From the Vault, Orca: The Killer Whale

There are certain movies that, good or bad, make their foothold in our cinematic consciousness. On the other hand certain movies, good or bad, can slip to the back of our consciousness. Each month I'll be taking a look back at a movie that since it was released has fallen through the cracks, been completely forgotten about, or just hasn't been watched in a while. This month:

Orca: The Killer Whale

My first viewing of Orca: The Killer Whale is inextricably linked with the memory of being sick with a stomach virus when I was about 8 years old, staying home from school, and eating jello. I don't know what spurred me to give it a second viewing, perhaps the recent release of Piranha 3D brought back my memory of another creature feature. I can't speak for Piranha 3D, and I hope I never will, however, Orca is bad enough to be a good bad movie (or "campy" if you prefer).
Richard Harris plays Nolan, a fisherman in Canada who, with his crew, is out shark hunting one day when a killer whale slams the hell out of a Great White Shark, just for hell of it. Nolan then decides to capture an orca and sell it to an aquarium so he can pay off the mortgage on his boat, but it all goes predictably wrong... I mean terribly wrong. Nolan and his crew end up killing the pregnant wife of a very vengeful orca. The orca wreaks havoc on the fishing town: first leaving his dead wife's carcass on the beach by the docks to remind Nolan of what he did, then sinking boats in the harbor to get Nolan to go out on the sea and fight him like a man, or whale. We know this because Charlotte Rampling, playing Rachel, a whale biologist, tells Nolan this information about the vengeful habits of killer whales. This information is confirmed by the stock character of the wise Indian (or Native American, actually he'd be a Canadian American) who literally just shows up at Nolan's house one day.

When Nolan finally decides to go out to sea and fight the whale, Rachel, the whale biologist, admits that she doesn't know what she's been talking about and tries to convince him not to fight the whale. Once they're out at sea not much happens.

This movie was clearly thrown together to cash in on the success of Jaws; which is kind of funny since the boat they use to hunt the shark in Jaws is called the Orca, and in Orca the boat they use to hunt the whale is called The Shark from Jaws... just kidding.

The highlight of the movie is when the whale rams into a seaside natural gas plant, then swims up the coast a bit and rams into a building on stilts where a kerosene lantern is on the edge of a table and a giant explosion results. And to top it off the orca takes a celebratory jump through the air. There's lots of badly used stock footage of sharks and killer whales and bad "day for night" (or as I like to call it, "American Night") shots. Not to mention people dangling their arms and entire bodies off the side of the boat as if they're tempting that vengeful man-killing orca to jump out of the water and bite them.

Orca: The Killer Whale is regrettably not available on Netflix Instant Play; which is a shame because this is the perfect movie for Instant Play, an obscure campy movie you wouldn't normally rent on DVD. If, however, you find yourself in the mood for something campy, or you're home sick, it's not a bad way to kill 90 minutes. You'll have a good time, mostly at the movie's expense. The trailer shows off just how awesomely bad this movie really is. I mean how could you not want to watch this: