• Directed by Michael Anderson
• Written by Luciano Vincenzoni and Sergio Donati
• Starring
  • Richard Harris
  • Charlotte Rampling
  • Will Sampson
  • Bo Derek
  • Keenan Wynn
• Produced by Luciano Vincenzoni
• Executive produced by Dino De Laurentiis

I suppose there are as many version of the American Dream as there are dreaming Americans, or immigrants to America. But here’s one I suspect as being the version unique to Italian directors: to make it big in Hollywood, where they can continue to make trend-following ripoffs and non-sequels with aplomb and decent budgets.

In other words, to be the next Dino De Laurentiis.

“What are YOU doing here?”
“A brief cameo.”
(With apologies to Peter Ustinov and Oscar the Grouch.)

Orca, naturally enough, was one of the many derivative followups to Jaws, the movie that almost single-handedly created the summer blockbuster. It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows the movies of the decade that most of said followups were generated by Italian studios, the ones always looking for a trend to drive into the ground in the quest for easy drive-in bucks. (We’re ignoring the legitimate Jaws sequels here, obviously, though the quality gap between the sequels and the ripoffs wasn’t nearly as wide as one might like to think.) But Orca… that was the biggie. There were Hollywood dollars to invest in that one, both for production and for advertising. (I remember seeing that killer whale on the backs of what seemed like hundreds of comic books in those days. Of course, that’s also where I got my greatest advertising exposure to MegaForce.) And thankfully, all of those resources weren’t wasted on a simple carbon-copy exploitation flick. Surprisingly, Orca has a lot going for it as a dramatic motion picture; much of it isn’t bad at all. Then, of course, there are those parts that are stupendously silly mixed in.

One such part is the opening sequence, which features a pretty-much extraneous great white shark just to remind the audience whose coattails this feature rode into production. The shark is after cetologist Rachel Bedford (Charlotte Rampling), scuba diving off the coast of Newfoundland to capture whalesong; and hunter-fisherman Nolan (Richard Harris) is after the shark, purely for the bounty. It’s not Nolan that saves Rachel, though; it’s a heroic killer whale who chews the shark to kibble just because he can.

That becomes the segue into the lecture at one of Rachel’s university classes, all about the killer whale. (Newfoundland Annoyance #1: Memorial University in Newfoundland, largest in Atlantic Canada, does indeed have a Marine Institute. However, I gotta doubt that they run a Cetology 101 class for General Ed credit, which is the only way I can imagine filling a lecture hall of that size full of note-scribbling undergraduates.) She spouts enough non-factual “facts” to lead me to believe that this movie actually takes place in an alternate universe, one in which,for example, the killer whale “is, without challenge, the most powerful animal on the globe.” (Oh yeah? I’d like to see how a killer whale would do in a WWF cage match!) Also, that killer whales are quite possibly as intelligent as humans, even though they may have nothing to say, and basically that they’re all New-Agey beatific creatures. Until they get angry. And you wouldn’t want to see them when they’re angry…

“Irish spaghetti. It’s an old family recipe.”

Nolan, though, has gotten the idea to hunt killer whales instead of sharks. (Why? Was there an international blockbuster movie about killer whales that brought them into the public eye? Hah.) Rachel tries to dissuade him, telling him that killer whales aren’t easily taken alive, but Nolan just winks her away with infuriating Irish nonchalance and goes on his merry way. (Newfoundland annoyance #2: given that the movie’s entirely set in Newfoundland, and all but a couple of characters are locals, could we at least have a hint of Newfie accent here somewheres? Rampling’s cold Britishisms aside, most of the cast sound like they hail from the environs of Cleveland. At first I thought Harris was attempting a Newfie accent and applauded the effort, even though he sounded nothing like a real Newfie. Then later they mention his character’s supposed to be Irish anyway. Ah, well; I suppose a major motion picture spoken almost entirely in Nowfoundland accents would have been nigh incomprehensible to most of the North American audience.)

Nolan takes out after a pod of whales (yes, that’s the term) and tries to harpoon the male; instead, he only clips his intended target and lodges the harpoon deep in the female, who responds with a piercing mammalian shriek. And once they get her strung up on board, she miscarries her disturbingly human-looking fetus onto the deck. (Eww.) Nolan’s a little more affected by this than he’d want to let on, but he’s not the most affected by a long shot. Remember that part about not pissing off a killer whale? Well, there’s one seriously pissed killer whale watching Nolan walk the decks right now with his big red rheumy eyes…

Nolan’s ship gets followed by a fin all the way in to harbor, and when Nolan in desperation sends his mate Novak (Keenan Wynn!) to cut the still-breathing female loose, Novak ends up getting eaten by the male right off the yardarm. (I guess you don’t have to matriculate from Sea World to do all of those tricks, huh?)

