly don't seem scared, like they're about to be devoured by a giant bear is all I'm saying.

Besides, if you go into nature and you fuck around with wilderness, you honestly deserve whatever wilderness does to you. That isn't your place to be. Leave the fucking bears alone. If you get eaten, I don't feel bad for you in the slightest cause it's your dumb ass that put itself in that situation. This movie, or at least this release of it, was from Shaftsbury Films, a production company formed in 1987 by Christina Jennings from Ontario, whose other work includes such fantastic titles as

• Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures
• The Frankie Drake Mysteries
• The Robber Bride
• In God's Country
• Sleep Murder

All of which sound just wonderful, don't they? Instant beloved classics the world over I'm sure. But let's talk about this back blurb for just a moment, okay? Cause I have some bones to pick with its wording. It starts off by saying, "Having killed several humans in horrific fashion, a professional animal catching team tries their luck with our grizzly friend." Now, theoretically, one would think that the start of that sentence is supposed to be insinuating that our good friend Willard the Bear here is the one who's killed several humans in horrific fashion. But they don't state that. Nowhere does it make that clear. 

Instead of putting context, it just goes right on to talk about "a professional animal catching team". So...is the professional animal catching team the ones that killed several humans in horrific fashion? Sentence structure matters, guys. Context. You gotta have context. Cause as it stands right now, this team sounds like the villains, and I'm rooting for Willard to take 'em out and stop their onslaught of brutal killings!

Actually, take a look at the plot description on Wikipedia.

This is literally what I said. The humans ARE the bad guys! Willard is just enjoying his life, doing bear stuff, and they come around, participating in illegal poaching, hurt him and then he, rather understandably I'd argue, wants revenge and I'm supposed to root against him? Give me a break, dude. All truth be told, the artwork for that first box is in fact fairly solid overall. It's not a bad design. It's well enough drawn and has great coloring, so let's look at a second, much more generic box, shall we?

Now here is a box that's somehow simultaneously terrible and great for being terrible.

However, in this rendition, the blurb doesn't state anything about hunters, about revenge or anything. It makes you feel entirely as if Willard is the villain here, which we all know not to be true at this point. The font for the title is so cartoony that it doesn't work to be creepy, the claws coming through the front is a well done trope that's long since past its prime visually and for some goddamned reason there's a mention of an Indian legend? This thing is a MESS, dude. And while it's a nice change of pace to have artwork on the back in lieu of the usual uncontextualized screenshot mess we're privy to, this time it's...also weird? You have a helicopter that, I'm assuming, it's flying over a roaring Willard, and then, for some reason, the front cover again. You know, just in case you forgot what it looked like in the last 4 seconds since turning it over.

I don't know, man. The first one has this undeniable goofy charm to it that makes it forgivable, but this one is just so very mediocre, even if the artwork on the back does happen to be top notch. I don't really know what else to so, it's the same thing we've seen a million times over; one is fantastic because it's so not great and the other is so extremely generic and devoid of personality. And while, at first glance I can see how someone might think the second one is the better of the two, because it looks more standard place, it's exactly that standard place look that makes it the lesser of them. The first has this undeniable goofy charm to it. It's almost, dare I say, welcoming, even. But this second one, while arguably the more reliable for video rental shelves, is just so common place that you're more likely to pass it up because of its generic look.

So yeah, Willard is a goddamned hero and humans are scum, any questions?

And let me end with saying that the next time you see a report of someone who was supposedly "viciously mauled" by any wild animal, bear or otherwise, ask yourself what the fuck they were doing around the animal in the first place. Because, quite frankly, outside of being either a veterinarian or a professional animal wrangler of some sort, working in a reserve or something, there's absolutely no need for human beings to ever be in such close proximity to a bear that it feels threatened enough to kill you. So maybe just stay the fuck away from bears, okay?

A lesson I think we all could use.