Orca (1977 film)

Orca (also known as Orca: The Killer Whale) is a 1977 American horror thriller film directed by Michael Anderson and produced by Dino De Laurentiis, starring Richard Harris, Charlotte Rampling and Will Sampson. The film follows a male orca tracking down and getting revenge on a fishing boat and its captain for killing the whale's pregnant mate and their unborn calf.

Upon release, the film was a minor box office success, but received mostly unfavorable reception from critics and audiences alike due to its similarities to the film Jaws, released two years prior.

In 2004, Paramount Home Entertainment released Orca on Region A DVD. In 2017, Umbrella Entertainment released Orca on Region B Blu-ray with a new 4-minute interview with Martha De Laurentiis. On June 30, 2020, Scream Factory released Orca on Region A Blu-ray with an improved video transfer.

Plot
Captain Nolan is an Irish Canadian fisherman living in South Harbour, Nova Scotia who catches marine animals in order to pay off the mortgage on his boat, the Bumpo, and eventually return to Ireland. Nolan's crew is currently looking for a great white shark on behalf of a local aquarium, but the aquarium's representative, Ken, is targeted by the shark. An orca intervenes and kills the shark, saving Ken's life.

This switches Nolan's target to the much more valuable orca. He attempts to harpoon the creature, but accidentally strikes a female orca instead, leaving her with a fatal wound. Nolan and his crew get the orca on board, where she subsequently miscarries. The captain hoses the dead fetus overboard as her mate looks on, screaming in anguish.

The enraged male tries to ram Bumpo. Nolan's first mate, Novak, cuts the dead female loose to distract their attacker but the orca jumps the boat and takes him with it under the ocean. The following day, the orca pushes his now-dead mate onto the shore. Al Swain, who heads the local fishermen's union, berates Nolan for his actions after finding the dead female orca. Nolan agrees to kill the male, as the presence of an angry orca is causing the fish that are vital to the village's economy to migrate. The orca continues its vengeance by sinking several fishing boats and rupturing underwater oil pipes to deprive the villagers of fuel.

Rachel Bedford, a colleague of Ken's and an experienced cetologist, shows Nolan how similar orcas are to humans and tells him that, "If he (the orca) is like a human, what he wants isn't necessarily what he should have."

Nolan confesses to Bedford that he empathizes with the orca, as his own wife and unborn child had previously been killed in a car crash caused by a drunk driver. Nolan promises Bedford that he will not fight the orca, but that night it attacks his home on the seafront, resulting in injured crewmember Annie losing her left leg. After seeing her in the hospital, Nolan recruits his only other remaining crewman, Paul, along with Ken, Branford, and Jacob Umilak, a Mi'kmaq hunter, to pursue the orca.

The crew begins to follow the orca after he signals Nolan to follow him. Ken (who was saved by the orca at the beginning of the film) is leaning over the side when the orca surfaces and grabs him with its jaws, killing him. They follow the orca until they reach the Strait of Belle Isle, but when Paul loses his nerve and tries to flee in the lifeboat, the orca smashes it and he drowns. The next day, the orca maneuvers Nolan to collide with an iceberg. The captain manages to harpoon the whale just as he and Bedford escape from the sinking Bumpo, but Umilak is crushed beneath an avalanche of ice just after sending out an SOS.

Nolan and Bedford hide on an iceberg, although Nolan slips onto another so that the orca will separate them and save her life. The orca jumps onto the ice, causing it to tilt and sending Nolan into the water, before catching him with its tail and hurling him to his death against the ice while Bedford looks on helplessly. With his revenge complete, the orca swims southward under the ice, while a helicopter is seen coming to rescue Bedford.

Cast

 * Richard Harris as Captain Nolan
 * Charlotte Rampling as Rachel Bedford
 * Will Sampson as Jacob Umilak
 * Bo Derek as Annie
 * Keenan Wynn as Novak
 * Robert Carradine as Ken
 * Peter Hooten as Paul
 * Scott Walker as Al Swain
 * Don "Red" Barry as Dockworker
 * Yaka and Nepo as The Orca.

Production
Producer Luciano Vincenzoni was first assigned to give the film a head start after being called by Dino de Laurentiis in the middle of the night in 1975. Upon admitting that he had watched the film Jaws, Vincenzoni was instructed by de Laurentiis to "find a fish tougher and more terrible than the great white". Having had little interest in sea life beforehand, Vincenzoni was directed to killer whales by his brother Adriano, who had a personal interest in zoology.

Filming took place in the town of Petty Harbour, about 20 kilometres south of St. John's.

The main orcas used for filming were trained animals from Marineland of the Pacific and Marine World Africa (Six Flags Discovery Kingdom), though artificial rubber whales were also used. These models were so lifelike that several animal rights activists blocked the trucks transporting them, confusing them for real orcas. The shark used early in the film was captured by noted shark hunter Ron Taylor. The scenery meant to represent a remote polar region of Labrador was fabricated in Malta by designer Mario Garbuglia.

According to Vincenzoni, Richard Harris had begun to drink heavily on set after reading a tabloid magazine and seeing a photograph of his wife Ann Turkel on a beach with a younger man. He reportedly intended to stop performing and fly to Malibu in order to kill them, relenting only after getting into a brawl which resulted in Vincenzoni getting a black eye. The 46-year-old Harris insisted on performing his own stunts in the polar sequences and was nearly killed on several occasions.

Reception
The film grossed $3.5 million from 775 theatres in its opening weekend and went on to gross $14,717,854 in the United States and Canada.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 9% based on 35 reviews and an average rating of 3.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Content to regurgitate bits of better horror movies, Orca: The Killer Whale is a soggy shark thriller with frustratingly little bite." A contemporary review published by Variety called the film "man-vs-beast nonsense", and lamented that "fine special effects and underwater camera work are plowed under in dumb story-telling." Richard Schickel of Time wrote that the filmmakers behind Orca "thumbed heavily through the literature of the sea in their search for dramatic cliches", and called the film "inept" and "suspenselessly shot". Gary Arnold of The Washington Post criticized the film's special effects and referred to it as "essentially a rehash of an earlier De Laurentiis hit, Death Wish, with the killer whale in Charles Bronson role."

Orca has been unfavorably compared to Jaws. Both Schickel and Arnold drew comparisons between the films, and Bob Thomas of the Associated Press called it "just another attempt to copy Jaws". Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader called the film an "incoherent blend of Moby-Dick, King Kong, and Jaws, hindered by what appears to be extensive reediting". However, Richard Harris enjoyed his experiences during filming and took offence at comparisons between Orca and Jaws.