 Hello and welcome to another edition of Frightfully Forgotten Horror Movies. Today we're going to be covering 1977's Orca the Killer Whale. Yeah. But before we get started, what are we drinking today? Just a mosaic IPA. Orca the Killer Whale was directed by Michael Anderson. He also did Logan's run. No! Don't go in there! You don't have to die! This movie stars Richard Harris, the legendary Hellraiser and Boozer. He's in so many damn movies. It's hard to pick a couple to mention but he was in Cromwell. He was in The Unforgiven. The last few movies he did in his lifetime were the first two Harry Potter movies where he played Dumbledore. Charlotte Rampling is also in this. She was in another horror movie, an anthology style movie from 1972 called Asylum. She was also in an episode of The Avengers. Yeah, The Superlative 7. That's a great episode. It's one of the best ones. And she was also in another great movie called Angelheart. So the movie starts out introduced to Captain Nolan and his crew and they're hunting great white sharks. There's this dingy with a couple of people on it. They're doing research too and they kind of get in the way. Just as they're ready to catch a great white shark. There's Orca Whale comes up and just headbutts the shark and throws it out in the water and everything. The sound is getting me. Holy shit. Puts these two people in the dingy at risk. The woman that he rescued was Rachel and she's a marine biologist. And we see her doing a lecture at the university and she's talking about Orca Whales and how they're one of the smartest creatures on earth. They also have an extreme pension for revenge and family. So Nolan realizes that these Orca Whales are more money. So Nolan naturally wants to start hunting Orcas. He actually sets the sights on a whale. They harpoon the whale and they end up drawing the whale in onto the deck of the boat. The male that's in the water. The whale on the deck is a female and that it's pregnant. The fetus drops out of the whale onto the deck. Kevin Nolan is just horrified by the whole thing. Good God. Good God. You can't believe what's going on. I was horrified too when you were watching the movie and you were like whoa they went there. Holy shit. Spray the fetus off the deck. Get it off the deck. Get it off the boat. The mate is royally pissed off. He's fucking pissed. The deck hand goes out onto one of those boom arms and the whale all comes up and all eats him. They short work in this guy. God and Nolan is completely horrified. Again he's like my God. The male has had some funeral for the female and pushes it to shore and everyone is gathered around to see this poor Orca on the shore killed and Nolan's like oh my God what did I do. The male starts taking his revenge. He goes to the harbor and starts like headbutting and sinking all these ships. Except Nolan's ship. One of the other ship captains approaches Nolan and says hey yeah well we know you killed that Orca. There's the male over here. He's pissed. He's wrecking everything in the dock. You better do something about it. And Nolan at this point he kind of doesn't want to because he feels bad that he killed the female. He doesn't want to have to kill the male. Then the male Orca goes to like the refineries and starts headbutting all these pipes. Fats fire on this whole oil refineries. Explodes the Orcas like jumping up and down. So Nolan doesn't know what to do. He goes and sets up some sick scaricrow out. He starts to confide in Rachel. I had a wife and she was pregnant. She died in a car crash and I know exactly how this whale is feeling. I don't want to have to go out and kill it. Then chief from one foo of the cuckoo's nest shows up. Juicy fruit. You have to do something here. Nolan is being destroyed because of you. As sacred as the whale is, it can't destroy this community. He's got like his workers and his daughter staying with him. And the Orca starts headbutting all the stilts through like the house. The house starts collapsing and everything. His daughter is like falling down out as the Orca is like. Orca takes a chunk out of her leg. So his house is destroyed. All of his friends are being tormented here. So he finally decides, okay, I'll fight you, you're just a son of a bitch. He gets on a ship with a small crew and they go out to hunt the Orca or is the Orca going to hunt them? Yeah, you don't know. We don't know. If you want to find out what happens at the end of Orca, finish watching the movie. The first thing we have to address is the fact that you'd think that this is a Jaws ripoff. This movie was kind of coined as sort of the answer to Jaws. Nowhere near like Jaws at all. No, not at all. I was expecting a huge Jaws ripoff. It's anything but. Yeah, I was expecting a revenge story but from Captain Nolan like Richard Harris' character. It's from the whales standpoint. The whale is the good guy-ness, the whale is the protagonist, like you sympathize with the whale. Yeah. Oh my god, you killed your wife and your