You know, I waited for years for this movie and, like Lemmy always sang, perhaps the chase is always better than the catch.

Originally filmed in Hungary in 1983, this movie was just a rumor for around four decades. But now it’s here.

Now we can talk about it.

Yellowstone National Park is expecting to have 50,000 people show up for a concert. Chief Ranger Nick Hollister (Steve Inwood) is in charge of making sure that everyone remains safe. That’s not going to be easy, because a poacher has killed the cub of a giant grizzly named Tawanda. Nick tries to warn Eileene Draygon (Louise Fletcher), who is putting on the rock show, but that goes over as well as closing the beach on the Fourth of July.

Samantha Owens (Deborah Raffin) is in charge of the bears and feels that instead of killing Tawanda, a grizzly expert named Bouchard (John Rhys-Davies) can just tranquilize it and place it into captivity. Great plan, but teenagers are already being killed by the bear. That’s right, George Clooney, Laura Dern and Charlie Sheen, early into their careers, are slashed by the titular terror.

By the end of this, the bear gets backstage and kills the so-called bear expert before its lured onstage and knocked off into equipment, causing a huge electrical explosion that the crowd thinks is just part of the show. Screw them. That bear should be rampaging in the mosh put right now.

The big crowd at that show was because the band Nazareth was performing. It was the largest public gathering in Hungary since the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

Originally called The Predator, this film was abandoned by its producer Joseph Ford Proctor on the first day of shooting. It was finished by co-producer Suzanne C. Nagy, who held the rights for decades, thanks to a Japanese investor who showed up and paid for the rest of the filming. The Hungarian government took most of the film’s equipment for non-payment of bills, which is why post-production was never finished.

Cannon Group, Inc. bought the film in 1987 and planned to finish its post-production and release it, but then Cannon started to falter and the movie was lost again. This feels very on-brand for Cannon.

This was written by Joan McCall, who played Allison in Grizzly. She also wrote Heart Like a Wheel and episodes of Days of Our Lives, Another World, Search for Tomorrow, Santa Barbara and Divorce Court. She also acted in William Girdler’s Project: Kill and played Julie, the heroine murdered by Leif Garrett with a stick in the throat in Devil Times Five. She was the wife of Grizzly writer David Sheldon, who co-write the script with her.

Sheldon was originally going to direct this movie but one imagines that when Edward L. Montoro of Film Ventures International disappeared, the rights to this got murky. They got probably worse when Proctor bought the movie and chose to make it with a German producer who has only directed one other movie, André Szöts.

Oh — if you’re like me and love to spot people, Deborah Foreman is in this as Nick’s daughter. Plus, the hunters who screw everything up trying to get the bear are Halloween alumnus Charles Cyphers, Marc Alaimo (Arena), Charles Young and Jack Starrett. That’s right, the director of Race With the Devil, Cleopatra Jones and Final Chapter: Walking Tall was in Hungary, playing a small role in this movie.

Oh yeah again — the robotic drummer in the band The Predator is Barbie Wilde, the female cenobite from Hellraiser II and gang leader Manny Fraker’s girlfriend in Death Wish 3!

It’s not great, you can hear cues from off camera and most of the movie is about getting a concert on the stage. But hey — it’s another bear against man movie and I’ll watch all of those.