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Orca (1977): A Revenge Western at Sea · The Cinematic Flashback Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: He never put to her a well by accident, it's
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: not your style.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: What can I do? But you can stop looking at
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: me as if I'm the crazy one.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Well, I must say I'm amazed that she swam up
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: here against the wind and the tide. She didn't swim
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: her mate pushed her.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: INQUI didn't you anchor your boat in here last night?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: I did? Just out there?
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: He followed you, He won, He followed you.
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: Welcome to the Cinematic Flashback Podcast. Get ready to hop
• 0:47
  Speaker 4: into the way back machine as we journey through the wild, bold,
• 0:50
  Speaker 4: and unforgettable films of the nineteen seventies. Each episode, we
• 0:55
  Speaker 4: break down a classic movie or a forgotten jim, seeing
• 0:58
  Speaker 4: how it performed then and now, and wrapping things up
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: by asking did a groof of the decades or did
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: it lose its beat? I am your host, Chuck Brian,
• 1:07
  Speaker 4: and today we are reviewing Michael Anderson's nineteen seventy seventh
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: film Orca, starring Richard Harris, Charlotte Rampling, Will Sampson and
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: Bo Derek. This is our first film in our Jobsploitation Month,
• 1:21
  Speaker 4: where we are looking at two films that are swimming
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: in the frenzy that Jaw's left in its wake. Joining
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: me is my first mate, Matt. Sergeant Matt, good to
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: see you again. How have you been?
• 1:33
  Speaker 5: I have been well, and I I captain Er. We're
• 1:36
  Speaker 5: ready to set sail. I can't believe that we are
• 1:42
  Speaker 5: already in August. The summer is almost over. We're looking
• 1:47
  Speaker 5: forward to our fall lineup. But yet we are going
• 1:50
  Speaker 5: to take just a little breather to look at some
• 1:53
  Speaker 5: films that are I mean to be very honest, or
• 1:55
  Speaker 5: are very new to me. Have you seen any of
• 1:58
  Speaker 5: these before?
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: No?
• 2:00
  Speaker 5: I have not, And actually that's not one hundred percent true.
• 2:04
  Speaker 5: The closing scene I remember, so it maybe that I
• 2:09
  Speaker 5: did see this, but I intentionally or unintentionally forgot about it.
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: You know, it's really funny because I have the exact
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: same memory of maybe seeing this on TV at some point,
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: and I remember the scenes at the end. But yeah,
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: you know, we started season two with French connection to
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: and we spent some time talking about sequels, you know,
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: the movies that come back for a second round after
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: a successful first outing. But we're kind of moving into
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: something a little bit different with Orca and Piranha. These
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: really aren't sequels at all. They're just something completely different.
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: Because if Steven Spielberg hadn't released Jaws in seventy five,
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: I honestly do not believe that either of these movies
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: would have existed.
• 3:00
  Speaker 5: I agree with you one hundred percent. Although I haven't
• 3:02
  Speaker 5: seen Piranha before, I'm pretty sure that neither of these
• 3:07
  Speaker 5: films would have been made, and that's probably a move
• 3:10
  Speaker 5: in the right direction.
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, it's funny the the level of killer
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: animal movies that spawned off. I mean, there's a there's
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: a movie called Prophecy about a mutated bear. There's a
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: movie about an alligator that lives in the in the
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: sewers that you know, I guess somebody flashed an alligator
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: when they were a kid.
• 3:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah, hilarious.
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: And then there's let's see There's a Swarm, which kind
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: of goes into the disaster movie. So it takes this
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: killer animal and elevates it to a you know, a
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: movie like Towering Inferno.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: I think this this is a is a response to
• 3:48
  Speaker 5: any kind of film that kind of preys on our
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: fears as humans, as someone outside their element and being
• 3:57
  Speaker 5: pursued maybe no longer the hunter, but the hunted. And
• 4:01
  Speaker 5: I think that's the theme that you're seeing on a
• 4:03
  Speaker 5: lot of these, And yeah, they're great kind of movies
• 4:06
  Speaker 5: to go to and check out for an hour and
• 4:09
  Speaker 5: a half or two hours and kind of see the
• 4:12
  Speaker 5: action in what's going on. Definitely the candy corn of
• 4:16
  Speaker 5: the candy world.
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, these are kind of I mean, I call
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: it jawsploitation.
• 4:22
  Speaker 5: I think it's perfect name, it's absolutely perfect.
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: And last last time, I was talking about truck'sploitation, right,
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: because you had some good truck movies and then all
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: of a sudden it's like everybody's making less than top shelf.
• 4:36
  Speaker 5: Yeah. I think that's one hundred percent true. You've heard
• 4:39
  Speaker 5: it all before, you know, when someone says this is
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: Jaws meets fresh water fishing, you know, this is Jaws
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  Speaker 5: but with a killer whale. You know, and immediately they
• 4:52
  Speaker 5: throw money at it, because that's the way Hollywood does. Unfortunately,
• 4:57
  Speaker 5: thousands of fabulous news stories out there. Again, we'll touch
• 5:01
  Speaker 5: on my standard theme of why are you making sequels
• 5:05
  Speaker 5: when there's so much great new material out there? Why
• 5:08
  Speaker 5: are you making cheap copies? When? Yeah, and honestly, in
• 5:11
  Speaker 5: this film, when we'll talk about it as we go forward,
• 5:13
  Speaker 5: I'm going to point out some places where this could
• 5:15
  Speaker 5: have been a great movie. Right, it could have been
• 5:20
  Speaker 5: a fabulously good movie. And I'll point out where I
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: think it went wrong. It was this close, right, I
• 5:25
  Speaker 5: think it's a bit close, a little bit farther at
• 5:28
  Speaker 5: this point, Matt's arms are well, Leigh. I started off
• 5:31
  Speaker 5: with a little finger of like an inch, you know,
• 5:33
  Speaker 5: and then his arms went really wide. But again, and
• 5:41
  Speaker 5: we will share with us as we go forward. In
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: this podcast, it's talking about there are highlights in this film.
• 5:46
  Speaker 5: Some of them are sure maybe unintentional hilarity, and some
• 5:51
  Speaker 5: of them are places where the story is kind of interesting.
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  Speaker 5: So we'll talk about it as we go forward.
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: Sure, sure, Matt, who is talking to us this week?
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: So we got this question from Spotify from listener The
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: Eternal seventy three and I quote, Hi, guys, gret episode,
• 6:09
  Speaker 5: is there a chance you could cover Friedkin's Cruising? Cheers?
• 6:14
  Speaker 5: End quote. Technically Cruising is a nineteen eighty film, but
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: it was filmed in the late seventies, So we'll throw
• 6:21
  Speaker 5: it out to our listeners. Should movies filmed in the
• 6:24
  Speaker 5: seventies but released in nineteen to eighty count or should
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: we stick strictly to release dates. Let us know what
• 6:32
  Speaker 5: you think on that question, and we welcomed that input.
