Project Grizzly

Interested in seeing a kind of half-baked superhero-themed movie? Do Not Be Deceived. Project Grizzly is not about Troy-Man from the Great White North Bay; rather, it is a chilling tale about a normal (?) fellow who's taken his defiance of nature to a level not fit for yourself or your friends. And trust me on that. And while it is hard not to watch Troy get repeatedly whupped by log-catapults and pick-up trucks, or be pushed off the Niagara Escarpment (!) during 'tests' of his bearproof suit, the picture does run on. Ahhh, but wait. You'll be left curiously satisfied by watching it - knowing that your crazy friend Troy from grade school who ate worms, marbles, gravel or what-have-you might just have amounted to something.

I first became aware of this film and that figure of fun Troy Hurtubise on the hilarious British TV show "In Bed With Me Dinner" with Bob Mills lampooning the film. Although somebody reading this would say "Don't laugh about it, you haven't seen the full film". Well, I bought the full "Project Grizzly" video a while ago from a friend, and I have to say that this is the most unintentionally funny piece of documentary film-making. Troy: What can be said about the man. He just doesn't see the humour that's so clearly visible to the viewers, but you've got to take your hat off to him, purely because he seriously has a screw loose. For any novices out there, root out the scene where one of Troy's buddies is talking about the game for all the family 'Out Run The Hand Grenade', or any scene involving testing the suit. I have to say as well, that I didn't go into viewing the film being snobby about anything, or expecting a marvelous piece of dramatic film. Plus Bob Mills reigned supreme on his show by poking fun at the whole idea of Troy and his little journey. Honestly, I knew that Troy would keep going with the bear business, but I never thought that in Old Blighty, I'd see him poking out of magazines (in that probably unmovable suit to match!), and being lampooned on that old chestnut "Have I Got News For You". What else is there to say, this isn't no Academy Award winning triumph, but it's definitely worth buying or renting if you see it available. In short words: this is excellent, you have to see it.

This short documentary (72 min) introduces North Bay, Ontario's Troy Hurtubise, and I can assure you you won't soon forget this guy. After a near-encounter with a giant grizzly in the Canadian Rockies, Hurtubise becomes seized with the idea of building a protective body suit strong enough to let him wrestle 'the Old Man' mano-a-mano and live to tell about it.

Just the sight of this contraption will make you laugh, and there are enough scenes of the 'field-testing' to keep you in stitches as he is knocked over by flying logs, run into by a pick-up truck doing 35 clicks and shot at with a variety of firearms, all without suffering any ill effects.

Hurtubise was apparently annoyed that the film ignores the 'science'. No doubt there are practical uses for this seemingly impenetrable body suit, but discussing the chemical properties of titanium won't make for a good film. Project Grizzly is the story of a man who follows the beat of his own drummer. And it is a very funny film. Early on, the laughter may be directed AT Hurtubise, but by the end of the film the viewer has come to respect the integrity of this man's quest and to feel certain that he will achieve his objectives someday, if not just yet. An entertaining and off-beat film.

Project Grizzly (1996)

*** (out of 4)

Documentary on Troy Hurtubise, a Canadian man who was attacked by a grizzly so to get revenge he builds a protective suit and goes out to find another grizzly to fight. If this guy sounds strange then that's because he really is. The ending is a disappointment as the fight never happens but everything that comes before this is pretty entertaining because this guy is just so damn weird. He rambles on about stuff he has no idea about and I can't help but wonder if this guy was the inspiration for all those Holiday Inn commercials that you see all over television. Apparently Quentin Tarantino is a big fan of this movie and I'm sure he could have fun turning this into a movie of his own.

The movie was funny and brilliant. Here's your everyman trying to make something different and following a dream. The funny thing isn't that he tried to design the suit for Grizzly bears but that after the film he actually redirected his thinking towards a suit designed to protect firefighters. While doing this and discovering his suit wasn't safe unless it was fireproof, he managed to create a compound that MIT professors said couldn't be made. He created a ceramic? compound that he demonstrated in his own unique way. He placed a small brick of it on top of a helmet and had a braizing torch directed on the top of it for 10 minutes (at 5000 degrees). After 10 minutes the temperate had risen barely 10 degrees. A crackpot? no doubt :) But likely a backyard genius too. See it once and remember that not all inventions in history were used in the original purpose that the creator envisioned.