Orca (1977): A Revenge Western at Sea

0:01 He never put to her a well by accident, it's not your style. What can I do? But you can stop looking at me as if I'm the crazy one. Well, I must say I'm amazed that she swam up here against the wind and the tide. She didn't swim her mate pushed her. INQUI didn't you anchor your boat in here last night? I did? Just out there? He followed you, He won, He followed you.

0:43 Welcome to the Cinematic Flashback Podcast. Get ready to hop into the way back machine as we journey through the wild, bold, and unforgettable films of the nineteen seventies. Each episode, we break down a classic movie or a forgotten jim, seeing how it performed then and now, and wrapping things up by asking did a groof of the decades or did it lose its beat? I am your host, Chuck Brian, and today we are reviewing Michael Anderson's nineteen seventy seventh film Orca, starring Richard Harris, Charlotte Rampling, Will Sampson and Bo Derek. This is our first film in our Jobsploitation Month, where we are looking at two films that are swimming in the frenzy that Jaw's left in its wake. Joining me is my first mate, Matt. Sergeant Matt, good to see you again. How have you been?

1:33 I have been well, and I I captain Er. We're ready to set sail. I can't believe that we are already in August. The summer is almost over. We're looking forward to our fall lineup. But yet we are going to take just a little breather to look at some films that are I mean to be very honest, or are very new to me. Have you seen any of these before? No? I have not, And actually that's not one hundred percent true. The closing scene I remember, so it maybe that I did see this, but I intentionally or unintentionally forgot about it.

2:15 You know, it's really funny because I have the exact same memory of maybe seeing this on TV at some point, and I remember the scenes at the end. But yeah, you know, we started season two with French connection to and we spent some time talking about sequels, you know, the movies that come back for a second round after a successful first outing. But we're kind of moving into something a little bit different with Orca and Piranha. These really aren't sequels at all. They're just something completely different. Because if Steven Spielberg hadn't released Jaws in seventy five, I honestly do not believe that either of these movies would have existed.

3:00 I agree with you one hundred percent. Although I haven't seen Piranha before, I'm pretty sure that neither of these films would have been made, and that's probably a move in the right direction. Well, you know, it's funny the the level of killer animal movies that spawned off. I mean, there's a there's a movie called Prophecy about a mutated bear. There's a movie about an alligator that lives in the in the sewers that you know, I guess somebody flashed an alligator when they were a kid. Yeah, hilarious. And then there's let's see There's a Swarm, which kind of goes into the disaster movie. So it takes this killer animal and elevates it to a you know, a movie like Towering Inferno.

3:44 Yeah. I think this this is a is a response to any kind of film that kind of preys on our fears as humans, as someone outside their element and being pursued maybe no longer the hunter, but the hunted. And I think that's the theme that you're seeing on a lot of these, And yeah, they're great kind of movies to go to and check out for an hour and a half or two hours and kind of see the action in what's going on. Definitely the candy corn of the candy world. Yeah, well, these are kind of I mean, I call it jawsploitation. I think it's perfect name, it's absolutely perfect.

4:25 And last last time, I was talking about truck'sploitation, right, because you had some good truck movies and then all of a sudden it's like everybody's making less than top shelf. Yeah. I think that's one hundred percent true. You've heard it all before, you know, when someone says this is Jaws meets fresh water fishing, you know, this is Jaws but with a killer whale. You know, and immediately they throw money at it, because that's the way Hollywood does. Unfortunately, thousands of fabulous news stories out there. Again, we'll touch on my standard theme of why are you making sequels when there's so much great new material out there? Why are you making cheap copies? When? Yeah, and honestly, in this film, when we'll talk about it as we go forward, I'm going to point out some places where this could have been a great movie. Right, it could have been a fabulously good movie. And I'll point out where I think it went wrong. It was this close, right, I think it's a bit close, a little bit farther at this point, Matt's arms are well, Leigh. I started off with a little finger of like an inch, you know, and then his arms went really wide. But again, and we will share with us as we go forward. In this podcast, it's talking about there are highlights in this film.

5:46 Some of them are sure maybe unintentional hilarity, and some of them are places where the story is kind of interesting. So we'll talk about it as we go forward. Sure, sure, Matt, who is talking to us this week? So we got this question from Spotify from listener The Eternal seventy three and I quote, Hi, guys, gret episode, is there a chance you could cover Friedkin's Cruising? Cheers? End quote. Technically Cruising is a nineteen eighty film, but it was filmed in the late seventies, So we'll throw it out to our listeners. Should movies filmed in the seventies but released in nineteen to eighty count or should we stick strictly to release dates. Let us know what you think on that question, and we welcomed that input.

