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!

Maneater (2007) ** (out of 4) Sci-Fi Channel movie is yet another Jaws rip, although this one has a few things going for it. A giant tiger is eating people in an Appalachian Mountains town so the sheriff (Gary Busey) and a bounty hunter (Ian D. Clark) try to track it down and kill it. Both of these characters are directly out of the Jaws handbook but thankfully both actors give very good performances so this weakness is the script can be overlooked. The story itself is another story as it's very weak and doesn't really offer anything new that we haven't seen countless times before. The one added storyline is a young boy who seems to have a connection with this tiger but this here comes off very forced and silly. The tiger used was real except for a few scenes where a CGI one was used.

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.