Review of Orca (1977) by Ashley D — 25 Apr 2015

Producer Dino De Laurentiis obviously made this film to leech off of the success of Steven Spielberg's "Jaws." However, this film is actually fairly entertaining and manages to stake out some new territory in the Nature Horror sub genre.

The basic premise is certainly close to "Jaws," a man in a small boat, Richard Harris, is determined to kill a big creature of the sea, an orca instead of a great white. The film does a bit of a "Jaws" put down by showing an orca live up to it's name by killing a great white shark in the opening scene.

Most of the film is pretty unoriginal, but the final battle in the arctic, where Harris chases the killer whale like he's Captain Ahab, is awfully entertaining. Harris reportedly insisted on doing all of his own stunts and nearly died several times on the film.

Directed by Michael Anderson it's a fairly classy production of a cheesy B-monster picture. Charlotte Rampling, Will Sampson, Bo Derek, Keenan Wynn and Robert Carradine also appear in the film. Ennio Morricone provides a memorable score and IMDB list uncredited rewrites by Robert Towne.

I'm also quite ticked to read on IMDB that in the mid-1980s, De Laurentiis considered a sequel to King Kong that would have had him go head-to-head with an orca.