Orca (1977)

Posted on June 9, 2013 at 10:21 am by Jeff Kuykendall

The message of Orca (1977) is clear: killer whales are beautiful, intelligent creatures who should be appreciated as thus, for if you cross them, they will ram you hard with their noses and chew you into bloody bits. “The ancient Romans called him Orca Orcinus, Latin for ‘The Bringer of Death,'” intones professor Charlotte Rampling to her class near the beginning of the film. “As parents, killer whales are exemplary, better than most human beings. And like human beings, they have a profound instinct for vengeance.” After explaining the depth of the killer whale’s communication by playing some whalesong (“[this] was found to contain over fifteen million pieces of information; the Bible contains only four million”), she concludes: “What we call language, they might call unnecessary, or redundant, or – retarded.” Here the scene ends, for is there anything more to say? Those whales at Sea World think you’re retarded. We witness a shark stalking a diver, and just as the shark is about to strike, it’s suddenly rammed by a charging orca so hard that it catapults out of the sea, covered in its own blood. The film has announced its intentions. It’s seen Jaws, and it has a lunatic inferiority complex.

Captain Nolan (Richard Harris) and his crew capture a female killer whale, while her vengeful mate watches from below the surface.

Such subtlety never lets up for the film’s ninety minutes. The opening shot of the film, eager to emphasize the awe and magic of killer whales, shows two of the beasts doing parallel flips out of the sea, against a setting sun and while mournful Ennio Morricone music plays; like much of the whale footage in the film, this is taken from Marine World/Africa USA in San Francisco, here overlaid into the ocean so poorly that the whales are semi-transparent. Even if the effect did work, it would be to support a mise-en-scène better suited to a black velvet painting at a sidewalk sale. But the collaborators – including director Michael Anderson (Around the World in 80 Days, Logan’s Run), screenwriters (and former Sergio Leone collaborators) Luciano Vincenzoni and Sergio Donati, and executive producer Dino de Laurentiis (fresh off his remake of King Kong), are aiming for an emotional effect more potent than Jaws. Theirs is a tale of existential guilt, to be embodied in the raw performance of Richard Harris as Captain Nolan, a man whose troubled relationship with a killer whale brings back traumatic, unresolved conflicts from his past. Also, the orca bites Bo Derek’s leg off.

Orca wreaks his vengeance against the Newfoundland fishing village.

Anxious to test his shark-wrangling mettle against a killer whale, Newfoundland fisherman Captain Nolan steers his vessel Bumpo into a shoal and snags a female. The whale would rather commit suicide than be captured by a mentally-insufficient human, so she flings herself against the boat’s propeller, leaving Nolan to drag out of the sea a hemorrhaging orca chained at the tail. While her husband watches from the sea (close-ups of a whale’s crying eye), she spontaneously gives birth, dropping a large, pink orca fetus onto the deck of Nolan’s ship. (The film is rated PG.) Horrified, he hoses the stillborn thing back into the ocean. We see the male orca scream in rage at the sky, then proceed to attack the boat and swallow Keenan Wynn. What follows is a killer whale funeral procession, as the mourning husband, joined by his whale companions, pushes his dead wife with his nose for miles and miles against the current, until he deposits her carcass upon a beach. Morricone’s score tries its damnedest to sell this. Harris’s Captain Nolan, meanwhile, is in despair. We’re soon to learn that he lost his pregnant wife in a car accident with a drunk driver, so, as he puts it, “I understand what that whale is feelin’, for the same thing happened to me.”

Harris and Rampling confront the killer whale inside the Arctic Circle.

It might be best to interpret what follows as a fairy tale, for it sure as hell isn’t connected with reality. The enraged killer whale terrorizes the Canadian fishing village, demanding that Nolan come out and face him mano-a-orca in the open waters, which the local fishermen understand because the whale has eaten all their fish and sunk several of their boats. The angst-ridden Nolan only gets conflicting advice from Rampling’s Dr. Bedford, who one moment tells him that the whale is seeking “vengeance,” and another moment tells him he’s crazy for trying to read into the whale’s actions. (“Nolan, I think I ought to explain something to you. I don’t know what this creature wants, you don’t know what he wants, the villagers don’t know, nobody knows. But if he’s anything like a human being, whatever he wants isn’t necessarily what he should have.” “Yes but, you said that–” “Forget what I said!”) The local Native American wise-man (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest‘s Will Sampson) is more straightforward: “The monster’s message to us is clear. We must send him Nolan or he will torment this village without mercy.” It’s only when the orca sets fire to the local industrial sector and blows its factories to pieces, then collapses Bo Derek’s house into the sea and bites off her aforementioned limb, that Nolan realizes he must stop listening to Charlotte Rampling – she was in Zardoz, after all – and sail out to face the whale.

