After the enormous success of Jaws, a film that introduced the concept of the summer blockbuster, the studios raced to bring out their own monster animal movies. 1976 saw Grizzly but by 1977 they had had time to really start churning out their own deep sea monster movies. ‘Tentacles’ was the first, a low budget Italian movie with an A-star cast that included John Huston, Henry Fonda, Claude Atkins and some rubber tentacles. The Italians led the way with their monster movie cash ins and producer Dino De Laurentiis was no slouch in that respect. Having arrived in Hollywood he had given the world the decent thriller Serpico and at the other end of the spectrum, ‘Death Wish’ that would forever define Charles Brosnan, an actor whose face increasingly resembled that of a gnarled monkey scrotum. But the producer had also given the world an expensive remake of King Kong and the monster fest continued with Orca that rode the wave of giant killer fish films.
The script for Orca was set around the hunt for a great white shark by the obsessive Captain Nolan (Richard Harris) who accidentally kills a pregnant orca. Seeking vengeance, her mate begins to terrorise the nearby fishing village in a rampage of death and destruction. Realising that only he can bring an end to the carnage, Nolan sets out on a deadly quest to face his enemy from the deep…
The story of a killer fish out for revenge was obviously ludicrous as so well illustrated by the nonsense that was 1987’s Jaws the Revenge but the Orca script had been crafted by Sergio Donati and Luciano Vincenzoni both of whom had worked with the great Sergio Leone on his spaghetti westerns. The Orca script, was low on thrilling set pieces a la Jaws but nevertheless was not without its merits with an environmental theme that was years ahead of its time. De Laurentiis had assembled a decent crew headed up by veteran London born director Michael Anderson with an impressive array of films that included the classic The Dambusters, Around the World in 80 days (1956), and Logan’s Run and was more than up to the job of handling action spectacle. To this was added composer Ennio Morricone, editor John Bloom (who would later edit and win an Oscar for Gandhi) and the cast was no less impressive with the late Richard Harris who was growing increasingly disenchanted with Hollywood, Charlotte Rampling who had made an impact with the controversial The Night Porter a few years previously and fledgling actress Bo Derek in what was her first big screen role before she hit major stardom in Blake Edwards smash hit comedy, ‘10’.
Spielberg’s Jaws shoot had been notoriously problematic and its stories of a massively over running schedule and a mechanical shark that rarely worked were legion and De Laurentiis, ever one to watch his budgets, had used footage of two killer whales combined with rubber prop fins dragged through the sea surface and it was far more convincing than the sagging rubber shark of Jaws and director Anderson combined this with a number of striking shots most notably the orca arching over the sea surface with an exploding sea port in the background working especially well alongside model work that included Captain Nolan’s port side home on stilts being taken out by the orca would later be used by Shane Black in his scripts in not dissimilar fashion in Lethal Weapon 2 and later again in Iron Man 3.
Released in summer 1977 Orca was a year ahead of Jaws 2 hoping to capture that same audience and ultimately whilst never getting near to the heights of Spielberg’s film it was still a decent enough film and made a modest $14m worldwide, a far cry from Jaws $477m.
Orca how has a new 4K restoration as part of Cult Classics Collection and whilst its transfer is as high in quality as might be expected it is thin on bonus features with the only one being an interview with Philippe Guedj (no, us neither) talking about the film which is mostly informative though as it goes on he does start waxing lyrical a little too much. Albeit with director Anderson, star Harris and producer DeLaurentiis no longer with us its only Rampling who could have provided a commentary but even a standalone interview with her would have been appreciated and let’s be honest though Bo Derek is barely in it we would have been happy with a short interview with her. Apart from this single interview the Blu-ray edition also includes four art cards.
Running at a brief 92 minutes Orca was one of the better killer animal movies that followed in the wake of Jaws success
related feature : ‘Something in the Water’ – shark talk with Hayley Street & cast Hiftu Quasem & Natalie Mitson
related feature : The worst killer animal movies ever!
Here’s the Orca the Killer Whale trailer…..
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