6:35 Matt. Last month, you and I did something kind of fun. We went on a podcast and we talked about a movie we did. It was fun. We were invited to talk about a movie called Heist. It was really a lot of fun speaking with Jeff and and I hope everybody reaches out to download that episode in other episodes of a Film by podcast. Just to be fair, I reached out to Jeff and asked him if he might consider doing I Have the Needle, starring our friend Donald Sutherland. Like he's our friend at this point, we're just fanboys. But it's also directed by Richard Markwand who directed Return of the Jedi. So I pitched that to him and let's keep our fingers crossed that we might get to talk about that film. Finally.

7:25 Well, I think we pitched it to him that he should do that and he should then have us back. Yes, because it's. One of the films I really wanted a review. I love that film. In fact, he could have you on there without me. No, No, we're a team. I think it would be an entertaining episode. I would love to hear. That I have not watched it since literally when I saw it, so I have not rewatched it. The film it's based on the book by Ken Follen. So anyway, how did this movie happen? Chuck? You know, Matt. When I started doing the hat of this movie section, I was always worried, at what point will I find nothing about how a film happened? But Orca did not disappoint And it really starts this way.

8:14 It starts with getting a phone call in the middle of the night, and that usually is not a good thing. So Luciano Vincenzoni was asleep when his phone rang, and on the other end was his friend and producer Dino de Laurentis. He was one of the biggest producers in the business over a career that lasted more than sixty years. He produced everything from Fellini classics like Lestrata all the way to Hollywood films like Serpaco, King Kong, Flash, Gordon Conan, The Barbarian, the nineteen eighty four Dune in Blue Velvet. Dino wanted his own blockbuster creature movie, but instead of calling a horror writer, he called Luciano Vincenzoni. Now, I'm going to guarantee that most people will not recognize that name unless they happen to be fans of spaghetti western films, because venon Zoni helped write two of Sergio Leone's greatest spaghetti western films for a few dollars more and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. And that's a really odd combination to start a story about a movie about a killer whale. So back to that phone call. According to venein Zoni, Dino's first question was super simple. He just says, you know, have you seen Jaws? And you know when vengeen Zonie wipes the sleep out of his eyes. He says yes, and Dino says, good. Now find me a sea creature that's more formidable than a great white shark. Okay,

9:45 great ventionen Zoni's a writer, he's not a marine biologist, so he calls his brother, who's also not a marine biologist but a zoologist, and his brother suggested to him the killer Well. So vention Zoni is working with fellow screenwriter Sergio Donata. Benion Zoni developed the story that would become Orca. This project starts to attract some serious talent. Novelist Arthur Herzog, who was famous for writing pulp science fiction novels, took an early version of the screenplay and turned it into a novel that ultimately did not resemble the final product, and this is the exact same thing that happened with Jows two novelization. Then Robert Town, who was fresh off of his Oscar win for Chinatown, was brought in to polish the screenplay for English speaking audiences, and his work on the film went uncredited. And it is my opinion that it is Town's screenplay changes that attracted a lot of the talent that signed on for this film. You have Michael Anderson, who came aboard to direct after the success of Logan's Run. Richard Harris and Charlotte Rampling signed on to star, and composer Enio Moore Kone was brought on to write the music and more.

11:01 Coney also wrote the scores for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, as well as for a Few Dollars More, as well as many many more. So that's a pretty remarkable lineup for what I always remembered as the Killer Whale version of Jaws. I think all of that really surprised me once I got into it. But maybe that's exactly why Orca feels a little bit different from the wave of killer animal movies that followed Jaws. Dino de Laurentis set out to make another Jaws, but instead he made Orca, and that is how this film happened. That's crazy, and I love the callback to the good, the bad, and the ugly and for a few dollars more. Two of my favorite old spaghetti westerns. And I think I've mentioned on the podcast before my brother a yeahge fan of spaghetti westerns, so we watched them all. I love those You make great points, and it is interesting.

11:54 It is different than the Jaws. I think the difference is the creature is very intelligent and portrayed so in the film, and I think that brings a different kind of fear into the film than with Jaws. Jaws, you know, the shark is just a killing machine, perfectly designed to do one thing, eat and make more white sharks, right, That's literally all it does, so brainless essentially, and in this movie we really see the creature as a character with what is maybe anthropomorphized feelings and stuff like that. But that's how they're portraying it in it, and to some extent it makes it more scary because this thing is is incredibly powerful, you know, and we see you during the film that you know that some of it is attributed to blind rage.

12:52 It's doing it on purpose, right, Yeah, Well, we are ready to dive into the production and casting details of or but we need to step away for a quick break and we will be right back. It's thematic sash back the shore. It's a cinematic slashback the shot. The ancient Romans called him Orca, or Kindness Latin or bringer of death. He is, without challenge, the most powerful animal on the globe, the killer will. Orca has forty eight teeth set in two impressive rows. In some respects, the orca's intelligence may be even superior to man's. They remain loyal to one mate for life. As parents, they are exemplary better than many human beings, and like human beings, they have a profound instinct for vengeance. An innocent creature is destroyed by an act of human cruelty, and the ultimate battle of man against begins.