Orca prepares to feed.

Here Orca finally switches into Moby-Dick mode, as Harris transforms into Ahab and northward guides his crew – including Rampling, Sampson, Peter Hooten (The Inglorious Bastards) and Robert Carradine, until Carradine gets swallowed just like Wynn. The Bumpo keeps following that fin on the horizon until icebergs surround them, and they run short on fuel. The increasingly gaunt Harris begins to tackle dialogue like, “He loved his family more than I loved mine. I won’t be needin’ [a harpoon]. It’s got to be a fair fight, on equal terms.” Whatever that means; a few scenes later and he’s firing a rifle at the whale while balancing on an ice floe that the orca shoves around with its nose, all while Rampling watches from the edge of the set, dressed now like Obi-Wan Kenobi (as if to remind the audience of the film they could be watching next door). The set, actually, is quite impressive, as is much of the oceanic scenery once Orca moves into its final act. None of this – not even Harris’s Irish charm and 100% investment in his character – can rescue the film from the inescapable silliness of the endeavor. The screenwriters seem to be aiming for the same level of operatic emotion they achieved with Leone in the spaghetti western; but absent of Leone and any real style to speak of, and applied to the more lowly cinematic realm of “Jaws rip-off,” the task seems more Quixotic than Ahab-esque. Orca is worth seeing, none the less, for even if Dino De Laurentiis’s stamp isn’t a guarantee of quality, the promised spectacle is delivered – more than enough to overwhelm your feeble human brain.

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The Twilight Zone: “Nick of Time” (1960)

Posted on June 1, 2013 at 10:19 am by Jeff Kuykendall

By the time this episode aired, The Twilight Zone had already become legendary for its outlandishness. Previously, science fiction, fantasy, and horror were seen as kids’ stuff, and though Rod Serling had already established himself as a screenwriter of note, a half-hour anthology series devoted exclusively to the fantastic was no easy pitch to the networks. Thankfully, CBS picked up the pilot, “Where is Everybody?”, and by the end of the show’s first season, The Twilight Zone was a sensation with a devoted fan base. Season Two launched in late September of 1960 with a new musical theme – the one we best know today, and whistle whenever something odd occurs – and an opening credits sequence (a black line cuts across the screen to form an artificial horizon, and a sun sets against it) that was slightly modified from what was used in the latter episodes of Season One. Serling’s opening-credits narration is truncated, and he speaks more urgently, almost sounding panicked as he warns you about that signpost up ahead. All of this quickly acclimates the viewer to another 25-minute trip into the realm of the bizarre and eerie. What viewers on this November 18 were not expecting was “Nick of Time,” an episode that would play off their expectations of the series, and suddenly turn the mirror upon themselves. Speaking of mirror-reveals, “Eye of the Beholder” had aired the week before, one of the series’ key triumphs, a high-concept science fiction tale with fantastic makeup by William Tuttle, executed with perfection on the small screen. But for “Nick of Time,” writer Richard Matheson, in his first contribution to Season Two, focuses not upon the otherworldly but – almost uncomfortably – upon our own frailties as human beings. The supernatural is merely suggested and never proven, but the actions of its central characters can’t be denied.

Pat and Don Carter (Patricia Breslin and William Shatner) discover the "Mystic Seer" in the Busy Bee Cafe.

The setup is typical Twilight Zone economic simplicity. We meet two newlyweds deeply in love with one another, Don S. Carter (a very young William Shatner) and Pat Carter (Patricia Breslin, who would soon appear in William Castle’s Homicidal). It would take a second viewing to realize the opening shot is symbolic of the episode’s central theme: they are introduced as passengers, not drivers, riding in their own car as it’s being towed to the local mechanic. They’ve just broken down in a town called Ridgeview, somewhere in Ohio. (Shades of the classic episode “Walking Distance” – if your car breaks in the middle of nowhere, you’re likely to find yourself in the Twilight Zone.) With four hours to kill, Don and Pat head off to the Busy Bee Cafe for lunch and some slow-dancing to the jukebox. At their booth, they’re charmed by the presence of the “Mystic Seer” napkin-holder, with one of those little winking devil-heads suspended above it; drop a penny in it and have your fortune told, provided you keep your question to the “yes/no” variety. Don asks it if anything exciting happens in this small town: “It is quite possible,” the napkin-holder says. He asks if he’s going to be promoted: “It has been decided in your favor,” the napkin-holder says. On a whim, he decides to phone the office. Pat looks worried, and we see her touching her husband’s good luck charms that have been left on the table – a rabbit’s foot and a four-leaf clover. She had the same worried expression when he deposited his second penny. The waters are apparently troubled.