kid? Start to kind of hate Captain Nolan and sympathize with the whales. As it progresses and you kind of realize what Captain Nolan's history is and he had a wife and child that died. And the last thing he wants to do is kill the Orca and everyone is forcing him to do it, including the Orca saying, come fight me! Yeah, come fight me damn you! Fight me damn you! He is forced to do the last thing on the planet that he wants to do, kill this whale who is already wronged. You feel sorry for the whale at first and then later on you feel sorry for Nolan because he's got to do something he doesn't want to do. Yeah. And the whale actually becomes more of a villain as the movie progresses. It starts killing more people and destroying more things. The movie is a big circle, like it's a big wheel and it keeps going around and around. Exactly. And the whale is smart. It knows what it's doing. It's luring Nolan, and tempting Nolan to come fight me damn you! It's like, come get me! I want you one on one! Yep. You know? And it does everything in its power to get it's way and it does get it's way. Exactly. And it's a really smart movie in that regard, right? Jaws is actually a lot more up front in your face. This movie there's so much more that's happening behind the scenes. More subject matter, it has more to do with the human condition and remorse and doing something you don't want to do and like it's yeah, there's a lot of emotion in this movie. So much emotion. And the character arcs for both Nolan and the whale. Because the thing is you don't really think of the whale as a character, but the whale is like the biggest character in the whole movie. Yep, exactly. And there's so much deeper than any of the characters in Jaws. The effects are fantastic and look so real like when I was watching this movie the first thing I thought was, I hope they're not harming real whales. That's what I thought. Please, please. And no they didn't, they're so good where they almost got shut down because everyone believed that they were using real whales and they weren't, they're all rubber or plastic. Practical effects all the way. The cinematography for this movie is amazing. To all of the ocean shots and the shots of the town and the night time shots are just so panoramic. Like you feel the expanse of the ocean. Whales jumping. Yeah, and it's like oh man, you feel the breadth of this. The music in this is fantastic and you know I was watching it and thought oh, this sounds familiar. It's very kind of western Ineo Morricone. Well how can you even get better than that? Exactly, the man himself. Yeah. It's fantastic. There's a great showdown at the end of the movie between the Orca and Nolan and who better to score a showdown than Ineo Morricone. Perfect, it's so fucking good. The music like it evokes so much emotion in you too, right, and you feel even more for the whales because of the music. The kills in this movie are fantastic. They're so fun, like the movie is just as silly and fun as it is like emotional and the kills have a lot to do with it. It's like kind of like a slasher in that way where every kill is like yeah. Yeah. Go get them, you know. They're rooting for the Orca. When Chief dies it's great because the Orca just like you'd think the Orca's just always going to eat everybody but no, the Orca's smarter than that. He'll like use things around him, headbutt things and make the boat go into the ice and then the iceberg. Yeah, that iceberg. He gets all crushed up by all that ice. Can you see his hand? And the ending too of this movie is completely not what you'd expect. The Orca leaves the boat way out to like the Antarctic and it's like ice and they're freezing and they've run out of gas at this point. I think there's no turning back. It's just so dismal and like. And Nolan knows that too and he's like well just run it out. How are you going to defeat this Orca at this point? You got no gas. Yeah. You got no gas. You got barely any manpower left. It's just you and the Orca and that's what the Orca wanted. Richard Harris kind of looks a little forlorn in this movie too. Yeah he looks like shit. And there's a very good reason for that because at the time when he was filming he learned that his wife was cheating on him and he wanted to actually leave the set and go and kill them both. Yeah. He's crazy. It's funny because he's making a movie where he doesn't want to go out and kill this Orca but in real life he does want to go out and kill his wife and her lover. Yeah. Oh Richard Harris. So if you haven't seen Orca the Killer Whale because you thought it was a cheap Jaws rip off well damn you are wrong just like we were wrong. Yep. It fools you. Fooled you. You definitely have to go and watch it. It's fantastic. It's such a fun ride. It's an emotional ride. It's funny. It's heartbreaking. It's hardwarming. It's everything. Yeah. All of the emotions. Yeah. So go check that movie out and until next time as Richard Harris would probably say keep drinking.