In 1975, the movie Jaws
was released into theaters and helped to change the course of movies. It is commonly cited as the first major
blockbuster film and ushered in the modern age of blockbuster filmmaking. Another thing that the success of Jaws bred was a slew of nature horror
movies. In the five or ten years
following Jaws, many other movies playing on similar themes were released. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw the release
of movies such as Piranha and Grizzly.
The movies attempted to capitalize of the same sort of fear that Stephen
Spielberg’s movie tapped into, with varying degrees of success. Another movie in this wave of animal attack
movies was 1977’s Orca.
Orca came out in
1977 in the wave of the success of Jaws. But you already know that. I already said that. It stars Richard Harris as Captain Nolan, a
ship captain who goes out hunting a killer whale that has been killing sharks
and stuff. When he shoots the wrong
whale, the targeted killer whale comes after him with a vengeance. This leads to death, destruction, and a lot
of insanity in this nature horror movie that has become a cult classic of
sorts. I probably won’t do it justice in
this week’s post, but I sure will try.
Like most movies that I have watched for the Sunday “Bad”
Movies, there are some crazy things that happen in Orca. I want to take this
post to list off five different details within the movie. These are aspects of Orca that make it into the movie that it is.
1. The killer whale knows who it is hunting.
One thing that doesn’t usually go over too well in a movie
is having the animal be getting revenge on the people who wronged it. For example, in Jaws: The Revenge, the great white follows the Brody family away
from Amity Island and goes after them for what happened in the previous
films. That’s why it is The Revenge. The shark is going out of its way for
revenge.
Orca has a similar
story. The killer whale that witnessed
the death of another whale (and the fetus inside that whale) goes after the man
who did the killing. Through any means necessary,
it tries to kill the man in some form of whale justice. These means become exceedingly more ludicrous
as the movie goes on.
2. There is a dead great white shark found at the beginning of
the film.
In a pointed attack at Jaws,
near the beginning of Orca, the
killer whale murders a great white shark that Captain Nolan is hunting. Thus, Nolan changes his target to the killer
whale. The murder of the great white
shark is what causes the entire story of the movie to take place. If it weren’t for that death, Nolan wouldn’t
have been hunting the whale, wouldn’t have caused the death of the wrong whale,
and wouldn’t have been targeted.
Clearly, the death of the great white shark at the beginning
of the film was a jab at Jaws. The first Jaws
had come out two years prior to Orca
and this movie needed to find a way to top it.
Everyone was afraid of the great white shark at the time. The only way to make the killer whales more
frightening was to have them kill a great white. It was a moment of “Step over Jaws, Orca is here.” And it set the movie in motion. This would later be countered by Jaws 2 when a shark killed an orca. This was like the late 70s film version of
two rappers writing songs about each other.
3. The movie was filmed mostly in Newfoundland.
There is a whole lot of Newfoundland in this movie, from the
fishing towns to the animals to the icebergs that appear later on in the
movie. Also notable is the fact that
Richard Harris is Irish and Charlotte Rampling is English. Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949, before
which it was a British territory. Many
of the people there in 1977 still had ties to their British ancestry or lives,
as many still there probably do. So
having the main characters be infused with this British touch is semi-realistic
to the way Newfoundland is and was.
4. The killer whale is a good strategist.
The whale in Orca
knows what it is doing when it comes to getting revenge on the man that wronged
it. It seems as though it has planned
out its attacks well enough that it can almost perfectly execute them. This good strategy begins when the whale goes
into a harbour and punctures the hulls of a bunch of boats, ensuring that the
people will not be able to come after it.
Later on, the shark manages to destroy the supports of a house built
over the water so that the house will collapse.
During this scene, the whale manages to eat someone’s leg, so that plan
worked for that much. Finally, near the
end of the movie, the whale launches an attack on Captain Nolan and his boat by
pushing an iceberg towards it. The whale
knows where to push on the iceberg so that it doesn’t tip right over, and it
knows what direction to go so that the iceberg will hit the boat, without being
able to see around the obstruction. This
is a smart whale.
5. The movie begins with a bunch of killer whales splashing in
the water.
Most horror movies tend to start with a scene meant to bring
the audience into the action. Jaws had the first death of the
movie. Scream had Drew Barrymore not knowing the killer in the first Friday the 13th movie. Orca…
Well, it had whales splashing in the water.
This is a common thing I have seen in nature horror. The first scene might not be a horrific
scene, but rather something to set up a theme within the movie. In the case of Orca, that theme is the familial nature of whale pods. Pods of whales treat each other like families
and will travel together through the ocean waters. The first scene of Orca sets that up by showing a pod of whales surfacing and going
under water; jumping out of the water and landing with a large splash. It gives a little bit of background to the
whale revenge story that the movie has.
Orca is a movie
that makes a whale out to have the same intelligence and emotional range as a
human. I don’t know anything about the
intelligence of a whale, but it seems unrealistic to me that a whale would have
the same emotions in regards to revenge as a human being. The concept of whale revenge is one that
might seem interesting on paper. It
doesn’t completely work as a movie. Orca is still entertaining enough for a
watch. It is hard to take seriously, yet
it’s still fun to watch. For a movie
made to capitalize on the success of Jaws.
I’ve got a few notes here for you guys before you head off
for the week:
- Other animal horror movies I’ve covered are Two-Headed Shark Attack, Shakma, Big Ass Spider!, Snakes on a Train, Anaconda, Frogs (which might be the best comparison to Orca that I’ve covered), Birdemic, and Zombeavers.
- I mentioned Friday the 13th in the post, and would like to remind you that I’ve covered two films in the franchise. First, I covered Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. Later on, I covered Jason Goes to Hell.
- Have you seen Orca? What did you think of it? Did I do it justice with this post (I don’t think I did)? There’s a comments section below if you want to discuss the movie.
- You can also use the comments section to suggest movies for me to watch in the future. If you want me to watch something for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, suggest it. Either in the comments, like I said, or on Twitter. I take 95% of movies into consideration when making the schedule. I did reject someone’s idea of Gladiator once, so I’ll admit to that.
- Next week’s movie is Chicks Dig Gay Guys and I am super afraid of what this movie is going to be. It’s likely going to be a terrible comedy. I watched the trailer once and was astonished at what I was seeing. So, that’s going to be an interesting one. See you next week.
