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DVD REVIEW ARCHIVE
ORCA: THE KILLER WHALE (1977)
MOMENTUM DVD (region 2)
d. Michael Anderson; pr. Dino De Laurentiis, Luciano Vincenzoni; scr. Luciano Vincenzoni, Sergio Donati, Robert Towne (uncred); ph. J. Barry Herron, Ted Moore; m. Ennio Morricone; ed. John Bloom, Marion Rothman, Ralph E. Winters; cast. Richard Harris, Charlotte Rampling, Will Sampson, Bo Derek, Keenan Wynn, Robert Carradine (92 mins)
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ORIGINAL MOVIE POSTER ART
Legendary Italian Producer Dino De Laurentiis and the post-Jaws American Revenge of Nature Movie
Producer Dino De Laurentiis had worked with Fellini and had a considerable reputation by the time he turned to fantastic, comic-book inspired cinema with the likes of Barbarella and Danger: Diabolik.
THEATRICAL TRAILER
However, when he made the move to the USA, his reputation dwindled to the point where he was considered a maker of crass, overblown exploitation. Although works such as the King Kong remake made money, they were not in any way acclaimed. Always on the lookout, De Laurentiis apparently noted the success of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and so promptly set up two films indebted to it. Both The White Buffalo and Orca: the Killer Whale flopped, becoming easy targets and branded irredeemably silly. For Orca the producer lured British journeyman Michael Anderson. Anderson had been a darling of British cinema in the 1950s but whose critical fortunes had also eroded since his decision to venture abroad and to America. Nevertheless through the 1970s he managed to helm a still under-rated body of work in fantasy, horror and science fiction genre cinema. Although Orca was ostensibly a Jaws rip-off, it also drew upon such sources as Moby Dick and spoke to a trend in cinema that went back as far as Hitchcock’s The Birds: namely, animals that turn irrationally against human beings. Thus, it is perhaps within this heritage that Orca finds a place denied it in its initial hostile reception and current bad-movie reputation.
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Synopsis (contains spoilers)
Canadian fisherman Richard Harris and his crew (including Bo Derek and Tracy Keenan Wynn) are searching for a great white shark. When a young man is stranded in the water and about to be preyed upon by a shark he is rescued by a killer whale, which dispenses the shark with ease.
On shore, scientist Charlotte Rampling has arrived to study these whales and so converses with Harris, who now thinks he has another lucrative opportunity and so intends to catch a killer whale and sell it to researchers, this despite Rampling’s suggestion of respect for the creatures. Harris doubts her claims that the animal can possess a superior intelligence. Harris and his crew set out after a whale. However, their attempts are terrible and a pregnant whale is injured and gives birth whilst Harris hauls it on board. The captured whale’s mate – its fin grazed by a harpoon – is distraught and takes a visual imprint of Harris as the female is dumped and left for dead. As the Orca tends to its mate, Harris and crew return. The Orca is now vengeful and has followed Harris, preying on harbour boats and turning the other coastal villagers against Harris. A mysterious Red Indian (Will Sampson) arrives, offering a spiritualism which befuddles Harris. When the whale turns against Harris’ own house, he accepts the apparent challenge and with Rampling and Samson, sails out in search of it, the whale leading him further into the ocean.
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Adversarial Humanism and Vengeful Psychosis in the Animal Kingdom
Orca: the Killer Whale addresses some of the more baffling undercurrents behind the then-popular revenge of nature film: namely the reasons for the animosity such animals have for humans as somehow related to a psychological affliction.
Thus, although the film is similar to Jaws, where Spielberg’s shark was an unknowable monster, a killing machine, the whale here is far more humanized. Hence, idyllic scenes showing whales in their natural state give way to Rampling’s lectures about their intelligence, social habits and monogamous nature and on to Harris’ attempts to interfere and rob them of their fate. This leads to the film’s main point – that whatever the similarities and differences between man and animal, it is man’s sense of unquestioned dominion over them and his subsequent interference in their existence that will in a sense contaminate the animal and bring out the very worst, imposed, human traits in it – namely vindictiveness, cruelty and pre-meditated murder. The film thus assumes that there is a commonality between all God’s creatures but that human order will stimulate ugly human traits in reaction against the dominion of humanity as if infectious. Yet it is only through an equal adversarial role that man will ever respect the creature: but in becoming so adversarial, the Orca loses its natural nobility and becomes both a contaminated beast and God’s wrath on sinful humanity.
