Maneater

Gary Busey leads in this, no don't go!

Anyway if you're still there Gary Busey leads in this Scyfy channel-esque movie about a small town that falls under siege from an escaped Bengal tiger.

You know drill, a panicked Sherriff, an authority figure who wants it all kept quiet because they're up for re-election and over confident rednecks looking to make a name for themselves.

Every cliche in the book can be found right here in Maneater, but despite this it's not actually the worst.

Don't get me wrong this is hardly enjoyable viewing but I've seen considerably worse. Busey is a lot less manic than usual and is more bearable, the sfx for the tiger are better than you'd assume and though the plot has facets that make little to no sense it has its redeeming features if you look carefully enough.

Dumb fun? Meh, honestly it's just dumb but it's essentially what you should expect going in. Want a decent tiger movie? Watch Burning Bright (2010) instead.

The Good:

Visually better than you'd expect

The Bad:

Cliched to hell and back

Certain elements don't make a vast amount of sense

MANEATER concerns a small town with a big cat problem when a truck crashes, unleashing a Bengal tiger to hunt for local prey. Several human snacks later, the sheriff (Gary Busey) is on the case.

Alas, the killer kitty isn't so easy to catch. Many lives are lost, including an entire national guard unit!

While there are a few bloody extremities on display, the actual violence is mostly offscreen. There's no real profanity or nudity either. Busey is quite good in his role, and the low-budget CGI is kept to a blessed minimum...

So yes, it's called Maneater, which is dodgy, and yes it looks as if it was shot with a budget of about $12.50, and yes it's clichéd and cheesy, but it was about a million times better than I was expecting it to be.

Gary Busey plays Sheriff Grady Barnes, who is the main main character (yeah, double "main", there's a few, they can't decide which to follow). There's a tiger (just a regular tiger, which surprised me, not like, 500 kilo, 10 metre long killing machine, just a Bengal) loose in his hick-town, and they don't take too kindly to tigers 'round these parts. Seriously though, it's an actual tiger, no CG, not even a puppet, it's a genuine freaking tiger. The acting was much better than I thought it'd be, the most terrible was just from the red-shirts, who basically don't even count. The setting was believable and the characters were bearable.

That is not however to say, that the movie was good, or even remotely interesting for that matter. I say it was about a million times better than I thought it was, but I had it pegged as bad as it was, then a whole lot worse. At the end of the day it's just another film that seemed to have been made for the sake of being made. Gary Busey's usual wild charisma was noticeable, literally in only a single line. And that's pretty much it.

There's an evil Christian mother, but she's not that evil. I mean, compare her to the bitch from Carrie and she's like mother-of-the-year award material, she just doesn't let her son go to school or play make-believe games, they had room to make her big-bad, but didn't. Then there was her son, who has some bizarre connection to the tiger, he sleep walks, he's a traumatised little kid, so of course he must be twisted, right? No wrong, no Michael Myers secreted away here. Ah, and that British hunter, a foreigner! Surely he is the human menace! No? He's not? Oh, just another guy who gets a whole lot of screen time but does nothing? Yeah, figured.

So, if someone told me they wanted to watch it, I probably wouldn't go so far as to kill them for even suggesting such a thing, but I'd probably leave the room.

-Gimly

This is one the descent Sci Fi original i have see.

The plot: The hunter becomes the hunted when the forested shadows of the Appalachian Trail are stalked by a wild animal out of its element, hungry and born to ravage. After Sheriff Grady finds a dismembered body in the area, he quickly discovers a print near the scene that identifies the predator as a Bengal tiger. Six hundred pounds, twelve feet from nose to tail, it's one of the most powerful cats on Earth. Now it's loose -- and there's no man on the Appalachian Trail with the skill, or the courage, to take it down.

As i am huge fan of Killer Animals movies, There is no surprise that i liked this movie. What i liked about this movies was fact that it had boy who had Connection with Killer Tiger , Was such Great Idea and other Great idea was the boy Also had a religious nut of a mother keeps him out of school and has him memorize Bible chapters all day in their trailer while she's at work. When he tells her about the tiger, she dismisses it as an imaginative lie. Believing that the only useful information is that found in the Good Book, she avoids television and is thus completely unaware of the local attacks. Roy is also unaware, and when he discovers that the police are hunting it, he believes it is his responsibility to save the tiger and protect it from harm.

They use an actual real tiger so there were no CGI in this movie at all.

There are some good death scene in here more Bloody then Gory.

The Biggest problem i had with this movie was the ending, i hated as the ending felt to rushed, it kinda of ruined the whole movie for me.

If you liked the movie Prey (2007) should give this a watch. i rate this movie a 5/10

With all the beatings I've dished out to the Sci Fi Channel for its horrible movies, I felt the need to finally post something a little upbeat.

Granted, MANEATER is no classic. But it's not a stinker in the typical Sci Fi Channel sense, either. There's a reasonable script. A few eccentric performances. And a director, Gary Yates, who realizes that CGI is not the best way to convey tension. In fact, he uses a real tiger to play...are you ready for it?...a real tiger. Sheer genius, especially when he has the good sense to hide it for the majority of the picture.

Of course, there's also Gary Busey, looking like he wandered off an accident scene, his hair askew, his suite ill-fitting (the same suit he wears for the entire film). He is truly a wonder to behold. It seems like he's The film, however, belongs to Ian D. Clark, who plays a big game hunter on the trail of the titular beast. He creeps through the underbrush spouting gibberish that wouldn't sound out of place in a martial arts movie, a Buddhist monk with a shotgun bloodlust.

Goofy fun.