Powerful

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Don't let that monstrous demon on the cover fool you. This tiger is as soft as they come. It looks about as ferocious as a Furby as it bounds towards the camera looking for hugs. It reaches highs of wonderful hilarity when we hear the tiger roar, but see him just being playful and content. Luckily, to counterbalance this, we have the true wild beast, Gary Busey. Busey plays it straight, which is to his credit. It has all the wonderful characters, and more. The greedy mayor, concerned about tourism, the hunter with a score to settle etc. These characters are actually played quite well, and the mayor even has a well played emotional scene. It's still got clunky dialogue, confused looking supporting actors, and impossible action sequences (this tiger is half ninja). It's a lot of fun and should be treated for the gem it is.

Maneater is set in thew small US town of where a truck crashes late one night, the truck happened to be carrying a large Tiger in a wooden box. The box is smashed open & the huge Tiger is set free to roam the woods near the town. The next morning starts like any other for local Sheriff Grady Barnes (Gary Busey) but that soon changes when several missing persons report come in, investigating these reports Sheriff Barnes & his deputies discover several mutilated dead bodies in the woods surrounding . The local coroner says that the victims were killed by a large animal & it's not long before there are sightings of the Tiger as the body-count continues to grow. The national guard is called in but they can't handle the situation so English big game hunter Colonel Graham (Ian D Clark) volunteers his services to track down the Tiger & kill it...Not to be confused with the monster film Maneater (2009) starring Dean Cain this made for television American & Canadian co-production was directed by Gary Yates, yet another in a very long line of killer creature feature flicks from the Sy-Fy Channel this is yet another truly terrible film that almost becomes painful to watch. To be honest there really isn't any sci-fi aspect here, the Tiger is just a normal escaped Tiger that starts to kill & eat the locals rather than some genetic experiment or mutation. In fact little background about the Tiger is given, there's some vague opening sequence as a truck crashes but where the truck came from or where it was going or what it was doing with a live Tiger in a wooden crate strapped to the back is anyone's guess. At almost 90 minutes long Maneater drags badly, the majority of the boring running time is just people wandering through th woods for various reasons (reporters reporting the story, people trying to hunt & kill the Tiger, various victims whose job it is to get killed) & little else, there's some crap about a boy who has some sort of link with the Tiger but is never explained in any great detail or to any satisfaction. Then there's the English hunter with a strange moustache & accent that pushes Maneater into the realms of camp even though it's script is deadly serious. Generally speaking I think I could organise a better hunt for the Tiger, the national guard just randomly walk through the woods looking for it rather than laying a trap with some bait for instance. The character's are awful, the dialogue is awful & the plot is awful. The whole film is awful.Even the attack scenes are awful, we never really see the Tiger attack anyone because they couldn't afford decent special effects & all the attacks happen off-screen with lots of severed body parts & splattered blood left. Actually this was gorier than i thought it was going to be, while most of the gore is after the event mutilated body type stuff at least there's plenty of it here. The real Tiger the makers use during several shots is obviously tame & never bares it's teeth, never acts threatening & is obviously just playing as it rolls around with it's 'victim'.Filmed in Manitoba in Canada this has decent production values but looks bland & lacks any visual style at all, the effects are alright I suppose & it's competently made. The acting is bad, Gary Busey looks really bad in this & can't even be bothered to button his jacket up properly let alone wear a proper uniform. Busey looks like he's slumming it here big time.Maneater is a terrible Sy-Fy Channel creature feature that doesn't actually have any sci-fi or fantasy aspects, it's just a normal Tiger killing people. Boring. If you want to see a decent film about killer Tiger's/Lion's then watch The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) again instead.

Sheriff Gary Busey, in a restrained performance, gets right down to business, trying to protect his small Appalachian town from a menacing escaped Bengal tiger. As locals, National Guardsmen, and deputies, become cat food, the situation rapidly deteriorates, until a self appointed British tiger hunter arrives on the scene. Ian D. Clark is quite good in this role, and along with Busey, gives the movie some above the norm acting. The little boy and his religious nut-bag Mother are nothing but damn annoyances, as are all of the news media. "Maneater may not be a work of art, but for it's intended audience, it is totally acceptable. ............... MERK

**SPOILERS** Much along the lines of the 1975 blockbuster "Jaws" the made for TV movie "Maneater" has to do with an escaped 600 pound Bengal Tiger who turns the sleepy and almost crime free, it doesn't even have a county jail, Taruga County into its personal hunting and feeding grounds.After the tiger's first three kills both the county Sheriff Grady Barnes, Gary Busey, and it's very reluctant Mayor Earl Hunt, Blake Taylor, finally throw in the towel and let the "cat" out of the bag in asking the State Governor to sent in the National Guard to either capture or gun down the wild beast. As we all soon find out even the National Guard with its state of the art equipment and dead-eye sharpshooters are no match against the ferocious feline. For all its ferocity the killer cat seemed to have developed some kind of friendship with little 12 year-old Roy Satterly, Ty Wood, which the film never goes into or explains! This together with the films very confusing and almost mythical-like ending makes you wounder if the killer tiger has supernatural powers or we, the audience, are being set up for a sequel to "Maneater" the soon to be released, on TV or DVD,"Maneater II"!Using no special effect the movie has an actual tiger who's anything but full grown, he looks like he weighs between 80 to 100 not 600 pounds, do the dirty or bloody work in it. Taking down most of his his victims by ambushing them from behind, the big cat's favorite hunting tactic, we very rarely get to see him the movie. Still even without the big cat being in the frame it's brutal attacks, by just playing with the audience's imagination, are just as effective as if the cat was actually in them!With the National Guard and local police just about giving up in tracking down and killing the rampaging killer tiger in comes British Big Game hunter Colonel Graham, Ian D.Clark, offering his services! looked by everyone as an eccentric The Colonel proves to be the real McCoy in him having documented evidence that he hunted down and killed 12 man eating tigers back in India. What the Colonel failed to bring out, in his resume, is that the last man eating tiger he tried to hunt down, who killed and ate some 200 people, made a monkey out of him by always giving the Colonel, when he was about to gun him down, the slip!***SPOILERS*** It's at the very end of the movie that the killer cat comes out of hiding and that's when things get a bit confusing. Changing his very successful attack mode from the ambush to a frontal attack makes the tiger a sitting duck for the Colonel's, whom the tiger already badly mauled, double barreled elephant gun! Still it took a lot more then the Colonel, and his howitzer, to put an end to the man-eating tigers reign of terror! Or did it!