14:03 Dino de la Reno's presents ARCA welcome back. Let's get into the production details and talk about this cast. Orca was released on July twenty second, nineteen seventy seven, and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film was produced by Famous Film's Production and was international co production between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Italy. Michael Anderson directed the film. The screenplay was written by Luciano Vincenzoni and Sergio Donata and based on the story that they developed for the project. The movie was photographed by Ted Moore, whose credits include James Bond, Classics, Doctor No From Russia with Love and Goldfinger. Editing duties were handled by John Bloom, Marion Rothman, and Ralph Winters. Music was provided by Enio Marcone.

14:57 The production budget has been reported between six and seven and a half million dollars, and the film earned approximately fourteen point seven million dollars at the box office, which does not quite surpass the two and a half times, so this film officially did not make money. Critics were understandably brutal. Today, the film sits at ten percent on Rotten Tomatoes, while audiences are only slightly kinder at thirty three percent. So while Orca never becomes the next Jaws, it has developed a loyal cult following over the years. Matt, who do we have starring in this film? Well, of course, the orca, which is played by a variety of Wales, filmed in the wild, and I believe at Sea World.

15:50 And if you are an institute observer and know anything about orca's in captivity, will notice that the orcas switch out. Yes, they do a nice job of trying to keep in tune with the orca of the one we care about by using a nice little chunk out of his dorsal fin that was removed when things were happening, So that that's kind of cool. You get to see real orca films in the wild, and there's a few shots of a family group of orcas hunting and they're beautiful, absolutely beautiful animals. So can't get can't get enough of seeing the orcas. They are an amazing animal. I actually saw. Them in the wild when I was up on the Aleutian Islands. I didn't know that. Yeah, And the island that we were on, the orcas would chase sea lions up onto the beach. We were there when that happened.

16:40 I mean it's rough, man, it's rough. They chase them up onto the shore and the orcas themselves go shooting up. I think there's a there's actually a famous film of that of that actually happening, but we got to see a very small sort of vignette of that when we were on the island. It struck me that if anybody else other than Steven Spielberg would have directed Jaws, I think this is the same way that somebody else would have approached making Jaws, because I'm sure that just filming creatures in the natural wild and then superimposing maybe with either an animatronic shark that's less articulate, followed by dorsal fins that are being dragged around. I think they would have used similar techniques to what Anderson does in this film. Well, and I think that was Steven Spielberg's genius. Is that our imagination is what's driving Bielberg's genius and the inability for a mechanical shark to actually operate within salt water go figure.

17:39 Yeah, but happenstance. It works out better because we do see in the film of the Orca. We definitely see him in what appears to be a tank. But you have to suspend a little disbelief I understand that you do see some wild shots, but then in the movie there's some things that happened that look just like the tricks that activity do at Sea World. Just they're not getting a ball or a piece of fish, they're getting something else. I always wonder what the audience of nineteen seventy seven if their brains just you know, maybe recognized it, but it wasn't as obvious. But to me, of course maybe it was. No. I think you're right. Remember, our experience up until that point informs what we're seeing. So when we're seeing it's like, yeah, of course you're going to see a little edge of the captivity pool or something and you just ignore it.

18:30 Yeah. Right, nowadays we're just with CGI. It's so perfect. Just to talk about Star Wars real quick. That was one of the shocking things about Star Wars is up to that point, when you had a spaceship, you could almost see the hand holding it in front of a black screen, right, a little wire. Yeah. Yeah, Well then they used wires in Star Wars, but the way they used the film, the angles and showing the size, like even that opening scene that blows you aways where the star destroke comes over your head. Shocking. They've never seen anything like it. We talked about this in our Logan's Run episode ironically, also directed by Michael Anderson, that it was like we came out, was like, I can't believe that this movie opens within the same time frame that we get Star Wars.

19:19 It's just such an amazing difference between the old school and the new way of doing it. Now. Maybe for Orca it was much more of a financial reason. Well, and I think we can give it some grace. I mean, come on, yeah, looking at this in twenty twenty six and it was filmed in nineteen. That's amazing in and of itself. So let's move on to our next human star, Oh my god, which is Richard Harris. He plays cap. What is Richard Harris doing in this film? Well, he's doing everything it can to keep it afloat, let's put it that way. Fair play, fair play. So he's a fisherman who attempts to capture the killer whale that sets the film's tragic events in motion. Some other facts about Richard Harris. I mean everybody's probably heard of him. He was born in Limerick, Ireland in nineteen thirty.