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: Matt. Last month, you and I did something kind of fun.
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: We went on a podcast and we talked about a
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: movie we did.
• 6:45
  Speaker 5: It was fun. We were invited to talk about a
• 6:48
  Speaker 5: movie called Heist. It was really a lot of fun
• 6:52
  Speaker 5: speaking with Jeff and and I hope everybody reaches out
• 6:55
  Speaker 5: to download that episode in other episodes of a Film
• 6:58
  Speaker 5: by podcast.
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: Just to be fair, I reached out to Jeff and
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: asked him if he might consider doing I Have the Needle,
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: starring our friend Donald Sutherland. Like he's our friend at
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: this point, we're just fanboys. But it's also directed by
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: Richard Markwand who directed Return of the Jedi. So I
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: pitched that to him and let's keep our fingers crossed
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: that we might get to talk about that film. Finally.
• 7:25
  Speaker 5: Well, I think we pitched it to him that he
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: should do that and he should then have us back.
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: Yes, because it's.
• 7:30
  Speaker 5: One of the films I really wanted a review. I
• 7:32
  Speaker 5: love that film.
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: In fact, he could have you on there without me. No, No,
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: we're a team. I think it would be an entertaining episode.
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: I would love to hear.
• 7:42
  Speaker 5: That I have not watched it since literally when I
• 7:46
  Speaker 5: saw it, so I have not rewatched it. The film
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: it's based on the book by Ken Follen. So anyway,
• 7:54
  Speaker 5: how did this movie happen? Chuck?
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: You know, Matt. When I started doing the hat of
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: this movie section, I was always worried, at what point
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: will I find nothing about how a film happened? But
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: Orca did not disappoint And it really starts this way.
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: It starts with getting a phone call in the middle
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: of the night, and that usually is not a good thing.
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: So Luciano Vincenzoni was asleep when his phone rang, and
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: on the other end was his friend and producer Dino
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: de Laurentis. He was one of the biggest producers in
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: the business over a career that lasted more than sixty years.
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: He produced everything from Fellini classics like Lestrata all the
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: way to Hollywood films like Serpaco, King Kong, Flash, Gordon Conan,
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: The Barbarian, the nineteen eighty four Dune in Blue Velvet.
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: Dino wanted his own blockbuster creature movie, but instead of
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: calling a horror writer, he called Luciano Vincenzoni. Now, I'm
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: going to guarantee that most people will not recognize that
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: name unless they happen to be fans of spaghetti western films,
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: because venon Zoni helped write two of Sergio Leone's greatest
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: spaghetti western films for a few dollars more and The Good,
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: the Bad, and the Ugly. And that's a really odd
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: combination to start a story about a movie about a
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: killer whale. So back to that phone call. According to
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: venein Zoni, Dino's first question was super simple. He just says,
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: you know, have you seen Jaws? And you know when
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: vengeen Zonie wipes the sleep out of his eyes. He
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: says yes, and Dino says, good. Now find me a
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  Speaker 4: sea creature that's more formidable than a great white shark. Okay,
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: great ventionen Zoni's a writer, he's not a marine biologist,
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: so he calls his brother, who's also not a marine
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: biologist but a zoologist, and his brother suggested to him
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: the killer Well. So vention Zoni is working with fellow
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: screenwriter Sergio Donata. Benion Zoni developed the story that would
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: become Orca. This project starts to attract some serious talent.
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: Novelist Arthur Herzog, who was famous for writing pulp science
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: fiction novels, took an early version of the screenplay and
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: turned it into a novel that ultimately did not resemble
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: the final product, and this is the exact same thing
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: that happened with Jows two novelization. Then Robert Town, who
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: was fresh off of his Oscar win for Chinatown, was
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: brought in to polish the screenplay for English speaking audiences,
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: and his work on the film went uncredited. And it
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: is my opinion that it is Town's screenplay changes that
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: attracted a lot of the talent that signed on for
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: this film. You have Michael Anderson, who came aboard to
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: direct after the success of Logan's Run. Richard Harris and
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: Charlotte Rampling signed on to star, and composer Enio Moore
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: Kone was brought on to write the music and more.
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: Coney also wrote the scores for The Good, the Bad,
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: and the Ugly, as well as for a Few Dollars More,
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: as well as many many more. So that's a pretty
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: remarkable lineup for what I always remembered as the Killer
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: Whale version of Jaws. I think all of that really
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: surprised me once I got into it. But maybe that's
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: exactly why Orca feels a little bit different from the
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: wave of killer animal movies that followed Jaws. Dino de
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: Laurentis set out to make another Jaws, but instead he
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: made Orca, and that is how this film happened.
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  Speaker 5: That's crazy, and I love the callback to the good,
• 11:38
  Speaker 5: the bad, and the ugly and for a few dollars more.
• 11:40
  Speaker 5: Two of my favorite old spaghetti westerns. And I think
• 11:43
  Speaker 5: I've mentioned on the podcast before my brother a yeahge
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: fan of spaghetti westerns, so we watched them all. I
• 11:50
  Speaker 5: love those You make great points, and it is interesting.
• 11:54
  Speaker 5: It is different than the Jaws. I think the difference
• 11:58
  Speaker 5: is the creature is very intelligent and portrayed so in
• 12:04
  Speaker 5: the film, and I think that brings a different kind
• 12:06
  Speaker 5: of fear into the film than with Jaws. Jaws, you know,
• 12:10
  Speaker 5: the shark is just a killing machine, perfectly designed to
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: do one thing, eat and make more white sharks, right,
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: That's literally all it does, so brainless essentially, and in
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  Speaker 5: this movie we really see the creature as a character
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: with what is maybe anthropomorphized feelings and stuff like that.
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  Speaker 5: But that's how they're portraying it in it, and to
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: some extent it makes it more scary because this thing
• 12:43
  Speaker 5: is is incredibly powerful, you know, and we see you
• 12:47
  Speaker 5: during the film that you know that some of it
• 12:49
  Speaker 5: is attributed to blind rage.
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: It's doing it on purpose, right, Yeah, Well, we are
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: ready to dive into the production and casting details of
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: or but we need to step away for a quick
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: break and we will be right back.
• 13:05
  Speaker 6: It's thematic sash back the shore. It's a cinematic slashback
• 13:15
  Speaker 6: the shot.
• 13:16
  Speaker 7: The ancient Romans called him Orca, or Kindness Latin or
• 13:21
  Speaker 7: bringer of death. He is, without challenge, the most powerful
• 13:24
  Speaker 7: animal on the globe, the killer will. Orca has forty
• 13:28
  Speaker 7: eight teeth set in two impressive rows. In some respects,
• 13:33
  Speaker 7: the orca's intelligence may be even superior to man's. They
• 13:37
  Speaker 7: remain loyal to one mate for life. As parents, they
• 13:40
  Speaker 7: are exemplary better than many human beings, and like human beings,
• 13:45
  Speaker 7: they have a profound instinct for vengeance. An innocent creature
• 13:54
  Speaker 7: is destroyed by an act of human cruelty, and the
• 13:57
  Speaker 7: ultimate battle of man against begins.