The Mystic Seer predicts...vaguely.

Of course, this being The Twilight Zone, the phone call reveals that he has, in fact, received the promotion he was asking for. He now regards the napkin-holder and its devil’s wink with a new kind of curiosity. More pennies are deposited. “Is it really going to be four hours before we get out of here?” “You may never know,” the napkin-holder says. “You mean something will keep us from knowing, something will happen to us?” he asks. “If you move soon,” the napkin-holder says. “You mean if we’re not supposed to move, we’re supposed to stay here?” “That makes a good deal of sense,” the napkin-holder says. Soon he’s got these vague answers locked down: they can’t leave before 3pm or something terrible will happen to them. Ominous music plays on the soundtrack and Don looks worried: that’s all that matters. We know the little devil must be right. Never mind that it’s answers are no better, and no random, than those you’d receive from a Magic 8-Ball. Pat is skeptical, and it’s a chore for Don to find things for them to do before 3:00 rolls around (needless to say, dessert is ordered). She can’t wait until 3 – she becomes impatient and annoyed. They leave a few minutes before, and, in crossing the street, are almost struck by a car. It’s not very long before Don is dragging his downcast wife back to the Mystic Seer. They just need to wait until those two old women get out of their booth, because even though there are other napkin-holders, other Mystic Seers, this one, Don is convinced, is special. Pat pleads with him, but he has become obsessed – like the gambling-addicted Everett Sloane in Season One’s “The Fever.” She has obviously seen similar behavior in Don before, or she wouldn’t have eyed those good luck charms so nervously. And as penny after penny is inserted into the machine, the cards keep giving unimpressive responses. At one point he explains to his wife that you can’t just expect the cards to call them by name.

As Don and Pat leave, another couple takes their place - further toward the end of their rope.

But why not? According to Rod, they’re on “the outskirts of the Twilight Zone,” after all. The truth is that Matheson is making a choice. “Nick of Time,” like the little winking devil, never commits to an answer. We never learn if anything supernatural has occurred. Don argues with his wife that the Seer told them something bad would happen before 3, and the car almost hit them when they left before 3, so therefore…but she responds softly, “Don, you said 3:00, not the machine. You decided to sit in here as long as we did. You.” Explicitly, the episode is about free will. In the final scene, we get the twist that truly makes this a Twilight Zone installment: as Don and Pat leave, having finally decided to seize control of their own lives, make their own choices, and forget all about little mysterious napkin-holders, another couple steps through the door and sits down at the booth, looking almost withered, their life-energy drained by the penny-machine. “Do you think we might leave Ridgeview today?…Is there any way out, any way at all?” We see what Don and Pat might have become, a few days in the future: self-imposed prisoners who’ve surrendered all their freedoms. A Philosophy class could pair this episode with Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) for the shared message of “You’ve got to think for yourselves.” And, sure, the fact that the supernatural presence at work is unproven and purely theoretical lends itself to a critique of religion. But indisputably the episode is a fable representing a metaphysical concept, the importance of grabbing hold of the reins, determining your own path. By outlining a worst-case scenario, we can be alerted to those inclinations within ourselves that lead us to surrendering our freedom of choice. Serling had previously shown us the monsters within ourselves with “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” but in the final reveal, he delivered the aliens and the flying saucer. Matheson strips his own tale down further: we don’t need extraterrestrial intervention to become subjugated; it only takes our own natural tendency to become helpless passengers.

And – of note – Shatner is fantastic.

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The Living Dead Girl (1982)

Posted on May 26, 2013 at 9:08 am by Jeff Kuykendall

Being a fan of Jean Rollin is sometimes like being a fan of Philip K. Dick. There are works that are essential, and others that were dashed-off during an evening to pay the rent. If you were to introduce someone to the artist’s work, you’d want to be careful about what you select. You’d rather have someone new to PKD reading Ubik or A Scanner Darkly than Vulcan’s Hammer; and when it comes to Rollin, you’d rather they not start with something like Schoolgirl Hitchhikers (1973). Better they choose The Living Dead Girl (La morte vivante, 1982), for one example. Even though it’s slightly atypical, taking a few steps in directions heretofore unexplored in Rollin’s filmography, it’s a remarkable little B-movie, one considerably more serious and unnerving than what he’d attempted in the 70’s. As a zombie picture, it’s leagues beyond the mediocre Zombie Lake, which he’d only made the year before; a newcomer wouldn’t even guess they were by the same director. His heart was in this one. That’s what matters. Yet they are both zombie movies, on the surface, and there are suggestions in Zombie Lake of what was to come: namely the sub-plot of the undead German soldier who tenderly reconnects with his daughter (the film’s one redeeming feature, which still played ludicrously). The Living Dead Girl develops this idea into a larger theme about devotion to reviving a shared memory – and the dangers of doing so.

