NOT #FreeWillyFriday: Orca

“Orca” (1977)
Starring Richard Harris, Charlotte Rampling, Bo Derek
Directed by Michael Anderson
Written by Luciano Vincenzoni, Sergio Donati, Robert Towne
Rated PG with some gruesome scenes

We really have reached the end of Free Willy Friday (for now anyway. Who knows? Reboots are big). But if you have a killer killer whale-shaped void in your life, I can help you for one more week.

Early on in this misadventure, Twitter user @Fiji Mermaid replied to my Willy vs. Jaws post with a clip of the rather one-sided battle between an orca and a great white shark in 1977's Orca.

I mentioned the movie with the 3 Willies post that featured a team-up between the most famous killer whales I knew of: Willy, Shamu and Orca (I assume his name was Orca. Or is that like calling myself Human?).

Pictured: Orca. Or maybe Colin?

The movie predates me, but I remember seeing ads for it in comics I picked up here and there. I'm pretty sure I saw a portion of the ending on TV, but I remembered very little about it. So I figured it was high time to watch the movie, and I requested it from the library shortly after. It didn't arrive until #FreeWillyFriday was winding down.

The movie opens with some whale sounds which, for all I know, could spell out the plot of the movie, kind of like how the terrorists at the beginning of Iron Man let you know who's really pulling the strings if you speak Urdu. From there we get some emotional music and a pair of killer whales frolicking and maybe mating? I don't want to know.

At that point, the DVD started freezing up, and I almost gave up and rewatched Venom. But finally it skipped from whales swimming through seaweed to Professor Rachel Bedford (Charlotte Rampling) dumping a whole lot of exposition on her college class about orcas and their intelligence, strength and human-like qualities, including the capacity for vengeance.

Turns out, the struggling DVD skipped right over that whole shark fight and Rachel's meet-cute with Captain Nolan (Richard Harris, or as I call him, Dumbledore I) and his crew, which includes Bo Derek in her film debut.

They were hunting great whites while Rachel was, I don't know, doing some marine biology or oceanography. There's about 3 minutes the disc never let me access, but I did see Nolan and company pull her aboard, and Orca (an orca?) save her grad student from getting chomped. Nolan decides he can make more money capturing a killer whale, despite the misgivings of the extremely attractive marine biologist.

Always listen to the attractive marine biologist.

While attempting to catch the male orca, Nolan winds up harpooning the female, who swims into the boat propeller and, when they hoist her out of the water, prematurely births her calf. This prompts her mate – look, I'm just going to call him Orca – to bellow with rage and go full Punisher.

Even as a kid who thought sharks were cool, I was skeptical of Jaws (I know, that's probably not his name either) following the Brodies to the Bahamas in the fourth movie. But this whale is even more deliberate and diabolical.

He not only torments Nolan by attacking his crew, but manages to turn the townspeople against him, damaging their boats and blowing up local infrastructure. Yes. He even knows which house is Nolan's. Perhaps someone dropped a phone book overboard?

It borders on the absurd, but here's the thing: there's a palpable tension building. Rachel humanized the darn orca, the death of his mate and baby are awful, and Nolan is not the carefree braggart we thought. As ridiculous as a lot of it is, a fateful showdown is set up, with Rachel going along in an effort to somehow protect Nolan and the whale. Or at least write a landmark paper on why you should never, ever tick off a killer whale.

Maybe I was more forgiving because I didn't expect much from the 40-plus-year-old effects, or perhaps I gave the movie a bit of unearned reverence by mistakenly believing it was a classic. But it was a decent way to spend 92 minutes (well, 89, with my banged-up library disc). Yeah, it doesn't rise much beyond “Killer whales are cool. Don't hunt them or make them mad.” But Harris and Rampling sold it, as well as they could.

I mean, it's no “Free Willy 2: A New Freedom,” but at lest it's an actual movie.