Tag: Richard Harris

On the evening of July 22, 1977, as I stood in line in the lobby of the Boyd Theatre in Bethlehem, PA, the doors to the auditorium swung open, and the audience for the previous showing began to file out. Someone in line asked, “How was it?” He received the flat, noncommittal response, “It was a big fish.”

Even at the age of 11, I knew “Orca” was going to suck. Heavily promoted on the back of every Marvel comic for weeks, the poster art featured an improbably large, breaching killer whale, looking all the world like a mottled Moby-Dick, splintering the hull of a ship, against the backdrop of an entire seaside village in flames, and a miniscule seaman (presumably Richard Harris) defying this vengeance-fueled juggernaut with a harpoon the size of a toothpick. The entire enterprise bore the unmistakable aroma of desperate hyperbole.

This week on “Roy’s Tie Dye Sci Fi Corner,” we finally honor a long-term request from viewer Lesley Siedt to sink our teeth into “Orca.”

Clearly intended to inspire awe, the Marvel ad couldn’t disguise the fact that “Orca” was a transparent “Jaws” cash-grab, with perhaps a little “King Kong” and maybe some “Death Wish” tossed into the mix. Executive producer Dino De Laurentiis’ “Kong” remake had only just been in theaters in December, and “Death Wish” made him a mint in 1973.

Either way, the audience is clearly meant to sympathize with the aquatic avenger. And why not? Harris’ character is a jerk. And supposedly the actor wasn’t much better on set. He insisted on performing his own stunts, nearly getting himself killed, spent most of the shoot inebriated, contemplated murdering his wife and her suspected lover, and punched out producer Luciano Vincenzoni. If only the actual film had conveyed as much drama. On Rotten Tomatoes, its current approval rating is 9 percent.

You can’t argue with the cast, which includes, beside Harris, Charlotte Rampling, Will Sampson, Bo Derek, and Keenan Wynn. But nobody behaves in a way that makes sense, and at the end of the day, there’s little to do but get picked off one by one.

Composer Ennio Morricone clearly perceived it as a western, providing an underscore of melancholy guitar, an air of heartbreak in the strings, and none other than Edda dell’Orso lending her wordless soprano, so indelibly associated with “Once Upon a Time in the West.”

I’ve got to hand it to my parents. We were a moviegoing family, and we saw everything, the good, the bad and the ugly. As my stepfather, bearing equally low expectations, observed, “If it’s produced by De Laurentiis, it’s got to stink.” A gross generalization, admittedly, but he was kind of right: approached in the correct frame of mind, a De Laurentiis film seldom disappointed.

We’ll blubber over this tragic tale of lost love and the destructive consequences of reckless greed on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Bring your seals (of approval) to the comments section, when we livestream on Facebook, this Friday evening at 7:30 EDT!

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

Haven’t seen the movie? It’s even better dubbed in Hindi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3tn22nvY7A

The Boyd Theatre was my favorite venue in the Lehigh Valley at which to view movies. It was the only theater that did the big movies justice, an old-fashioned movie palace that somehow still offered decent projection and stirring sound. Opened in 1921, it was demolished only this year. What rises in its place? A 14-story “luxury apartment” building. Nice job, Bethlehem. It breaks my heart a little every time I think that the Boyd’s gone.

A Farewell to the Boyd Theater

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/7852

https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/bethlehem/2022/03/redesigned-bethlehem-boyd-theatre-project-retains-iconic-look-photos.html

Abandoned Boyd Theater, Bethlehem PA. Built in 1920
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