12:57 a.m. on 2002-03-23
Cinema Awful

Instead of running ER today, TNT opted to show the biggest ripoff film of this lifetime...the incomparable ORCA!!!

It's based on a true story, but I have to say that embellishments HAD to have been made. Regardless, Richard Harris, really promoting the diversity of roles which an Irish actor can play portrays a nasty old drunken sea salt, who along with his crew, takes on the Atlantic in search of a killer whale. They harpoon a rather pregnant shamu and accidentally perform the first killer whale abortion in history. Daddy whale looks on, pissed. He spots Harris immediately as the captain of the boat and we get a closeup of the whale's eye, staring on at Harris. The whale roles it's eye, perhaps remembering that Harris starred in a lot of bad movies during the fifties. Mama whale is cut loose, whale fetus tossed in water, gentleman, start your engines and back to shore.

The whale follows and starts to wreak havok on the pier. All of the other fisherman are pissed at Harris. They blame him. They think, "Hey, if you hadn't starred in all of those bad movies in the 50's, you would've gotten better roles. You wouldn't have accepted this one and we wouldn't be here right now. Fucker!" Indeed!

To wrap this up, Harris needs four of his companions to die, including Bo Derek who gets her leg bitten off, before he goes in search of the whale. He enlists the help of a large, mysterious Indian who appears out of nowhere and a real bitch, Charlotte Rampling. Best moment of the film: we learn that Harris' son and wife were killed by a drunk driver. Harris, being a drunken Irishman, can relate to the whale. He tells Rampling, in the most audacious display of cinematic stupidity in the history of film, "I want to go talk to him[whale]and tell him about my son. I'm HIS drunken driver!" Harris really was drunk. And so was the screenwriter.

In the end, Harris dies, Rampling lives, and TNT should've stuck with ER.

in the slammer - up for parole