Orca

A gloriously unruly entry in the post-Jaws wave of “nature attacks” movies—one that Kleber selected instead of Spielberg’s shark—Michael Anderson’s Orca opens with a gentle mating pair of killer whales before vaulting into operatic revenge. After a fisherman (Richard Harris) botches an attempted capture and hauls a mortally wounded, pregnant whale onto his deck, her mate surfaces to witness the death and follows him back to a small Newfoundland village. What begins as a simple encounter spirals into a cycle of retaliation where boats sink, houses collapse, and the town’s uneasy alliance with the fisherman fractures as the orca methodically draws him out to sea. Shot along the rugged Newfoundland coast and dappled by Ennio Morricone’s mournful score, the film, in its own pulpy way, gradually opens into a much more serious expression of grief… and features a quite memorable leg-severing set piece.