As the world celebrates the mega-landmark 50th anniversary of Jaws, Shudder says “Oh yeah, well WE have Orca!” Released in 1977 to crassly capitalize on the shark-flick phenom, “killer whale” flick Orca copycatted its way to cult-movie status, which means those of us of a certain vintage used to watch it on cable on Saturday afternoons, enduring the boring people-talking parts in order to get to the thrilling monsters-killing parts. Funny facts: The movie skims from Moby Dick as much as it does from the Spielberg classic. It boasts some heavy-hitters in Richard Harris and Charlotte Rampling. Its director, Michael Anderson, helmed best picture Oscar winner Around the World in 80 Days a couple decades prior. And it marked the silver-screen debut for Bo Derek, debuting two years before she became a ubiquitous sex symbol in 10 – shame about those famously sexy legs, though, since they don’t survive the movie intact.
The Gist: We open with several minutes of nature-doc footage of orcas cavorting in the sea. Their chirpy whalesongs are supposed to sound haunting, but they seem pretty cute and happy. Cut to: a great white shark. GOTTA have a great white shark in the movie or it might not have a reason to exist! Nolan (Harris), captain of junker fisherboat the Bumpo, hunts the big toothy fish off the coast of Newfoundland, hoping to snare it to sell to an aquarium. But his harpoonery is disrupted by a couple of scuba divers researching orcas, one of whom comes dangerously close to getting shark-chomped when an orca races in, slams into the shark and kills the crap out of it. One of the divers is Rachel Bedford (Rampling), a scientist who exists in the movie to explain things, e.g., “There’s only one creature in the world that can do that – a killer whale!”
Next, a classroom. Professor Rachel explains things some more, to her rapt students. She knows everything there is to know about orcas, from the mythology to their physiology and psychology. Yes, psychology: “As parents, killer whales are exemplary, better than most human beings,” she says with a straight face. “And like human beings, they have a profound instinct for vengeance.” Oooh – foreshadowing! Savor it, my friends. It’s the priceless ambergris of this narrative. But what she doesn’t quite understand is the nature of human lust, because she finds herself strangely attracted to the rugged Nolan, who looks like he smells like 20 years of chum. Maybe she has a thing for men in cable-knit sweaters? Inspired by the orca-shark incident, Nolan shifts focus to the whales, hoping to capture one, which gives Rachel an excuse to turn up wherever he is and give him stern, but subtly sexy lectures of a type that can only be delivered with conviction by Charlotte Rampling circa the late 1970s.
And so Nolan hops in the Bumpo with a couple of men who have the air of the expendable, and Bo Derek, who remains remarkably well-clothed considering the era. He spots a pod of whales and fires his harpoon, winging a big ’un and taking a chunk out of its dorsal fin before it fatally spears another whale. Nolan hauls in the beast and then learns that it’s the big ’un’s wife. No, really. If you listened to Rachel’s lectures, you’d know that orcas in this movie mate for life (fact check: 10 Pinocchios. In reality, orcas are total swingers). The big ’un rears its head out of the water and screams. The incident results in the movie’s most highly dramatic and therefore hilarious scene, which I would never dream of spoiling. It’s just one of those things you’ve gotta see for yourself.
Did Nolan just eff with the wrong whale? You bet he just effed with the wrong whale. Needless to say, the widower orca ain’t happy with this development, and therefore indulges its Profound Instinct For Vengeance by ramming the Bumpo and smashing other boats in the harbor, thus making Nolan the target of ire of all the local fishermen. See, this whale is whoa-smart and understands sociology ‘n’ shit. There’s a great moment where Nolan walks out on a rocky outcropping and has a staring contest with the orca. Then Rachel introduces him to Jacob Umilak (Will Sampson of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), the Mystical Native American character who explains that the only way to end the whale’s reign of terror is for Nolan to fight him. So Nolan crews up the Bumpo (note: I really need to have “Bumpo” airbrushed on the stern of my Ford Fusion) and heads out to sea to finish this, man to cetacean.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I think Rachel would rather uncapitalize and unitalicize Free Willy with regards to fisherhunk Nolan. Otherwise, Orca is about on par with Alligator and Piranha in terms of primo animals-attack B-schlock, and there were bits where it gave me some hard, pipe-hittin’ Night of the Lepus vibes.
Performance Worth Watching: Weird how Harris and Rampling grant this movie charismatic performances it clearly doesn’t deserve. He keenly expresses some of his inner turmoil as he empathizes with his orca rival. And she smolders oh-so-quietly beneath approximately two dozen expressions of serious concern.
Memorable Dialogue: Rachel – who notably sleeps only with piles of books and papers – aims this zinger at Nolan like a big ol’ harpoon: “It’s creatures like you science should be observing!”
Sex and Skin: After all that, disappointingly, none.
Our Take: Hampered by a bimbobrained plot and phony science, occasionally padded with benign nature-doc footage, and boasting editing as choppy as stormy seas and a deeply deficient sense of romance, Orca is hilarious garbage ripe for an afternoon of popcorn and hard liquor – but you’ll be fine with a mixer, reserving straight shots of prison toilet vodka for newer, far more cynical and ironic crap like Cocaine Bear. It’s charmingly dated, but as rigorously directed as any one-note quasi-grindhouse movie from the ’70s, with real stars acting their asses off, soldiering through wonderfully dumb dialogue like the total pros they are. And as the plot cribs increasingly heavily from Melville, it leads to a mighty showdown with a big plastic whale that pays off like two pennies spat from a penny slot machine.
The subtext is – ha ha, right? Good one. It’s nil. Feel free to make your hands cramp up as you try to wring a conservationist message from this bone-dry rag. That leaves us wholly with metatextual observations addressing the ingenuity of pre-CG visual effects, Orca deploying real location photography (some of it objectively beautiful), mostly convincing miniature models and a mixture of real-whale stock footage and a mechanical whale that’s almost (but not quite) savvy enough for us not to see the seams. There’s some craft to the film that, while not particularly impressive, and at best adequate for its time, isn’t worthy of this dipshit plot riddled with Grand Canyonian chasms of logic. Of course, I’m not talking about the many, many shoddy overlays that use the same shot of a breaching orca over and over again atop scenes of destruction. Those moments suck profoundly, but are hella funny.
One can only conclude that Orca breached from the drink two years after Jaws to illustrate the genius of Spielberg, who overcame the implausibilities of its hungry-shark story by ruthlessly and skillfully nurturing massive amounts of deeply irrational fear. By comparison, Orca never transcends its myriad orcas-don’t-do-that moments, and is therefore a comedy. That’s the generous take, far nicer than calling it the half-assed thriller it so obviously is.
Our Call: Even shameless ripoffs can be fun – more so if you’re nursing a buzz. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.