20:09 I did not know that he was an Irish actor because I know him from his film where he played Dumbledore in two of the Harry Potter films, and I always thought he was British, right. He earned his first Academy Award nomination for the Sporting Life in nineteen sixty three. He starred in acclaim films including Camelot, A Man Called Horse That's where I remember him most for as A Man Called Horse a great movie, and The Molly Maguires Before Orca. He's known for portraying charismatic, flawed men with tremendous emotional depth. Oh wow, that describes no one. Yeah, yeah, I think it was an interesting choice to have him. He's a great actor. I do have to say it's almost fuermulaic to hire an Irish actor with an accent to play this role, because it sort of seems a lot like Quint. Although Quinn was trying to play somebody from New England, Riley didn't appear to be from New England. I through the whole movie I thought he was from I thought he was from Europe, probably from Ireland. But then he tells the story of the Indianapolis and I'm like, Okay, I guess he's pretending to.

21:19 Be from New England. Well, we've talked about Robert Shaw multiple times. We've covered multiple Robert Shaw films. Yeah, and I think every time we always say, Okay, which accent will he have today? From how what point? And then at what point won't become irish? Which is great. Not to say he's not a great actor. He's a great actor. Absolutely not. He's fantastic. So Charlotte Rampling plays Rachel, who is a marine biologist who spent her years studying killer wales, and throughout the films she serves as our guide and explaining a lot of the narrative dumping of the orca behavior and at the same time she's warning Nolan that he has underestimated the intelligence and emotional capacity of the animal. Now I recognized Charlotte Rampling from her movie or her appearance in the nineteen seventy four John Borman classic Czardas, where she starred opposite of Sean Connery playing Consuela.

22:21 She plays almost a very similar character. She was born in England, obviously, and she became one of Europe's most acclaimed actresses during the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies. She's known for taking intelligently psychologically complex roles such as the night Porter and Farewell, My Lovely, and her career continues to span more than six decades, earning her Academy Award in Emmy nominations later in life. So she is still working. Well. I one hundred percent recognized her, you know, I recognized her in her voice, but I could not place but I had seen her in and I went and looked it up. And it's because she's been in a lot of things, so it's one of those familiar actresses.

23:06 I think her natural kind of snootiness, maybe Mahse in this film is actually appropriate because she's a marine biologist, and she knows a lot about orcas, and it seems like nobody really knows, even in this fishing village, anything about them, except for maybe some of the Native Americans who have more about them. So she delivers a solid performance. She's in the whole film, obviously, and she also provides sort of that narrative backdrop. And I think maybe I was wondering about it because we all seem to, at least I know a lot about killer whales orcas, and I think maybe it's this film that caused that, because I don't think a lot of people knew about them before this film. Certainly people had seen them in Sea World and stuff like that, but I mean, I know it wasn't in the common zeitgeist like it is today.

23:59 You know, people know about what a killer whale is, an orca, how they hunt, how they are pen packs, and how amazing they are. But I don't think that was the case. So it was really important to have that narrative backdrop. I think there's been a lot of I guess from an ecological standpoint, I think there's been a lot more noticed in the last ten years on holding a lot of these animals in captivity and whether or not that's a good idea or not. There's actually another movie that came out much later that described some of the practices. It's a good documentary, definitely worth the time to take a look at. But obviously here in the nineteen seventies, we're not there yet. You mentioned the Mick mack Hunter played by Will Sampson. His name is Jacob Umelac, and he understands the orcas more through years of experience rather than scientific study. Again, like Rachel, Will Sampson He is a member of the Creek Nation from Oklahoma. He made his acting debut as Chief Bromdon in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nets, which we covered about a year ago.

25:05 He stood at six foot seven. He was pretty big guy. I mean. He was also known for conveying emotion with very little dialogue. He went in to appear in The White Buffalo, The Outlawed, Josie Wales, and Poltergeist to the Other Side, and he is widely regarded as one of the most influential Native American actors of the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties. One hundred percent agree. I recognized him immediately from One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. He's great, and then I also remembered it from The Outlaw Josie Wales, where he also, yes, plays a really interesting and I mean at that time's very funny character. Both great performances.

25:47 I am. I am a big fan. Again. I have to ask, what is Will Samson, Charlotte Rampling, and Richard Harris doing in this film. I think they were probably hired with the promise of making something different. You know, sometimes these things fall short and they've already turned in their performances. What happens in the editing room and that sort of thing is not really up to them. This movie does not seem to be the film that should have attracted this much talent. It's part that was very surprising to me. Anyways, I personally think that someone did a great job of quote unquote selling them on the concept of the film, and once they signed onto the film. I mean, it's very difficult for an actor to sort of extract themselves once they've made a commitment, and honestly, I don't think they want to because until filming is happening, they don't really know.