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: Dino de la Reno's presents ARCA welcome back.
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: Let's get into the production details and talk about this cast.
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: Orca was released on July twenty second, nineteen seventy seven,
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film was produced by
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: Famous Film's Production and was international co production between the
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: United States, the United Kingdom, and Italy. Michael Anderson directed
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: the film. The screenplay was written by Luciano Vincenzoni and
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: Sergio Donata and based on the story that they developed
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: for the project. The movie was photographed by Ted Moore,
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: whose credits include James Bond, Classics, Doctor No From Russia
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: with Love and Goldfinger. Editing duties were handled by John Bloom,
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: Marion Rothman, and Ralph Winters. Music was provided by Enio Marcone.
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: The production budget has been reported between six and seven
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: and a half million dollars, and the film earned approximately
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: fourteen point seven million dollars at the box office, which
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: does not quite surpass the two and a half times,
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: so this film officially did not make money. Critics were
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: understandably brutal. Today, the film sits at ten percent on
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: Rotten Tomatoes, while audiences are only slightly kinder at thirty
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: three percent. So while Orca never becomes the next Jaws,
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: it has developed a loyal cult following over the years. Matt,
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: who do we have starring in this film? Well, of course,
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: the orca, which is played by a variety of Wales,
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: filmed in the wild, and I believe at Sea World.
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: And if you are an institute observer and know anything
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: about orca's in captivity, will notice that the orcas switch out. Yes,
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: they do a nice job of trying to keep in
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: tune with the orca of the one we care about
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: by using a nice little chunk out of his dorsal
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: fin that was removed when things were happening, So that
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: that's kind of cool. You get to see real orca
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: films in the wild, and there's a few shots of
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: a family group of orcas hunting and they're beautiful, absolutely
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: beautiful animals. So can't get can't get enough of seeing
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: the orcas. They are an amazing animal. I actually saw.
• 16:29
  Speaker 5: Them in the wild when I was up on the
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: Aleutian Islands. I didn't know that. Yeah, And the island
• 16:34
  Speaker 5: that we were on, the orcas would chase sea lions
• 16:37
  Speaker 5: up onto the beach. We were there when that happened.
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: I mean it's rough, man, it's rough. They chase them
• 16:44
  Speaker 5: up onto the shore and the orcas themselves go shooting up.
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: I think there's a there's actually a famous film of
• 16:49
  Speaker 5: that of that actually happening, but we got to see
• 16:51
  Speaker 5: a very small sort of vignette of that when we
• 16:54
  Speaker 5: were on the island.
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: It struck me that if anybody else other than Steven
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: Spielberg would have directed Jaws, I think this is the
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: same way that somebody else would have approached making Jaws,
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: because I'm sure that just filming creatures in the natural
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: wild and then superimposing maybe with either an animatronic shark
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: that's less articulate, followed by dorsal fins that are being
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: dragged around. I think they would have used similar techniques
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: to what Anderson does in this film. Well, and I
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: think that was Steven Spielberg's genius. Is that our imagination
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: is what's driving Bielberg's genius and the inability for a
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: mechanical shark to actually operate within salt water go figure.
• 17:39
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but happenstance. It works out better because we do
• 17:42
  Speaker 5: see in the film of the Orca. We definitely see
• 17:46
  Speaker 5: him in what appears to be a tank. But you
• 17:48
  Speaker 5: have to suspend a little disbelief I understand that you
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: do see some wild shots, but then in the movie
• 17:55
  Speaker 5: there's some things that happened that look just like the
• 17:58
  Speaker 5: tricks that activity do at Sea World. Just they're not
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: getting a ball or a piece of fish, they're getting
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: something else.
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: I always wonder what the audience of nineteen seventy seven
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: if their brains just you know, maybe recognized it, but
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: it wasn't as obvious. But to me, of course maybe
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: it was.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: No.
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: I think you're right. Remember, our experience up until that
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: point informs what we're seeing. So when we're seeing it's like, yeah,
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: of course you're going to see a little edge of
• 18:27
  Speaker 5: the captivity pool or something and you just ignore it.
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: Right, nowadays we're just with CGI. It's so perfect. Just
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: to talk about Star Wars real quick. That was one
• 18:37
  Speaker 5: of the shocking things about Star Wars is up to
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: that point, when you had a spaceship, you could almost
• 18:44
  Speaker 5: see the hand holding it in front of a black screen, right,
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: a little wire.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:50
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Well then they used wires in Star Wars, but
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: the way they used the film, the angles and showing
• 18:56
  Speaker 5: the size, like even that opening scene that blows you
• 18:59
  Speaker 5: aways where the star destroke comes over your head. Shocking.
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: They've never seen anything like it.
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: We talked about this in our Logan's Run episode ironically,
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: also directed by Michael Anderson, that it was like we
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: came out, was like, I can't believe that this movie
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: opens within the same time frame that we get Star Wars.
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: It's just such an amazing difference between the old school
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: and the new way of doing it. Now. Maybe for
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: Orca it was much more of a financial reason.
• 19:30
  Speaker 5: Well, and I think we can give it some grace.
• 19:32
  Speaker 5: I mean, come on, yeah, looking at this in twenty
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: twenty six and it was filmed in nineteen.
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: That's amazing in and of itself. So let's move on
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: to our next human star, Oh my god, which is
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: Richard Harris. He plays cap. What is Richard Harris doing
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: in this film? Well, he's doing everything it can to
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: keep it afloat, let's put it that way. Fair play,
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: fair play.
• 19:57
  Speaker 5: So he's a fisherman who attempts to capture the killer
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: whale that sets the film's tragic events in motion. Some
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: other facts about Richard Harris. I mean everybody's probably heard
• 20:06
  Speaker 5: of him. He was born in Limerick, Ireland in nineteen thirty.
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: I did not know that he was an Irish actor
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: because I know him from his film where he played
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: Dumbledore in two of the Harry Potter films, and I
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: always thought he was British, right.
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: He earned his first Academy Award nomination for the Sporting
• 20:25
  Speaker 5: Life in nineteen sixty three. He starred in acclaim films
• 20:28
  Speaker 5: including Camelot, A Man Called Horse That's where I remember
• 20:31
  Speaker 5: him most for as A Man Called Horse a great movie,
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: and The Molly Maguires Before Orca. He's known for portraying charismatic,
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: flawed men with tremendous emotional depth. Oh wow, that describes
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: no one. Yeah, yeah, I think it was an interesting
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: choice to have him. He's a great actor. I do
• 20:51
  Speaker 5: have to say it's almost fuermulaic to hire an Irish
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: actor with an accent to play this role, because it
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: sort of seems a lot like Quint. Although Quinn was
• 21:03
  Speaker 5: trying to play somebody from New England, Riley didn't appear
• 21:08
  Speaker 5: to be from New England. I through the whole movie
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: I thought he was from I thought he was from Europe,
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: probably from Ireland. But then he tells the story of
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: the Indianapolis and I'm like, Okay, I guess he's pretending to.
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: Be from New England. Well, we've talked about Robert Shaw
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: multiple times. We've covered multiple Robert Shaw films. Yeah, and
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: I think every time we always say, Okay, which accent
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: will he have today? From how what point? And then
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: at what point won't become irish?
• 21:35
  Speaker 5: Which is great. Not to say he's not a great actor.
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: He's a great actor. Absolutely not. He's fantastic. So Charlotte
• 21:42
  Speaker 5: Rampling plays Rachel, who is a marine biologist who spent
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: her years studying killer wales, and throughout the films she
• 21:50
  Speaker 5: serves as our guide and explaining a lot of the
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: narrative dumping of the orca behavior and at the same
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: time she's warning Nolan that he has underestimated the intelligence
• 22:02
  Speaker 5: and emotional capacity of the animal. Now I recognized Charlotte
• 22:08
  Speaker 5: Rampling from her movie or her appearance in the nineteen
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: seventy four John Borman classic Czardas, where she starred opposite
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: of Sean Connery playing Consuela.
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: She plays almost a very similar character. She was born
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: in England, obviously, and she became one of Europe's most
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: acclaimed actresses during the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies. She's
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: known for taking intelligently psychologically complex roles such as the
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: night Porter and Farewell, My Lovely, and her career continues
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: to span more than six decades, earning her Academy Award
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: in Emmy nominations later in life. So she is still working.
• 22:52
  Speaker 5: Well. I one hundred percent recognized her, you know, I
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: recognized her in her voice, but I could not place
• 23:00
  Speaker 5: but I had seen her in and I went and
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: looked it up. And it's because she's been in a
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: lot of things, so it's one of those familiar actresses.
• 23:06
  Speaker 5: I think her natural kind of snootiness, maybe Mahse in
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: this film is actually appropriate because she's a marine biologist,
• 23:16
  Speaker 5: and she knows a lot about orcas, and it seems
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: like nobody really knows, even in this fishing village, anything
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: about them, except for maybe some of the Native Americans
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: who have more about them. So she delivers a solid performance.
• 23:30
  Speaker 5: She's in the whole film, obviously, and she also provides
• 23:33
  Speaker 5: sort of that narrative backdrop. And I think maybe I
• 23:37
  Speaker 5: was wondering about it because we all seem to, at
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: least I know a lot about killer whales orcas, and
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: I think maybe it's this film that caused that, because
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: I don't think a lot of people knew about them
• 23:48
  Speaker 5: before this film. Certainly people had seen them in Sea
• 23:52
  Speaker 5: World and stuff like that, but I mean, I know
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: it wasn't in the common zeitgeist like it is today.
• 23:59
  Speaker 5: You know, people know about what a killer whale is,
• 24:02
  Speaker 5: an orca, how they hunt, how they are pen packs,
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: and how amazing they are. But I don't think that
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: was the case. So it was really important to have
• 24:09
  Speaker 5: that narrative backdrop.
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: I think there's been a lot of I guess from
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: an ecological standpoint, I think there's been a lot more
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: noticed in the last ten years on holding a lot
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: of these animals in captivity and whether or not that's
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: a good idea or not. There's actually another movie that
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: came out much later that described some of the practices.
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: It's a good documentary, definitely worth the time to take
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: a look at. But obviously here in the nineteen seventies,
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: we're not there yet. You mentioned the Mick mack Hunter
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: played by Will Sampson. His name is Jacob Umelac, and
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: he understands the orcas more through years of experience rather
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: than scientific study. Again, like Rachel, Will Sampson He is
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: a member of the Creek Nation from Oklahoma. He made
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: his acting debut as Chief Bromdon in One Flew Over
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: the Cuckoo's Nets, which we covered about a year ago.
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: He stood at six foot seven. He was pretty big guy.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: I mean.
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: He was also known for conveying emotion with very little dialogue.
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: He went in to appear in The White Buffalo, The Outlawed,
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: Josie Wales, and Poltergeist to the Other Side, and he
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: is widely regarded as one of the most influential Native
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: American actors of the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties.
• 25:27
  Speaker 5: One hundred percent agree. I recognized him immediately from One
• 25:31
  Speaker 5: Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. He's great, and then I
• 25:34
  Speaker 5: also remembered it from The Outlaw Josie Wales, where he also, yes,
• 25:38
  Speaker 5: plays a really interesting and I mean at that time's
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: very funny character. Both great performances.
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: I am.
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: I am a big fan.
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: Again. I have to ask, what is Will Samson, Charlotte Rampling,
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: and Richard Harris doing in this film.
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: I think they were probably hired with the promise of
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: making something different. You know, sometimes these things fall short
• 26:03
  Speaker 5: and they've already turned in their performances. What happens in
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: the editing room and that sort of thing is not
• 26:11
  Speaker 5: really up to them.
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: This movie does not seem to be the film that
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: should have attracted this much talent. It's part that was
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: very surprising to me. Anyways, I personally think that someone
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: did a great job of quote unquote selling them on
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: the concept of the film, and once they signed onto
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: the film. I mean, it's very difficult for an actor
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: to sort of extract themselves once they've made a commitment,
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: and honestly, I don't think they want to because until
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: filming is happening, they don't really know.
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: I mean, they've read, nobody knows. And obviously there was
• 26:44
  Speaker 5: some churn to the story because there's the first and
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: then the novel comes out of that and then the rewrite.
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: So I think they were just committed and like anybody,
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: if they say they're going to do it, they're going
• 26:55
  Speaker 5: to do it. And also, I mean there's a payday
• 26:57
  Speaker 5: associated with it. I'll bet you that even if they
• 26:59
  Speaker 5: spent thirteen million was it thirteen million bucks.
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: Something like that or something like that, and they made
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: it made about fourteen so it barely broke even, right.
• 27:08
  Speaker 5: So, but I'm just saying that the cost to make
• 27:10
  Speaker 5: the film is this partly the salaries of the people
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: that are yeah, the actor, so maybe there was some
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: money to be made. I don't know sure sure. Our
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: next actor is kind of the smaller part. It's Peter
• 27:21
  Speaker 5: Houghton and he plays Paul, the young crewman aboard Nolan's
• 27:25
  Speaker 5: boat who finds himself caught up in the increasingly dangerous
• 27:28
  Speaker 5: hunt for the killer whale. He built his career as
• 27:31
  Speaker 5: with guest appearances on television series including The Waltons, Mannix,
• 27:36
  Speaker 5: The Mod Squad, and Marcus Welby NB. I actually remember
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: him on The Waltons. I recognize his face and it's
• 27:42
  Speaker 5: from I used to watch The Waltons All the Love
• 27:45
  Speaker 5: the Waltons Show. Orcus was one of his few major
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: studio film roles, later start as Steven Strange in the
• 27:52
  Speaker 5: nineteen seventy eight television movie Doctor Strange, Marvel's first live
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: action adaptation of the care.
