So I watched this show on Discovery Channel the other week called Bear Feeding Frenzy, which is about a man who—for the purposes of science—fashions a tent out of smoked salmon, dunks it in sexy she-bear urine, puts a peanut-butter-smeared humannequin inside, then parks the whole thing in the middle of Main Street, Bear City, USA, thus irrefutably proving that bears have an insatiable appetite for human flesh.

It's science! As the bears devour the tent, the man sits several feet away in a small plastic cube (or, as it's known in science, PREDATOR SHIELD™), yelling things like "BOY, BEARS SURE DO WANT TO EAT HUMAN FLESH" and "THE ONLY WAY OUT OF HERE IS THROUGH A GRIZZLY'S COLON!" and "IF IT WEREN'T FOR THE PREDATOR SHIELD™ AND THE FACT THAT I AM NOT MADE OF PEANUT BUTTER AND FISH INNARDS, THESE BEARS WOULD WASTE NO TIME IN GOBBLING ME FOR SURE." What a dumbass.

Anyway, that whole experience led me to hunger for real knowledge about bear attacks (is my family safe!!!??!?!?!), which led me to Wikipedia (my favorite book), which led me to two life-changing tales of bear fear and awesomeness. And—look!—both of them have been made into movies! For me!

Tale #1: Way back in 1915, before every inch of Japan was covered in electric lobsters and time-traveling phone booths and bearproof karaoke pods, they still had things like snow and villages and bears. Kesagake, the bear, awoke early from his hibernation. Fuck! He was sooo hungry! He went to the village, looking for delicious corn. Instead he found a delicious lady and a baby, so he ate them. The villagers formed an armed guard to find Kesagake and exact revenge. Kesagake fled into the woods, leading all the guardsmen on a mad chase down what they thought was his bear trail. But then Kesagake was all, "PSYCH, BITCHEZ!" and doubled back to the house where everyone else was hiding. THEN HE ATE THE ENTIRE VILLAGE. The end.

If that's not the most needingest-to-be-made-into-a-horror-movie story EVER, then cover me with urine and leave me in a bear's boudoir. (Wait, don't, though.) In 1990, Sonny Chiba directed Yellow Fangs, loosely based on the Kesagake story. It features an awesomely floppy bear puppet (RAWRRR!!!) and some boring family politics, and it throws in a weird sexual element: "It eats only women. So far it's killed all 12. It ate five of them. All of them women." Hmm. Hot.

Tale #2: Wayer backer in 1823, a grizzled frontiersman named Hugh Glass was frontiersmaning all about in South Dakota or something, when he experienced the sinking feeling that comes with a bear's hot mouth closing on one's face. When his comrades left him for dead, he set his broken leg, stuffed some moss and maggots into his gushing back wound, and then CRAWLED ONE HUNDRED MILES TO SAFETY. The 1971 film—Man in the Wilderness, starring Richard Harris—is definitely the most exciting movie ever made about crawling. Using only his beard and his grizzledness and his wizarding prowess, the young Dumbledore groans a lot, eats a live crab, and earns the respect of a wolf. None of this would have been possible without the evil, black heart of a killer bear. Thank you, bears.