26:41 I mean, they've read, nobody knows. And obviously there was some churn to the story because there's the first and then the novel comes out of that and then the rewrite. So I think they were just committed and like anybody, if they say they're going to do it, they're going to do it. And also, I mean there's a payday associated with it. I'll bet you that even if they spent thirteen million was it thirteen million bucks. Something like that or something like that, and they made it made about fourteen so it barely broke even, right. So, but I'm just saying that the cost to make the film is this partly the salaries of the people that are yeah, the actor, so maybe there was some money to be made. I don't know sure sure. Our next actor is kind of the smaller part. It's Peter Houghton and he plays Paul, the young crewman aboard Nolan's boat who finds himself caught up in the increasingly dangerous hunt for the killer whale. He built his career as with guest appearances on television series including The Waltons, Mannix, The Mod Squad, and Marcus Welby NB. I actually remember him on The Waltons. I recognize his face and it's from I used to watch The Waltons All the Love the Waltons Show. Orcus was one of his few major studio film roles, later start as Steven Strange in the nineteen seventy eight television movie Doctor Strange, Marvel's first live action adaptation of the care.

28:00 I know you probably remembered The Incredible Hulk Show with Bill Bixby and Luf Farigno. Yeah, obviously, now everybody probably knows Doctor Strange from the Marvel cinematic universe, but there was a time when they were really trying to spring off of the popularity of the Incredible Hulk with other Marvel characters. I'll be honest with you, I was never a comics, you know, a graphic novel person at all. Yeah, so a lot of that stuff was if you're in that world of graphic novels and comic books and stuff like that, this was second nature. As soon as somebody said Doctor Strange or Steven Strange, you kind of knew the backstory. I'll be honest with you, I knew nothing about doctor Strange until he appeared in the major motion film, which was his origin story. I knew nothing about it. I didn't even know what he was. You know, like everybody knows what Superman is, you know what Batman is and Spider Man. I had no idea whose Strange was.

28:57 Now. I love that character, and I think it was played great in the movies. Amazing, It's really fun. But this is the problem with someone who wasn't into graphic novels and that kind of lure. Anyway, back to this film, I'm guessing that we could go on the YouTube and we could probably find the Doctor Strange movie. But the next actress who is in this film was Bo Derek and she plays Annie, who is a crew member of board Nolan's boat. This was just two years before she became an international star with Blake Edwards romantic comedy Ten in nineteen seventy nine, launching many many bad decisions at local hair salons at that time.

29:40 Her iconic beach running scene in ten made her one of the biggest pop cultural sensations of the late seventies. Yeah, the fair faucet poster and Bo Derek ten poster was on every teenage boys wall, not mine, but everybody had, and it was pretty fantastic. And it's cool to see in this film because she's honestly, she's a little miscast. I mean, anybody who would work on a boat obstensively, it's hard work. They're gonna be like kind of hard boiled and grizzled. She's still very beautiful and obviously the love interest of one of the other crew members, and just kind of odd that she's there. Okay, well we're gonna leave Bo Derek and we're going to talk about Robert Carodine, who plays Ken. Ken is Rachel's assistant who joins Nolan's final voyage in an effort to track down the rogue orca. He appears at the beginning of the film driving a little Robert Dinghy, then he kind of disappears, and then he appears later on Robert Carodine. We recognize the last name because he is a member of the legendary Carodeine acting family, which includes his father John and brother David and Keith. You may remember we talked about Keith Carodine in the film McCabe and Missus Miller. He was later wildly known as Lewis Skolnik in the Revenge of the Nerds films. Bringing up the rear is Scott Walker, who plays Al Swain, a local fisherman who becomes the

31:12 voice of the South Harbor community. Muppet fans may recognize him as Snake Walker, one of Doc Hopper's henchmen in The Muppet Movie nineteen seventy nine. We're going to cover that movie. It's a seventies movie. Can I ask you a question? Sure? Would you want to cover that movie? The Muppet Movie. I thought it was hilarious. I remember, okay, it was fun, okay, okay, I need to figure out what we're gonna into that would be Oh, well, we'll figure something out. I mean, the seventies is just a treasure trove of films that if you seek it, it will come to you. Wasn't there other puppet movies? Maybe we could do a puppet movie. One was The Never Ending Story in the seventies.

31:55 Oh that was the eighties. But what was it? What a fantastic flick? Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. Okay, let's take a look at the back of the box of this DBD Matt tell us what we're gonna see. Well, this is a little bit of what might be on the back of the box. But let's deliver it like it like it's an intro okay, sleek, intelligent, beautiful and hell bent on revenge. Dino Dan Laurentis and director Michael Anderson joined forces to present the rousing action adventure Tale of Orca the Killer Whale. It's the story of one powerful being against another, a strong, determined fisherman by the name of Captain Nolan versus an equally determined killer whale.

32:41 When the giant whale's pregnant mate is nimed and killed by Nolan, the whale seeks vengeance, smashing boats, attacking sea coast village and eventually luring his human adversaries into a final confrontation in the marine creature's own arctic turf. Charlotte Rampling, Will Sampson and Bo Derek, in her feature film debut, also star in the seafaring epic brimming with nail biting suspense and spectacular special effects. Ooh, they are somebody paid the marketing department a lot of money for that. Yeah, they got a good They've got a great cast. We've got a lot to say about this, but first we're going to pull the rig over for a quick break. Stick around, and we'll be right back with our thoughts on Orca.

33:33 Domatic sash back. I'm Amber, I'm Dayton in Disney, Jean, I'm Robert, and I'm Tim, and we are the host of the Documents seventy seven podcast. And we're here to give you a little tease of what to expect in twenty twenty six. In January, we're bringing back on our very popular sci fi movie Monk. That's one kind of film from the nine fifth these sixties, seventies and eighties. You all know that we love Disney on this broadcast. I mean it's literally in my name. So Amber and I are going to be going to spend some quality time with you looking at their live action films from this fifties, the sixties, and the seventies. I think twenty thousand Leagues.

34:13 Apple, Dumbling Gang, and so much more. Now, the year nineteen seventy seven was an important year for pop culture. We're talking game changing, earth shattering, culture defining moments. So we are doing our longest series ever looking at films and albums from that legendary. Year, docum Base seventy seven, where Broadway references meet the voice of reason and it's. Healthy for you. We're just a bunch of nerds discussing what we're listening to, watching and reading, and. As always encouraging you to listen to more music, read more books, and watch more movies. I remember, physical media is better than streaming. Docu Bay seventy seven, Your twenty twenty six adventure starts here. And thematic sash back.

34:57 Can I help you? You know the men all meet, they talk of you, and they are angry. I understand. They say you're a coward for not to go out and kill this whale. I have my reasons, I believe you why I've seen your face fear, but it is not anything alive. It is of some spirit. I think. I come only to warn you. Perhaps it is best you go hunt this devil. No matter what your reasons are, if there is any more harm done to this town, are your whale light?

35:43 Thank you for the warning. I know what my ancestors would have done. Well. They have this shaman sow a small skinned whale and stuffing with the livers of birds. They make pissed water on it and throw it into the sea with some word. It's all, it's been done right. The monster spirit flies out. Of his mouth. Welcome back. All right. From here on out, we're going to talk about our thoughts on Orca and might inadvertently give some spoilers. You can rent Orca at the usual places. You know. I had not seen this film. I don't know how old I was at the time, but I remember opening the newspaper and seeing Orca, and I thought it was a PG rating, and so I really wanted to go see it, but of course nobody.

36:32 Was going to take me. I was probably it was the summer of when was it released nineteen seventy seven? Seventy seven? Yeah, so I was ten. I would turn sixteen that year, so I was fifteen, so my freshman year. I think it was after my freshman year in high school. Okay, I do not remember going to the film, but I think I saw it on TV. But I don't think I saw the whole thing. I definitely do not remember most of the film except for the end. Yeah. I thought I was going to laugh more at this film than what I ultimately did. And I don't want to narrate the film, but it helps to understand the character of Nolan, and then juxtaposed that to the motives of the whale. So we learn that Nolan's wife and unborn child were killed in a car accident due to a collision with a drunk driver. And in this movie, Nolan was trying to capture the male orca and bring it into captivity, but his harpoon nicks the dorsal fin of the male orca and hits the female. The female was pregnant with the pup of the male orca.

37:43 But you really don't find out about Nolan's past. You get some flashbacks, but to find out the details later. You suspect there's some tragedy in Nolan's past that may be similar in I don't know. I wonder if that was a storyline brought in by Robert Town or if May Luciano had that end originally. It seems to me that it was added with flashbacks. I was not expecting that opening, right, Yeah, yeah, I was expecting woman swimming in the water. Well, you may be forgetting in the opening scene, which is pretty hilarious because this is where I had my first laught. So in the beginning they're opening, No, Len's out in his boat. The marine biologist and her assistant are out in a semi rigid inflatable boat and one of them they're diving, and a shark comes along. Duh, Yeah, there's the shark comes along, right, So the shark is very threatening and you're really scared and you're like, oh my gosh, this is just like Jaws. This person's going to be attacked and he's hiding, and like the end of Jaws is someone's hiding down on the bottom. But then then what comes but in Arca comes and knocks the living crap out of this Jaws.

38:53 It knocks the shark out of the water. So it was so on the nose of we're going to replace Jaws, but something even more formidable, a killer whale. At that point, I was just like, okay, okay, good golly. So yeah, what about you Chi? Yeah, I'm in the same semi rigid dinghy as you are out there on the water. You approach this movie with a low bar, right, yeah, But once it gets past this opening sequence of the terrible shark effects, if the movie began to take dramatic turn that I wasn't expecting. And some of the photography in this film by Ted Moore again remember he's the guy who shot a lot of the early James Bond films. It was better shot than I thought it was going to be. Yeah, I think that's all fair. When we were describing the character of the whale earlier, we talked about the different ways in which they filmed live whales, But what about the variety of techniques for the let's just call it the whale doubles, because I think we have maybe some slight articulation in some of the stunt whales, if you will, like where they would use a I don't know if it was a fully mechanical like they did with Bruce, or they had someone back behind it. Pushing it up into a boat, and after the female dies, there's a scene where the pod is in a funeral procession with the male pushing the corpse of.