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: I know you probably remembered The Incredible Hulk Show with
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: Bill Bixby and Luf Farigno. Yeah, obviously, now everybody probably
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: knows Doctor Strange from the Marvel cinematic universe, but there
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: was a time when they were really trying to spring
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: off of the popularity of the Incredible Hulk with other
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: Marvel characters.
• 28:21
  Speaker 5: I'll be honest with you, I was never a comics,
• 28:23
  Speaker 5: you know, a graphic novel person at all. Yeah, so
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: a lot of that stuff was if you're in that
• 28:30
  Speaker 5: world of graphic novels and comic books and stuff like that,
• 28:33
  Speaker 5: this was second nature. As soon as somebody said Doctor
• 28:36
  Speaker 5: Strange or Steven Strange, you kind of knew the backstory.
• 28:39
  Speaker 5: I'll be honest with you, I knew nothing about doctor
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: Strange until he appeared in the major motion film, which
• 28:45
  Speaker 5: was his origin story. I knew nothing about it. I
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: didn't even know what he was. You know, like everybody
• 28:51
  Speaker 5: knows what Superman is, you know what Batman is and
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: Spider Man. I had no idea whose Strange was.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: I love that character, and I think it was played
• 29:00
  Speaker 5: great in the movies. Amazing, It's really fun. But this
• 29:03
  Speaker 5: is the problem with someone who wasn't into graphic novels
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: and that kind of lure.
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: Anyway, back to this film, I'm guessing that we could
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: go on the YouTube and we could probably find the
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: Doctor Strange movie. But the next actress who is in
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: this film was Bo Derek and she plays Annie, who
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: is a crew member of board Nolan's boat. This was
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: just two years before she became an international star with
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: Blake Edwards romantic comedy Ten in nineteen seventy nine, launching
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: many many bad decisions at local hair salons at that time.
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: Her iconic beach running scene in ten made her one
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: of the biggest pop cultural sensations of the late seventies.
• 29:48
  Speaker 5: Yeah, the fair faucet poster and Bo Derek ten poster
• 29:52
  Speaker 5: was on every teenage boys wall, not mine, but everybody had,
• 29:57
  Speaker 5: and it was pretty fantastic. And it's cool to see
• 30:00
  Speaker 5: in this film because she's honestly, she's a little miscast.
• 30:03
  Speaker 5: I mean, anybody who would work on a boat obstensively,
• 30:07
  Speaker 5: it's hard work. They're gonna be like kind of hard
• 30:09
  Speaker 5: boiled and grizzled. She's still very beautiful and obviously the
• 30:14
  Speaker 5: love interest of one of the other crew members, and
• 30:17
  Speaker 5: just kind of odd that she's there. Okay, well we're
• 30:20
  Speaker 5: gonna leave Bo Derek and we're going to talk about
• 30:22
  Speaker 5: Robert Carodine, who plays Ken. Ken is Rachel's assistant who
• 30:28
  Speaker 5: joins Nolan's final voyage in an effort to track down
• 30:32
  Speaker 5: the rogue orca. He appears at the beginning of the
• 30:35
  Speaker 5: film driving a little Robert Dinghy, then he kind of disappears,
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: and then he appears later on Robert Carodine. We recognize
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: the last name because he is a member of the
• 30:45
  Speaker 5: legendary Carodeine acting family, which includes his father John and
• 30:50
  Speaker 5: brother David and Keith. You may remember we talked about
• 30:54
  Speaker 5: Keith Carodine in the film McCabe and Missus Miller. He
• 30:59
  Speaker 5: was later wildly known as Lewis Skolnik in the Revenge
• 31:03
  Speaker 5: of the Nerds films. Bringing up the rear is Scott Walker,
• 31:08
  Speaker 5: who plays Al Swain, a local fisherman who becomes the
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: voice of the South Harbor community. Muppet fans may recognize
• 31:16
  Speaker 5: him as Snake Walker, one of Doc Hopper's henchmen in
• 31:20
  Speaker 5: The Muppet Movie nineteen seventy nine. We're going to cover
• 31:24
  Speaker 5: that movie. It's a seventies movie. Can I ask you
• 31:28
  Speaker 5: a question? Sure?
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: Would you want to cover that movie?
• 31:32
  Speaker 5: The Muppet Movie. I thought it was hilarious.
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: I remember, okay, it was fun, okay, okay, I need
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: to figure out what we're gonna into that would be Oh, well,
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: we'll figure something out. I mean, the seventies is just
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: a treasure trove of films that if you seek it,
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: it will come to you.
• 31:49
  Speaker 5: Wasn't there other puppet movies? Maybe we could do a
• 31:52
  Speaker 5: puppet movie. One was The Never Ending Story in the seventies.
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: Oh that was the eighties.
• 31:57
  Speaker 7: But what was it?
• 31:57
  Speaker 5: What a fantastic flick? Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. Okay, let's
• 32:02
  Speaker 5: take a look at the back of the box of
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: this DBD Matt tell us what we're gonna see. Well,
• 32:09
  Speaker 5: this is a little bit of what might be on
• 32:11
  Speaker 5: the back of the box. But let's deliver it like
• 32:15
  Speaker 5: it like it's an intro okay, sleek, intelligent, beautiful and
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: hell bent on revenge. Dino Dan Laurentis and director Michael
• 32:24
  Speaker 5: Anderson joined forces to present the rousing action adventure Tale
• 32:28
  Speaker 5: of Orca the Killer Whale. It's the story of one
• 32:32
  Speaker 5: powerful being against another, a strong, determined fisherman by the
• 32:37
  Speaker 5: name of Captain Nolan versus an equally determined killer whale.
• 32:41
  Speaker 5: When the giant whale's pregnant mate is nimed and killed
• 32:44
  Speaker 5: by Nolan, the whale seeks vengeance, smashing boats, attacking sea
• 32:48
  Speaker 5: coast village and eventually luring his human adversaries into a
• 32:52
  Speaker 5: final confrontation in the marine creature's own arctic turf. Charlotte Rampling,
• 32:59
  Speaker 5: Will Sampson and Bo Derek, in her feature film debut,
• 33:03
  Speaker 5: also star in the seafaring epic brimming with nail biting
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: suspense and spectacular special effects.
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: Ooh, they are somebody paid the marketing department a lot
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: of money for that. Yeah, they got a good They've
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: got a great cast. We've got a lot to say
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: about this, but first we're going to pull the rig
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: over for a quick break. Stick around, and we'll be
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: right back with our thoughts on Orca.
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: Domatic sash back.
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: I'm Amber, I'm Dayton in Disney, Jean, I'm Robert, and
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: I'm Tim, and we are the host of the Documents
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: seventy seven podcast.
• 33:49
  Speaker 8: And we're here to give you a little tease of
• 33:51
  Speaker 8: what to expect in twenty twenty six.
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: In January, we're bringing back on our very popular sci
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: fi movie Monk.