Catherine Valmont (François Blanchard) is reanimated and feeling a new kind of hunger.

The film opens with a shot of endless gray factories, the kind of industrialized modern landscape that Rollin last criticized in Night of the Hunted (1980): anathema to a director obsessed with realms more natural and ancient, such as chilly beaches, overgrown countryside, old chateaus, and decrepit cemeteries. The image proves to be shorthand, for the first characters we meet are two workers driving into the country to bury some chemical waste. (With magical properties, as is so often the case in genre horror. What caused a disease of amnesia in Night of the Hunted on a different continent gave birth to the Toxic Avenger.) The catacombs where they’re storing the barrels just happen to border a crypt – with lit candles, of course – that is home to two women of the wealthy Valmont family who recently passed, a mother and her daughter. Sliding naturally into the role of grave-robbers, the two lift the lids of the coffins on the hunt for jewelry. But one of their barrels leaks, and the daughter, Catherine (François Blanchard), is revived by the toxic liquid, quickly slaughtering both men, drinking their blood and gnawing on their flesh. All of this is standard-issue zombie fare. But Rollin’s camera rarely leaves Catherine’s side. He follows her out of the crypt and into the country, until she reaches the chateau where she once lived. We see her walking from room to room, dwelling on a piano and a music box. She begins to remember. A flashback shows a prepubescent Catherine with her best friend, Hélène (Marina Pierro), partaking in the skin-pricking blood-brother ritual so common among young boys. “If you die, I will follow,” they tell each other. The now-grown Hélène coincidentally phones the estate, and Catherine answers. The undead Catherine cannot speak, but she plays the music box. Hearing the familiar music, Hélène calls Catherine’s name. She somehow knows.

Marina Pierro as Hélène, guardian of the undead Catherine.

Much of what follows pays further tribute to the tropes of the genre. While our protagonist kills some more – in the tradition of 80’s slasher films, she murders a couple post-coitus – a tourist and amateur photographer (Carina Barone) captures her on camera walking through a field, and begins to suspect she’s somehow the recently-deceased Catherine Valmont. But all these scenes are mere distraction while Rollin builds a plot worth caring about. Soon enough Hélène is reunited with Catherine, and when she finds her best friend surrounded by bloody corpses, she makes a hasty decision to hide them. She cleans up Catherine and helps her learn how to speak again – and her first word is Hélène’s name. She kills a pigeon for Catherine to eat, but it’s not good enough: her friend needs to eat a person. When we next see Hélène by the side of the road, pretending to be stranded and looking for a lift, you can see where this is going, but you’re unlikely to take your eyes off the screen. As the story progresses, a strange transfer seems to take place. Catherine begins to speak with greater ease, and expresses remorse and disgust with her own actions. Hélène becomes accustomed to killing, and eager to keep her blood-sister well fed. What is most shocking about The Living Dead Girl is that it begins in such a paint-by-numbers fashion (grave-robbers, toxic waste, reanimation) and progresses to a finale that is genuinely lyrical in the best Rollin fashion. It is also, simultaneously, brutal and heart-breaking. (Note how Rollin excruciatingly depicts cannibalism, then finally pulls his camera far, far back, distancing us from the carnage. I was reminded of the fascist who turns his binoculars around to look at his victims through the opposite end in Pasolini’s Saló. But Rollin’s technique also emphasizes the loneliness and isolation of poor Catherine.)

Catherine follows her instincts.

Redemption and Kino Lorber have been doing such a great job of issuing Rollin’s films to Blu-Ray that I’ve yet to have the time to really dig into the voluminous special features on their discs, and The Living Dead Girl has more than most. Fitting, since it’s such a fine and unusual horror film. The Blu-Ray was released last year alongside his 1997 Two Orphan Vampires, with liner notes by Tim Lucas comparing the films. My only complaint is that the cover art depicts the blood-soaked climax of the film, which happens to be a spoiler akin to that Planet of the Apes DVD release with the Statue of Liberty on the cover. Not to mention that it makes for an unattractive design, when more intriguing images from the film could have been used. But Jean Rollin is all about marginalized appeal: too much blood and sex for the critics, and too much contemplative strangeness for most horror fans. What makes The Living Dead Girl so haunting is that it sinks its teeth more deeply than your average zombie movie. In its treatment of a worthy theme – the longing for an innocent past that can never be recaptured – with some bloody, bloody metaphors, it’s a horror film that resonates with emotion, and to accomplish the feat it doesn’t need a horde of zombies, but only one of them, and her anguished cry that ends the picture.

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