40:22 The female along. You don't see the whales breaching, so I suppose that all of that must have been the prop fins that they were dragging underneath the water, much like they would do with Bruce's fins and some of the sequences in Jaws. Yeah, I thought a lot of that was very convincing. I thought the parts that seemed less convincing was when they actually showed. The real whale. Well, the other thing about it is, and I don't know if you guys know, and maybe people in the audience recognize us, but when you watch the film, you'll see some of the whales suffer from their dorsal fin curling over, which is indicative of an orca in captivity. They don't really know why happens, but it invariably happens in an Orca in captivity. And you'll see in the film, you'll see a bunch of shots with Orca with the thin folded over. When you see the real live Orca's out in the ocean, they're straight, straight upright as an arrow, So that was kind of disconcerting for me. So that really was a telltale where I'm like, Okay, this isn't the tank, this isn't the ocean, this isn't tank, this isn't the ocean. So I think they did a good job with the prosthetic or whatever they used to pretend, you know, when they had to do some stuff. So I think it didn't stand out to me as a problem like when he was ramming boats and stuff, which is good. It means that you know, it was real enough and the shot was limited enough that it didn't just stand out like, oh, there's the underwater motor driving it into a balsalwood boat or something.

41:48 I want to ask you about the Outlaw Josie Wales. Think about how that film started. Josie is out in the farm. He's working with his son. He's tilling the land and his son is helping him to remove rocks, and then little boy gets called in by his mother. Shortly thereafter, Josie sees smoke arising from the distance in the direction of his homestead, so he runs over there and he notices that there are soldiers who have set his farm on fire and have dragged his wife off and has killed his little boy. And then the remainder of the outlaw jose Wales turns into kind of a revenge Western flick. Now, given that this film was written by Luciano, who also wrote The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and for a few dollars more, is Orca more of a revenge Western?

42:37 What do you think? Oh? I think it's absolutely a revenge Western. It's just the farmer whose family was murdered happens to be a whale. And I think that's a great parallel. I mean literally exactly what happens with the whale. If you watch the Outlaw Josie Whale, he just goes on He's going to kill everybody, either it's coming after him or had anything to do with murdering his family. Yeah, and that drives the rest of the entire movie. I think that's pretty similar to what's happening here. The difference is they follow the whale until the whale finally gets them where he wants them so that he can murder them all. Well, not all of them. Somebody has to remain to narrate the movie.

43:21 The movie clearly is trying to give us some empathy for both Yolan and the whale, and I think they do that through Nolan's tragedy of losing his wife an unborn child and through the whales tragedy of his mate and the unborn child. Right. So there's that parallel and I think it works because you sort of understand Nolan at first when you meet him. He's kind of brust and he's just trying to make a buck. He's trying to capture a whale to sell it. He's not really trying to kill a whale. Then once all this happens, I mean he's horror struck. Yes, he would take it back in an instant. He would undo everything he did. That is absolutely clear. And that's why his character elevates this movie above my low bar expectation line.

44:04 Yeah. I think that's true, and that is the shining lights of this film is that there is that parallel story of revenge and we're led to believe in the film that they have the capacity for this. Yes, Chuck, if you're good, probably need to step away for a quick break. Flash back and flash back. Well, Matt, I think it's time to ask the question, did Orca win us over or should it have gone kabboom? Where did this one land? For you?

44:45 So I will say that an all star cast, great writing team, and a follow up rewrite to make it better and a reasonable budget for special effects all can be put together and still make a turd of a movie. That it's where we are. Unfortunately for me, this was not a great movie. It's not really a great homage to Jaws. Didn't I didn't find I had the same visceral dread that Jaws gave and the inevitability of innocence being killed right in in Jaws, people are at the beach, there's kids in the inlet, the shark goes in the inlet.

45:34 Everybody's very stressed out. You know, poor kid gets eaten out in the surf. All of that, The only time they have any problem is they brought it on themselves. And then the other time they have problem is they go out on the boat and follow this whale until the whale turns around and proceeds to tear them up. So to me, it's like I have absolutely no sympathy. It's like, turn around, turn the boat around. You're insane to get on a boat with this man. So to me, I just I mean, I literally did not care what happened to anybody except the Breen biologist. I wanted her to survive, and they did deliver on that. You know, man, I think your your solution for all of life's problems.