If only they had scored this scene with the 1812 Overture…

Now, there’s plenty of silly stuff to come, but I’ll give props where props are due: Nolan’s a pretty solid character, and Harris is a pretty solid actor playing him. The fisherman’s a swaggering type who gets a double load of guilt right off the bat, both with killing a surprisingly human animal, and with getting his longtime shipmate chomped. But he’s got that whole male pride thing going, that puts him on the defensive in order to save face whenever anyone starts to push.

That’s the good part. The silly part is pretty much everything else. I can accept a whale with a surprising amount of intelligence, even one with rudimentary problem-solving abilities and, as Rachel informed her class, a keen instinct for vengeance. (Say — maybe Nolan and the killer whale are BOTH Irish!) But this particular orca seems to have been the understudy for Rutger Hauter in The Hitcher, creating havoc all around Nolan to turn people against him and to cause psychological anguish. It sinks the other boats in the harbor around Nolan’s; it drives the fish from the fishing grounds; at one point, it shows a remarkable grasp of engineering by busting some fuel lines near the shore that just happen to start a fire that just happens to run all the way back up the hill and just happens to ignite/explode the huge fuel tanks. (It’s Jaws meets The Hitcher meets Rube Goldberg!)

Rachel appoints herself Nolan’s personal cetacean advisor, psychoanalyzing the whale to a degree that would be ludricous for a human, much less a huge aquatic mammal with few analogous social structures. Plus, being Charlotte Rampling, she displays that curious British Ice Maiden vibe that made her a blip on the pop cultural radar (see also Zardoz). Somehow, that standoffish British demeanor doesn’t mesh well with a role written as a pseudo-Gaian feminist.

“She’s got leg / She knows how to use it…”

But she’s not even close to being the most ridiculous human character. No, that dubious honor has to go to Umilak (Will Sampson), the Designated First Nations¹ Wise Man, who comes along spouting “here’s what my ancestors would have said” bunkum so threadbare you could probably write it yourself. Listen, I have nothing against Native culture, and I recognize that there is much wisdom to be had, and much more that was lost, about relating to nature and the environment as a partner rather than an adversary. But the fact remains: being Indian doesn’t automatically make you wise. Nor does citing your ancestors — what’s the guarantee that the ancestors in question knew what they were talking about? Change the speaker to a Deep South redneck and listen to him say, “Wull, my granpappy sed killer whales taste jes’ like chicken.” Does the attribution immediately convince you of the sageness of the speaker? I hope not. And it’s not like Umilak contributes anything consistent, as his role is apparently to transmit nonsensical information to add to Nolan’s conflicted conscience: “You must face him,” “You must leave town,” “You can’t leave town,” “Trust the Force,” “Have some paté,” etc.

It seems that, for every plus this movie had going for it, there was a minus shoehorned in to lend balance. The pissed-off killer whale has a notch in his dorsal from Nolan’s harpoon, which is a competent visual cue; unfortunately, it’s only visible on the prop fin, as killer whales have a standard contract releasing them from the application of any latex FX appliances. Nolan’s believably shaken by encountering such a sentient-seeming animal when all he expected was a warm-blooded fish; but then his pathos is jacked up by his backstory — his wife and unborn child were killed by a drunk driver years ago, so now he finds himself playing the part of the drunk driver. (Call me a softie, but I think seeing a screaming whale miscarry a baby-shaped fetus on my deck would be fully enough to shake me to the core without any conveniently analogous pre-existing trauma.)

Simple reviewer obligations force me to mention that Bo Derek is here in her first film role, playing Annie, another member of Nolan’s crew. She doesn’t make much of an impression, truthfully; her largest impact on the story is in losing a leg to a killer whale who also knows enough about structural engineering to knock a seaside house off its moorings.

Sit further from the middle of the see-saw to maximize your leverage!

Even productorial afterthoughts follow that same yin/yang pattern. It’s apparent that somebody realized that the bad parts were dragging down the few good ones. Their fix, however, was one that never works: after-the-fact voiceovers. Voiceovers rarely work outside of hardboiled detective stories, in which they’re meant to replicate the sardonic first-person tone of the novels they’re based on. When a movie’s first voiceover comes not at the beginning, but a good ten minutes into the movie, it’s pretty obvious that it’s being used desperately as “spackle” — and when the only function of the voiceovers (there are three, all from Rachel) is to second-guess the on-screen action, well…

Now add on a last twenty minutes which takes place over the course of several days as Nolan and his dwindling crew (Say hi, new crewmember meant as obvious whale fodder! Whoops, not quick enough…) follow the orca clear to the arctic because… hell, I dunno. Because Nolan’s determined to meet the whale in an arena of the whale’s own choosing to redeem himself. Or because the production designer really really liked making styrofoam icebergs. Take your pick.

But wait – the nibbling’s not over yet!

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 5 (plus one great white shark and 2 killer whales)
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 8
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0

1. Calling them ”Native Americans” in Canada is a serious faux-pas.[back]