• 33:58
  Speaker 8: That's one kind of film from the nine fifth these sixties,
• 34:00
  Speaker 8: seventies and eighties.
• 34:02
  Speaker 9: You all know that we love Disney on this broadcast.
• 34:04
  Speaker 9: I mean it's literally in my name. So Amber and
• 34:06
  Speaker 9: I are going to be going to spend some quality
• 34:08
  Speaker 9: time with you looking at their live action films from
• 34:10
  Speaker 9: this fifties, the sixties, and the seventies.
• 34:12
  Speaker 8: I think twenty thousand Leagues.
• 34:13
  Speaker 5: Apple, Dumbling Gang, and so much more.
• 34:16
  Speaker 8: Now, the year nineteen seventy seven was an important year
• 34:19
  Speaker 8: for pop culture. We're talking game changing, earth shattering, culture
• 34:22
  Speaker 8: defining moments. So we are doing our longest series ever
• 34:26
  Speaker 8: looking at films and albums from that legendary.
• 34:28
  Speaker 9: Year, docum Base seventy seven, where Broadway references meet the
• 34:31
  Speaker 9: voice of reason and it's.
• 34:33
  Speaker 8: Healthy for you. We're just a bunch of nerds discussing
• 34:35
  Speaker 8: what we're listening to, watching and reading, and.
• 34:38
  Speaker 9: As always encouraging you to listen to more music, read
• 34:41
  Speaker 9: more books, and watch more movies.
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: I remember, physical media is better than streaming.
• 34:46
  Speaker 8: Docu Bay seventy seven, Your twenty twenty six adventure starts here.
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: And thematic sash back.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: Can I help you? You know the men all meet,
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: they talk of you, and they are angry. I understand.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: They say you're a coward for not to go out
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: and kill this whale.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: I have my reasons, I believe you why I've seen
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: your face fear, but it is not anything alive.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: It is of some spirit.
• 35:30
  Speaker 7: I think.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: I come only to warn you. Perhaps it is best
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: you go hunt this devil.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: No matter what your reasons are, if there is any
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: more harm done to this town, are your whale light?
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: Thank you for the warning. I know what my ancestors
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: would have done. Well.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: They have this shaman sow a small skinned whale and
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: stuffing with the livers of birds. They make pissed water
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: on it and throw it into the sea with some word.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: It's all, it's been done right. The monster spirit flies out.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: Of his mouth.
• 36:05
  Speaker 5: Welcome back. All right. From here on out, we're going
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: to talk about our thoughts on Orca and might inadvertently
• 36:11
  Speaker 5: give some spoilers. You can rent Orca at the usual places.
• 36:16
  Speaker 6: You know.
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: I had not seen this film. I don't know how
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: old I was at the time, but I remember opening
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: the newspaper and seeing Orca, and I thought it was
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: a PG rating, and so I really wanted to go
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: see it, but of course nobody.
• 36:32
  Speaker 5: Was going to take me. I was probably it was
• 36:35
  Speaker 5: the summer of when was it released nineteen seventy seven?
• 36:38
  Speaker 5: Seventy seven?
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so I was ten.
• 36:41
  Speaker 5: I would turn sixteen that year, so I was fifteen,
• 36:43
  Speaker 5: so my freshman year. I think it was after my
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: freshman year in high school. Okay, I do not remember
• 36:48
  Speaker 5: going to the film, but I think I saw it
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: on TV. But I don't think I saw the whole thing.
• 36:53
  Speaker 5: I definitely do not remember most of the film except
• 36:56
  Speaker 5: for the end.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: I thought I was going to laugh more at this
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: film than what I ultimately did. And I don't want
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: to narrate the film, but it helps to understand the
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: character of Nolan, and then juxtaposed that to the motives
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: of the whale. So we learn that Nolan's wife and
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: unborn child were killed in a car accident due to
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: a collision with a drunk driver. And in this movie,
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: Nolan was trying to capture the male orca and bring
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: it into captivity, but his harpoon nicks the dorsal fin
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: of the male orca and hits the female. The female
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: was pregnant with the pup of the male orca.
• 37:43
  Speaker 5: But you really don't find out about Nolan's past. You
• 37:47
  Speaker 5: get some flashbacks, but to find out the details later.
• 37:50
  Speaker 5: You suspect there's some tragedy in Nolan's past that may
• 37:55
  Speaker 5: be similar in I don't know.
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: I wonder if that was a storyline brought in by
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: Robert Town or if May Luciano had that end originally.
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: It seems to me that it was added with flashbacks.
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: I was not expecting that opening, right, Yeah, yeah, I
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: was expecting woman swimming in the water.
• 38:11
  Speaker 5: Well, you may be forgetting in the opening scene, which
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: is pretty hilarious because this is where I had my
• 38:17
  Speaker 5: first laught. So in the beginning they're opening, No, Len's
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: out in his boat. The marine biologist and her assistant
• 38:25
  Speaker 5: are out in a semi rigid inflatable boat and one
• 38:29
  Speaker 5: of them they're diving, and a shark comes along. Duh, Yeah,
• 38:33
  Speaker 5: there's the shark comes along, right, So the shark is
• 38:36
  Speaker 5: very threatening and you're really scared and you're like, oh
• 38:38
  Speaker 5: my gosh, this is just like Jaws. This person's going
• 38:41
  Speaker 5: to be attacked and he's hiding, and like the end
• 38:44
  Speaker 5: of Jaws is someone's hiding down on the bottom. But
• 38:46
  Speaker 5: then then what comes but in Arca comes and knocks
• 38:50
  Speaker 5: the living crap out of this Jaws.
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: It knocks the shark out of the water. So it
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: was so on the nose of we're going to replace Jaws,
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: but something even more formidable, a killer whale.
• 39:04
  Speaker 5: At that point, I was just like, okay, okay, good golly.
• 39:08
  Speaker 5: So yeah, what about you Chi?
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm in the same semi rigid dinghy as you
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: are out there on the water. You approach this movie
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: with a low bar, right, yeah, But once it gets
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: past this opening sequence of the terrible shark effects, if
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: the movie began to take dramatic turn that I wasn't expecting.
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: And some of the photography in this film by Ted
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: Moore again remember he's the guy who shot a lot
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: of the early James Bond films. It was better shot
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: than I thought it was going to be. Yeah, I
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: think that's all fair. When we were describing the character
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: of the whale earlier, we talked about the different ways
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: in which they filmed live whales, But what about the
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: variety of techniques for the let's just call it the
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: whale doubles, because I think we have maybe some slight
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: articulation in some of the stunt whales, if you will,
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: like where they would use a I don't know if
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: it was a fully mechanical like they did with Bruce,
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: or they had someone back behind it. Pushing it up
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: into a boat, and after the female dies, there's a
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: scene where the pod is in a funeral procession with
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: the male pushing the corpse of.
• 40:22
  Speaker 5: The female along.