In so doing, the film thus applies the reactive psychosis commonly found in vigilante films onto the revenge of nature genre. However, it deconstructs the usual anthropomorphism as it is at some pains to suggest that human drives in an animal are an unnatural imposition: that a susceptible beast is perverted by the human drives.
MORRICONE SCORE EXTRACTS
Revenge is a contaminant and once set in motion by human action is irreversible. Although many scenes are improbable and the dire script often silly, the film successfully emerges as a peculiarly spiritual take on the action and reaction dynamic within the genre. It cleverly parallels the Orca’s vengeful obsession with Harris’ own tormented Catholicism, his realization that his actions against an animal may well have been sinful and that his destined clash with the whale will thus be the penance that he owes the God he has so offended by his actions. Beautifully filmed, the movie thus emerges as a kind of tragically Romantic view of humanity slowly contaminating everything within its supposed dominion. The Orca’s adoption of human aberrations thus shatters all illusions – that such natural creatures are inherently superior to humans (as Rampling feels) or that humans can wield their God-given superiority without consequence (as Harris feels). In the frozen, watery Hell of the film’s astonishing final scenes, the movie realizes its view of a fallen world, human and animal.
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Haunting Melancholia and the Absurd Horror of Human Indifference
In so doing, the film thus applies the reactive psychosis commonly found in vigilante films onto the revenge of nature genre. However, it deconstructs the usual anthropomorphism as it is at some pains to suggest that human drives in an animal are an unnatural imposition: that a susceptible beast is perverted by the human drives.
Revenge is a contaminant and once set in motion by human action is irreversible. Although many scenes are improbable and the dire script often silly, the film successfully emerges as a peculiarly spiritual take on the action and reaction dynamic within the genre. It cleverly parallels the Orca’s vengeful obsession with Harris’ own tormented Catholicism, his realization that his actions against an animal may well have been sinful and that his destined clash with the whale will thus be the penance that he owes the God he has so offended by his actions. Beautifully filmed, the movie thus emerges as a kind of tragically Romantic view of humanity slowly contaminating everything within its supposed dominion. The Orca’s adoption of human aberrations thus shatters all illusions – that such natural creatures are inherently superior to humans (as Rampling feels) or that humans can wield their God-given superiority without consequence (as Harris feels). In the frozen, watery Hell of the film’s astonishing final scenes, the movie realizes its view of a fallen world, human and animal.
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A Sublime Blending of Ennio Morricone and Whale Song
The sound transfer is available in Dolby Digital mono only. The opening segue from whale song into a haunting and again melancholic Ennio Morricone score is truly sublime and it is a shame that a fuller sound transfer is not provided.
The music is abrupt and threatening when establishing the shark as monster but sentimental when dealing with the whales, suggesting the difference between the creatures. Correspondingly, as human action forces the whale into a deliberate monstrousness, the score balances menace with the sense of melancholic tragedy of such a transformation in the Orca. Rampling’s voice-over adds a reminiscent tone to the proceedings although is also used to directly relate the film’s main themes: unfortunate, as Anderson’s aesthetics do the job. The cry of the wounded whale is unnerving and almost human and rarely has an animal’s needless suffering, pain, fear and deathly confusion been as evocatively conveyed. Indeed, from that point onwards, there is a palpable sadness to the movie. Ocean sounds, whale cries and breathing are used effectively, are often cued to the Orca’s presence and even suggest its deliberation as it too effectively falls from grace. There is an increasingly cold quality, the film’s arctic descent matched in the bitter wind. Diegetic effects (footsteps, whaling procedures and so forth) are always crisp and the revenge set-pieces carry an aural imprint as much as a visual one. Sampson’s stilted dialogue, however, makes him a condescending caricature Indian.
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FURTHER READING
Dino De Laurentiis' First Venture into Themes of Nature's Revenge in The White Buffalo (read more)
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