Hell hath no fury like a whale scorned. White Gladis may have recently hit the worldwide headlines for seemingly leading her pod of killer whales to attack boats in the Strait of Gibraltar, but eco-horror Orca got there first in 1977. Shunned by critics and dismissed as one in a sea of films that plagiarised Jaws, Orca does not have the best of reputations, but does it deserve to be reevaluated in the wake of life imitating art?
2020 saw the first attacks by White Gladis and her gang. Hundreds of encounters have followed, and of course, the events have been anthropomorphized, with Gladis positioned less as a champion of cetacean rights and more as a beast with a thirst for revenge after possibly being injured by a boat. However, some experts have said that the whales may just be playing around and imitating behavior; it’s just that these animals can weigh over ten tons and reach over thirty feet, so it’s like saying Godzilla is just having playtime when he tramples over Tokyo.
The titular creature of Orca certainly isn’t playing. The film reverses Moby-Dick with a killer whale becoming obsessed with hunting down a sea captain after its mate dies. The antagonist is Nolan, the chief of a Newfoundland fishing boat hunting for great white sharks. He tries to catch a male orca instead when a pod appears but accidentally butchers a pregnant female. The wronged mate then heads off on a mission of revenge against Nolan, causing havoc at the fishing village of South Harbour with the sole intent of having Nolan face him on the battleground of the ocean. Eat your heart out, Gladis.
Instigating Orca‘s rampage was the infamous Dino de Laurentiis, producer of Blue Velvet and Evil Dead II. Inspired by the vast success of Jaws, de Laurentiis tasked producer Luciano Vincenzoni (Death Rides A Horse) to find a sea animal deadlier than Spielberg’s shark. Orcinus orca was the winner, with the trailer proudly boasting that “the ancient Romans” had named him that, ominously stating that it was “Latin for ‘the bringer of death'” and that killer whales have “a profound instinct for vengeance.”
Vincenzoni and Laurentiis brought Sergio Donati (Once Upon A Time in the West) aboard to co-write the screenplay, while the job of directing went to Michael Anderson, who had just had a big success in 1976 with the dystopian science fiction Logan’s Run. A terrific cast was assembled, including Richard Harris as Nolan, Charlotte Rampling, Bo Derek, and Will Sampson, with the picture lensing in Newfoundland and Malta, the latter doubling for the Arctic.
It’s difficult to talk about Orca without mentioning Jaws, which is given a sly nod in an early scene where Nolan is hunting a great white before discovering there are divers in the water. The shark heads towards one of them and is about to chomp down when it’s hurled out of the water in a shower of crimson by a killer whale. Jaws was scary, says de Laurentiis, but it’s no match for Orca.
And while Orca fits into the pantheon of eco-horror that followed Jaws, it isn’t just a matter of transposing the elements of Spielberg’s film as many films that followed it did. By reversing the protagonists and antagonists, Orca creates a different point of view, spurred by the growing appreciation for the conservation of whales. The film pushes the concept of whales as not only an equal species to man but as one also superior in terms of intelligence.
By comparison, Nolan is somewhat of a Neanderthal. Harris plays Nolan as a man of two parts; an impetuous drunk with a tendency to throw caution to the wind (not unlike his real-life alter ego) but also with a haunting feel, a more vulnerable side that brought out how he was feeling beneath the bravado and the bluster of being a macho shark hunter. The film’s emotional twist is that the whale and Nolan are two sides of the same coin, with the revelation that Nolan’s pregnant wife had previously been killed in a car accident with a drunk driver.
While Nolan is initially reluctant to face the orca, he comes to understand the rage the animal is feeling and that he has a duty to the whale, as well as the people of South Harbour. To force his hand, the orca comes into the harbor and sinks all the boats except Nolan’s, causing further damage. The message is clear, and the inhabitants of the town side with the whale: Nolan has got to go and face it.
The picture goes full steam ahead with the orca’s rampage as it dislodges the town’s gas pipes and causes the power station to explode before biting Derek’s leg off and swimming to the pier to look Nolan in the eye. The film uses a combination of real and animatronic whales, and there are some great moments when it focuses on the eyes of the orca, which remarkably convey emotions, reminding the audience of how close these mammals are to us. There’s also a gnarly sequence where the female whale, strung up on the side of the boat, gives birth to a fetus that briefly confronts the audience with its alien yet human visage before it’s unceremoniously washed over the side.
Rampling’s whale biologist Rachel initially goads Nolan before accompanying him on the final voyage, trying to appeal to his conscience and calm his hotheadedness. She also appeals to Will Sampson to speak to him in his small but important role as First Nations person Jacob Umiliak. Nolan is told he must face the orca not only so it stops terrorizing South Harbour but also that it is spiritually laid to rest. Sampson’s role as one of the Mi’kmaq of the Northeastern Woodlands tends to come across as an example of the “magic Native American” trope, but he is convincing, especially as he at least seems to have his own agency.
The film ends in the desolate landscape of the Arctic, where the orca sinks Nolan’s boat to force him onto the ice. Nolan hesitates to kill it with a rifle, but the whale has no such reluctance and throws him against the ice with its tail, finally destroying that which eradicated his future and leaving his bloodied and broken body to float in the icy water.
Moments like this are given depth and soul by the heart of the picture, the stunning musical score by Ennio Morricone, with a gorgeous yet melancholy theme that runs throughout the film. Morricone’s scoring is impeccable, with an ever so quiet and minor version of the theme heard over the opening titles that almost imitates sonar, along with the full-blooded version that scores the scenes of the whales featuring a classic Edda dell’Orso soprano that cuts right through you. The film ends with vocals to the theme by American singer Carol Connors in a rendition called “We Are One,” although an alternate love theme was released as a single in Japan, composed by Katsuhisa Hattori (Fist of the North Star) with vocals by Noriko Muraoka.
Orca looks as beautiful as it sounds, with an emotionally muted color palette featuring lots of browns, greys, blues, and white courtesy of cinematographer Ted Moore, who had previously worked on a slew of James Bond films, including From Russia With Love and Goldfinger. J. Barry Herron handled the superb underwater photography, later doing the same for staples such as Big Trouble in Little China and Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.
Orca is a sorely underappreciated film that deserves to be seen in a new light. While Jaws inspired it, it’s still unique enough to stand apart with its own identity. It’s an exploitation film at its heart, but its narrative strives to create a relevance that will remain as long as man continues to hunt whales. Don’t show it to Gladis, though; she might get further ideas.