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: You don't see the whales breaching, so I suppose that
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: all of that must have been the prop fins that
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: they were dragging underneath the water, much like they would
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: do with Bruce's fins and some of the sequences in Jaws. Yeah,
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: I thought a lot of that was very convincing. I
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: thought the parts that seemed less convincing was when they
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: actually showed.
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: The real whale. Well, the other thing about it is,
• 40:43
  Speaker 5: and I don't know if you guys know, and maybe
• 40:45
  Speaker 5: people in the audience recognize us, but when you watch
• 40:48
  Speaker 5: the film, you'll see some of the whales suffer from
• 40:51
  Speaker 5: their dorsal fin curling over, which is indicative of an
• 40:57
  Speaker 5: orca in captivity. They don't really know why happens, but
• 41:01
  Speaker 5: it invariably happens in an Orca in captivity. And you'll
• 41:05
  Speaker 5: see in the film, you'll see a bunch of shots
• 41:08
  Speaker 5: with Orca with the thin folded over. When you see
• 41:11
  Speaker 5: the real live Orca's out in the ocean, they're straight,
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: straight upright as an arrow, So that was kind of
• 41:17
  Speaker 5: disconcerting for me. So that really was a telltale where
• 41:20
  Speaker 5: I'm like, Okay, this isn't the tank, this isn't the ocean,
• 41:22
  Speaker 5: this isn't tank, this isn't the ocean. So I think
• 41:24
  Speaker 5: they did a good job with the prosthetic or whatever
• 41:27
  Speaker 5: they used to pretend, you know, when they had to
• 41:29
  Speaker 5: do some stuff. So I think it didn't stand out
• 41:32
  Speaker 5: to me as a problem like when he was ramming
• 41:34
  Speaker 5: boats and stuff, which is good. It means that you know,
• 41:37
  Speaker 5: it was real enough and the shot was limited enough
• 41:40
  Speaker 5: that it didn't just stand out like, oh, there's the
• 41:43
  Speaker 5: underwater motor driving it into a balsalwood boat or something.
• 41:48
  Speaker 5: I want to ask you about the Outlaw Josie Wales.
• 41:51
  Speaker 5: Think about how that film started. Josie is out in
• 41:53
  Speaker 5: the farm. He's working with his son. He's tilling the
• 41:56
  Speaker 5: land and his son is helping him to remove rocks,
• 41:59
  Speaker 5: and then little boy gets called in by his mother.
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: Shortly thereafter, Josie sees smoke arising from the distance in
• 42:06
  Speaker 5: the direction of his homestead, so he runs over there
• 42:09
  Speaker 5: and he notices that there are soldiers who have set
• 42:12
  Speaker 5: his farm on fire and have dragged his wife off
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: and has killed his little boy. And then the remainder
• 42:20
  Speaker 5: of the outlaw jose Wales turns into kind of a
• 42:23
  Speaker 5: revenge Western flick. Now, given that this film was written
• 42:28
  Speaker 5: by Luciano, who also wrote The Good, the Bad, and
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: the Ugly and for a few dollars more, is Orca
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: more of a revenge Western?
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: What do you think?
• 42:38
  Speaker 9: Oh?
• 42:38
  Speaker 5: I think it's absolutely a revenge Western. It's just the
• 42:44
  Speaker 5: farmer whose family was murdered happens to be a whale.
• 42:50
  Speaker 5: And I think that's a great parallel. I mean literally
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: exactly what happens with the whale. If you watch the
• 42:55
  Speaker 5: Outlaw Josie Whale, he just goes on He's going to
• 42:58
  Speaker 5: kill everybody, either it's coming after him or had anything
• 43:01
  Speaker 5: to do with murdering his family. Yeah, and that drives
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: the rest of the entire movie. I think that's pretty
• 43:06
  Speaker 5: similar to what's happening here. The difference is they follow
• 43:11
  Speaker 5: the whale until the whale finally gets them where he
• 43:13
  Speaker 5: wants them so that he can murder them all.
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: Well, not all of them. Somebody has to remain to
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: narrate the movie.
• 43:21
  Speaker 5: The movie clearly is trying to give us some empathy
• 43:24
  Speaker 5: for both Yolan and the whale, and I think they
• 43:26
  Speaker 5: do that through Nolan's tragedy of losing his wife an
• 43:30
  Speaker 5: unborn child and through the whales tragedy of his mate
• 43:34
  Speaker 5: and the unborn child. Right. So there's that parallel and
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: I think it works because you sort of understand Nolan
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: at first when you meet him. He's kind of brust
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: and he's just trying to make a buck. He's trying
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: to capture a whale to sell it. He's not really
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: trying to kill a whale. Then once all this happens,
• 43:51
  Speaker 5: I mean he's horror struck. Yes, he would take it
• 43:54
  Speaker 5: back in an instant. He would undo everything he did.
• 43:57
  Speaker 5: That is absolutely clear.
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: And that's why his character elevates this movie above my
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: low bar expectation line.
• 44:04
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 44:05
  Speaker 5: I think that's true, and that is the shining lights
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: of this film is that there is that parallel story
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: of revenge and we're led to believe in the film
• 44:14
  Speaker 5: that they have the capacity for this. Yes, Chuck, if
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: you're good, probably need to step away for a quick break.
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: Flash back and flash back.
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: Well, Matt, I think it's time to ask the question,
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: did Orca win us over or should it have gone kabboom?
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: Where did this one land?
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: For you?
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: So I will say that an all star cast, great
• 44:50
  Speaker 5: writing team, and a follow up rewrite to make it
• 44:54
  Speaker 5: better and a reasonable budget for special effects all can
• 44:59
  Speaker 5: be put together and still make a turd of a movie.
• 45:04
  Speaker 5: That it's where we are. Unfortunately for me, this was
• 45:09
  Speaker 5: not a great movie. It's not really a great homage
• 45:12
  Speaker 5: to Jaws. Didn't I didn't find I had the same
• 45:18
  Speaker 5: visceral dread that Jaws gave and the inevitability of innocence
• 45:25
  Speaker 5: being killed right in in Jaws, people are at the beach,
• 45:30
  Speaker 5: there's kids in the inlet, the shark goes in the inlet.
• 45:34
  Speaker 5: Everybody's very stressed out. You know, poor kid gets eaten
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: out in the surf. All of that, The only time
• 45:41
  Speaker 5: they have any problem is they brought it on themselves.
• 45:45
  Speaker 5: And then the other time they have problem is they
• 45:47
  Speaker 5: go out on the boat and follow this whale until
• 45:52
  Speaker 5: the whale turns around and proceeds to tear them up.
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: So to me, it's like I have absolutely no sympathy.
• 45:57
  Speaker 5: It's like, turn around, turn the boat around. You're insane
• 46:01
  Speaker 5: to get on a boat with this man. So to me,
• 46:04
  Speaker 5: I just I mean, I literally did not care what
• 46:08
  Speaker 5: happened to anybody except the Breen biologist. I wanted her
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: to survive, and they did deliver on that. You know, man,
• 46:14
  Speaker 5: I think your your solution for all of life's problems.
