Orca (1977)

When Jaws was released in 1975 it has to be said, no pun intended, that it really opened some flood-gates. Not only was it the birth of the summer blockbuster, but it also had people chasing similar success with a variety of watery thrillers/horror movies. Orca is one of those attempts to ride that wave (okay, that pun was totally intended), and it was one of the major titles I had been meaning to watch for decades. And now I have.

What you have here is the tale of a a fisherman (Captain Nolan, played by Richard Harris) who ends up engaging in an ongoing battle with a cunning killer whale. To be fair, this whale saw the fisherman kill his partner and child, in a scene that is genuinely distressing and wild. It wasn't necessarily done with malice, but it was done nonetheless. Nolan ends up endangering himself, his colleagues (two main supporting characters played by Robert Carradine and Bo Derek), and, to use the technical term, a sea mammal expert (cetologist Rachel Bedford, played by Charlotte Rampling), but it looks inevitable that things are leading to a showdown between two determined individuals who have suffered great losses.

Directed by the fairly dependable (at this time anyway) Michael Anderson, Orca is a strange mish-mash of elements that don’t ever really fit together, but it has to be said that this is as much a strength as a weakness. Orca isn’t really what you think it is, not for the majority of the runtime, but it keeps trying to remind viewers of the film it is most indebted to. Writers Luciano Vincenzoni and Sergio Donati have a couple of excellent set-pieces to work around, including that stunning opening sequence that starts the whole chain of events, but they are unable to properly weave together the visceral thrills and the interesting exploration of characters and livelihoods shaped by the sea.

Harris isn’t doing his best work, but he’s good enough. He is certainly still very much a leading man, although Rampling matches him, and gets to share plenty of screentime with him without being reduced to an inconvenient love interest. Will Sampson is very welcome, despite his disappointingly small role, but Carradine, Derek, and Keenan Wynn are given too little to work with. The whole film would have benefited from a smaller core cast and a bigger platter of potential victims, but then it wouldn’t be the oddity that we got.

The best way to sum it up is to label it as technically mediocre, but intermittently impactful. I won’t rush to rewatch this, I may actually never rewatch it, but there are a few scenes that will stay in my mind forever, which is quite the achievement for what is an otherwise unexceptional Jaws “knock off”.

6/10

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Noirvember: Point Blank (1967)

In case you somehow missed the memo, Lee Marvin is one tough sonofabitch. If you didn’t know that before watching Point Blank then you should sure as hell know it by the time it’s finished. This is a film that starts with Marvin’s character, Walker, being shot multiple times and left for dead, but it doesn’t take him long to get back on his feet and start on a path of bloody revenge.

Based on a novel, “The Hunter”, by Donald E. Westlake (who has had a number of his works adapted into movie form), this is an enjoyably simple tale of one man cutting a large swathe through a criminal organisation as he looks to collect his share of a rewarding plot that he was a vital part of. He isn’t being unfair, yet everyone seems to think that as they try their best to avoid giving him what he is due.

Director John Boorman, working from a script written by Alexander Jacobs, and David and Rafe Newhouse, delivers what could well be a perfect mix of violence, intrigue, and ultra-cool in this classic neo-noir. It is another film I regret not seeing sooner, especially since I already saw Payback (the Gibson-starring remake from the late ‘90s) a couple of decades ago.

The script is brilliant, if often economical with words (Boorman adds so much with visual details, and excellent editing from Henry Berman, throughout), and you have a mostly excellent cast getting themselves in trouble while a fine, dreamy/nightmare-ish, soundtrack from Johnny Mandel accompanies their actions.

I would say this is Marvin’s best role, but that would suggest I have seen him in many other movies (I haven’t, he’s a bit of a blind spot for me). It’s tough to think of anyone doing better work here though, and he’s a perfect mix of smooth and rough. A young John Vernon is enjoyably spooked, knowing that his betrayal could cost him his life, and there are enjoyable performances from Keenan Wynn, Carroll O’Connor, and Lloyd Bochner. Although very male-centric, both Angie Dickinson and Sharon Acker get to be front and centre in a couple of surprisingly impactful scenes.

Having enjoyed this from start to finish, I am now struggling to find any fault with it at all. Maybe I have been too generous with my ratings lately, or maybe I have just finally got around to watching some classics that should have been marked off the list a long time ago. I think the latter is correct. People may not like how brutal and “ugly” Point Blank is, I can understand that, but I loved it. A large part of that is to do with Marvin, playing his character like some ever-moving shark that has sensed blood in the water and knows that it’s time to eat, but there’s nothing here I would change. 

I will now plan to rewatch Payback next week, and I’m interested to see what I think of that nowadays.

10/10

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