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Uh-oh. Gary Busey’s starting to see tigers again, time for another trip to the celebrity clinic.

Oh, here she comes. Watch out boy, she’ll chew you up. Oh, here she comes. She’s a manea – wait, this isn’t a review of the old Hall & Oates song? It’s supposed to be one for a new movie by the same name?

Dammit. Hold on a few minutes, let me go watch it real fast.

(Approximately 88 minutes pass)

Okay, still here? Your loss. It seems what we have here is a new film called Maneater, from Genius Entertainment. It’s part of the Genius’ “Maneater Series” which includes the spiders-attack thriller In The Spider’s Web and the apes-attack thriller Blood Monkey. Like those two stinkers, this low-budget horror film stars a washed-up actor (Web had Lance Henriksen, Monkey had F. Murray Abraham and this has Gary Busey), and an animal on the loose. Here it’s a really big tiger stalking small-town America. As the bodies start piling up, Sheriff Grady (Busey) has to find out what it is. To make matters worse, there’s an ultra-religious mother whose creepy little boy has some sort of bond with the killer cat.

This film is pretty generic, but it’s actually not as bad as the last two in this series. Busey is competent and the mother/son situation is handled in a way that, while Mom is a bit overzealous in her convictions, she is never portrayed as a Piper Laurie Carrie nutcase. It’s a much more realistic film than Web or Monkey and I think that helps a little. I also like that fact that while Grady saves the day (no big spoiler there, really), he does it by complete accident and by a bit of incompetence.

There are no special features to be found on the disc, not even a trailer.

Given the track record for the Maneater Series, I expected another complete dog. Surprisingly, it’s fairly well-done and, while not a great film, is at least competent. There are certainly worse ways to spend an hour and a half.

3