• 46:18
  Speaker 5: Whenever a killer truck is chasing you down, or maybe
• 46:21
  Speaker 5: an orca is leading you out to sea, turn around,
• 46:25
  Speaker 5: just turn around. There's a great skit where people are
• 46:29
  Speaker 5: making fun of horror movies and the comedians like, you know,
• 46:34
  Speaker 5: if you walk into the house and the house says
• 46:37
  Speaker 5: get out, you get out, don't stay anyway, it's just
• 46:43
  Speaker 5: too funny. Our typical question is did it groove through
• 46:46
  Speaker 5: the decades or did it lose its beat? I don't.
• 46:49
  Speaker 5: My answer is I don't think this ever had a beat.
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: It's a shame, so I don't think it grooves now.
• 46:57
  Speaker 5: My lament for this film is that it would have
• 47:00
  Speaker 5: been very easy to make it a really great film.
• 47:06
  Speaker 5: That's my personal belief. A few changes in the script
• 47:09
  Speaker 5: where the meeting with the whale was inadvertent, totally accidental.
• 47:14
  Speaker 5: Not he was out to try to capture one, but
• 47:17
  Speaker 5: something else happened. He tried to help the whale in
• 47:21
  Speaker 5: the whale misunderstood him trying to help and went on
• 47:25
  Speaker 5: this vengean streak. After that, everything would have been like, hey,
• 47:29
  Speaker 5: I was just trying to help. I was trying to
• 47:31
  Speaker 5: save her as he ran into the prop and now
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: I'm trying to save her. I'm not trying to capture her.
• 47:35
  Speaker 5: But the whale doesn't understand, because the whale is a
• 47:37
  Speaker 5: dumb animal.
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: But that would have They got the biggest brains, don't
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: you remember what Charlotte Rankling told us, It has the
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: biggest brain of all.
• 47:44
  Speaker 5: I get it. They have a big brain, but they
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: can be mistaken.
• 47:47
  Speaker 8: Okay.
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: Anyway, to me, that would have made it a better film.
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: You would have been a lot more emotionally involved. The
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: deaths of the crew members would have been much more
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: impactful if they had been done in the pursuit of
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: trying to help this way, not capture it. So anyway
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: I say it didn't groove, then it doesn't groove for
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: me now, which is a shame because it could have
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: been a great film. I hear you. I hear you,
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: And I think it's a bit of an oddity because
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: I mean, both these films that we're looking at, we're
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: not approaching them with high bars of expectations, so my
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: bar was also said very very low. I thought it
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: was going to be just a shameless Jaws knockoff, only
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: with an Orca. But what really surprised me is when
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: I started researching all of the Italian names that I
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: was seeing in the opening credits. Clearly the people that
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: were making the film believe that they were making something
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: more than just a creature feature. Having Richard Harris play
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: Nolan more as a tragic figure rather than an action
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: hero was different than I was expecting. Charlotte Rampling and
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: Will Samson make the Richard Dreyfus character Enio Morcone score
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: treats the story like a tragedy from beginning to the
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: very end. What really caught me off guard was how
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: much that this movie was about the themes of grief, guilt,
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: and revenge. And then by the time Nolan reaches the Arctic,
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: it's really not a movie about a killer whale anymore.
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: It's about two grieving fathers who have lost their families
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: and they just can't let it go. So No Orca
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: is not Jaws, but I thought it was better than
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: what its reputation would suggest. I expected to spend this
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: episode pointing out everything that didn't work, and instead I
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: found myself getting invested in the characters, and surprisingly, I
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: was genuinely moved by its melancholy final moments. So Orca
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: isn't a lost masterpiece, It's not even a hidden gym
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: it But nearly fifty years later people still remember it.
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: That's a lot more than what can be said for
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: most of the other Jaws imitators that had followed. Matt,
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: do you have any final thoughts before we close up today?
• 50:00
  Speaker 5: I would just say, you know, Chuck, you always do
• 50:03
  Speaker 5: a great job of sort of giving the film it's due,
• 50:07
  Speaker 5: and I agree with what you're saying. I just still
• 50:09
  Speaker 5: think it was It was a missed opportunity. Should have
• 50:13
  Speaker 5: been a big kaboom. No, no, I mean a missed opportunity. Actually,
• 50:18
  Speaker 5: I agree with the second half of the film. It's
• 50:21
  Speaker 5: just the setup in the first half, Yeah, doesn't lead
• 50:24
  Speaker 5: you into a really deep caring for the characters. I mean,
• 50:28
  Speaker 5: I really do not care about any of them, and
• 50:31
  Speaker 5: I figured, oh, look at all these guys getting on
• 50:33
  Speaker 5: the boat with this knucklehead. They're all gonna die for sure,
• 50:37
  Speaker 5: undred percent. We know why they are there. Yeah, I
• 50:40
  Speaker 5: mean it was they all had red shirts on on
• 50:44
  Speaker 5: the away team.
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, we made a Star Trek reference and
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: that's you're my friend. So anyway, I think it's worth
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: watching on a rainy day. And if you're a Jaws fan,
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: it's funny. If you're a Richard Harris fan, you really
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: get a peek into his younger cinematic role, which is
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: really quite good. All right, Join us in two weeks
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: as we continue our Jaws floydation theme with Joe Dante's
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: Piranha from nineteen seventy eight, starring Bradford Dillman, head their Menzies,
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: Kevin McCarthy, and returning from White Line Fever, Dick Miller.
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: At first glance, Piranha looks like exactly the kind of
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: movie that only could have existed after Jaws changed Hollywood forever.
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: But as we'll discover, Joe Dante brought a sense of humor, satire,
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: and just enough bite to turn what could have been
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: a simple cash in into something much more rememberable. We'll
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: talk about Roger Corman government experiments gone wrong in an
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: awful lot of Hungry Fish, and until then, stay in
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: the boat, stay out of the water.
• 51:51
  Speaker 5: We want to thank you for taking the time to
• 51:54
  Speaker 5: tune in. If you've seen ORCA, reach out and let
• 51:57
  Speaker 5: us know your thoughts. You can find us on Facebook
• 51:59
  Speaker 5: or leave us a message over at Cinematicflashback dot com.
• 52:03
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• 52:06
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• 52:09
  Speaker 5: and a review. We really appreciate it, and your review
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: just might get read on the air. And if you've
• 52:14
  Speaker 5: been enjoying the show, tell your friends and family about
• 52:17
  Speaker 5: what we still proudly believe is the best podcast dedicated
• 52:21
  Speaker 5: to nineteen seventies cinema. Join us next time as we
• 52:24
  Speaker 5: hot into the wayback machine and head once again to
• 52:27
  Speaker 5: the nineteen seventies for another classic. Until then, stay out
• 52:30
  Speaker 5: of the water and we'll see you next time.
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: Flashback to the Tales Untold, where the heroes were gritty,
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: the buildings were bowled.
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: From the average test. Flashback o God