46:18 Whenever a killer truck is chasing you down, or maybe an orca is leading you out to sea, turn around, just turn around. There's a great skit where people are making fun of horror movies and the comedians like, you know, if you walk into the house and the house says get out, you get out, don't stay anyway, it's just too funny. Our typical question is did it groove through the decades or did it lose its beat? I don't. My answer is I don't think this ever had a beat. It's a shame, so I don't think it grooves now. My lament for this film is that it would have been very easy to make it a really great film.

47:06 That's my personal belief. A few changes in the script where the meeting with the whale was inadvertent, totally accidental. Not he was out to try to capture one, but something else happened. He tried to help the whale in the whale misunderstood him trying to help and went on this vengean streak. After that, everything would have been like, hey, I was just trying to help. I was trying to save her as he ran into the prop and now I'm trying to save her. I'm not trying to capture her. But the whale doesn't understand, because the whale is a dumb animal. But that would have They got the biggest brains, don't you remember what Charlotte Rankling told us, It has the biggest brain of all. I get it. They have a big brain, but they can be mistaken.

47:47 Okay. Anyway, to me, that would have made it a better film. You would have been a lot more emotionally involved. The deaths of the crew members would have been much more impactful if they had been done in the pursuit of trying to help this way, not capture it. So anyway I say it didn't groove, then it doesn't groove for me now, which is a shame because it could have been a great film. I hear you. I hear you, And I think it's a bit of an oddity because I mean, both these films that we're looking at, we're not approaching them with high bars of expectations, so my bar was also said very very low. I thought it was going to be just a shameless Jaws knockoff, only with an Orca. But what really surprised me is when I started researching all of the Italian names that I was seeing in the opening credits. Clearly the people that were making the film believe that they were making something more than just a creature feature. Having Richard Harris play Nolan more as a tragic figure rather than an action hero was different than I was expecting. Charlotte Rampling and Will Samson make the Richard Dreyfus character Enio Morcone score treats the story like a tragedy from beginning to the very end. What really caught me off guard was how much that this movie was about the themes of grief, guilt, and revenge. And then by the time Nolan reaches the Arctic, it's really not a movie about a killer whale anymore.

49:17 It's about two grieving fathers who have lost their families and they just can't let it go. So No Orca is not Jaws, but I thought it was better than what its reputation would suggest. I expected to spend this episode pointing out everything that didn't work, and instead I found myself getting invested in the characters, and surprisingly, I was genuinely moved by its melancholy final moments. So Orca isn't a lost masterpiece, It's not even a hidden gym it But nearly fifty years later people still remember it. That's a lot more than what can be said for most of the other Jaws imitators that had followed. Matt, do you have any final thoughts before we close up today?

50:00 I would just say, you know, Chuck, you always do a great job of sort of giving the film it's due, and I agree with what you're saying. I just still think it was It was a missed opportunity. Should have been a big kaboom. No, no, I mean a missed opportunity. Actually, I agree with the second half of the film. It's just the setup in the first half, Yeah, doesn't lead you into a really deep caring for the characters. I mean, I really do not care about any of them, and I figured, oh, look at all these guys getting on the boat with this knucklehead. They're all gonna die for sure, undred percent. We know why they are there. Yeah, I mean it was they all had red shirts on on the away team.

50:46 Oh my gosh, we made a Star Trek reference and that's you're my friend. So anyway, I think it's worth watching on a rainy day. And if you're a Jaws fan, it's funny. If you're a Richard Harris fan, you really get a peek into his younger cinematic role, which is really quite good. All right, Join us in two weeks as we continue our Jaws floydation theme with Joe Dante's Piranha from nineteen seventy eight, starring Bradford Dillman, head their Menzies, Kevin McCarthy, and returning from White Line Fever, Dick Miller. At first glance, Piranha looks like exactly the kind of movie that only could have existed after Jaws changed Hollywood forever.

51:30 But as we'll discover, Joe Dante brought a sense of humor, satire, and just enough bite to turn what could have been a simple cash in into something much more rememberable. We'll talk about Roger Corman government experiments gone wrong in an awful lot of Hungry Fish, and until then, stay in the boat, stay out of the water. We want to thank you for taking the time to tune in. If you've seen ORCA, reach out and let us know your thoughts. You can find us on Facebook or leave us a message over at Cinematicflashback dot com. Don't forget to subscribe so you'd never miss an episode. If you're enjoying the podcast, please give us a rating and a review. We really appreciate it, and your review just might get read on the air. And if you've been enjoying the show, tell your friends and family about what we still proudly believe is the best podcast dedicated to nineteen seventies cinema. Join us next time as we hot into the wayback machine and head once again to the nineteen seventies for another classic. Until then, stay out of the water and we'll see you next time.

52:33 Flashback to the Tales Untold, where the heroes were gritty, the buildings were bowled. From the average test. Flashback o God