It’s impossible to watch Orca without thinking of Jaws. Hell, director Michael Anderson (Logan’s Run) won’t let you! Ennio Morricone’s score borrows a cue or two from John Williams, shots of the fin are like a constant visual reminder, and — let’s be honest — producer Dino De Laurentiis never would’ve made this project had Jaws not eaten up box-office records. Given Dino’s Kong-sized ego, the killer-whale film even acts like it’s out to top the Great White, opening with a scene in which a shark is turned to bloody chum by a whale, as if to say, “You’ve been pwned, Spielberg!”

He wasn’t. Not just a flop, but a real slog, Orca stars Richard Harris (Gladiator) as the possibly insane Capt. Nolan, who’s out to hunt down the “most powerful animal in the world,” according to a marine biologist (Charlotte Rampling, Zardoz). That angers her, and so does Nolan’s interest in her, prompting her to diss him with a curt, “You’re a sensitive bore.” (Oh, no, you di’n’t!)

Nolan hooks a female killer whale, not knowing the beast was pregnant. When he hoses its expelled fetus back into the deep, the father whale (Orca, I guess) makes it his life’s work to follow them across the ocean and take ’em out. When Orca makes off with a character’s leg, Nolan channels his inner Ahab and clunkily vows, “I’ll fight you, you revengeful son of a bitch!” The last five or so minutes provide the thrills and atmosphere missing all along.

Among the supporting cast, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest‘s Will Sampson plays the Native American no one listens to, and soon-to-be-sex-symbol Bo Derek makes her film debut as the girl who seemingly cannot blink. Orca is played by himself; he’s a talented whale, somehow capable of screaming underwater. —Rod Lott

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Maybe I’ve seen too many gory horror flicks (guilty, your honor!), but Prime Evil director Roberta Findlay’s infamous Tenement didn’t quite strike me as the mega-disturbo flick it’s made out to be: “TOO VIOLENT TO BE RATED!” I mean, it’s no picnic in Central Park, but how could it mess up your mind when its jaunty hip-hop theme song reminds me of Mario Van Peebles in Beat Street?

On a hot August day in the Bronx, after threatening one of its own with a dead rat, a gang is removed forcibly from its home base(ment) in a two-bit apartment building, much to the rejoicing of the landlord and residents, who throw a party: “We won’t be seeing them again. Cheers!” They forgot to knock on wood, because elsewhere, high as a kite, gang leader Chaco (Enrique Sandino) vows, “I’m gonna get my building back! We’re gonna have some fun!” Watch out for their Wang Chung.

As night falls, the shit goes down. They assault the residents, taking a straight-razor to a neck or two. While getting raped, an African-American woman stabs her attacker in the eye with scissors. She’s rewarded with a pipe up the plumbing — implied, luckily. Our hooligans stop only to shoot up and, in Chaco’s case, knead the breasts of his gal pal with his bloody paws.

Eventually, the residents get all Howard Beale/Twister Sister on the scumbags, which gives the grimy film its cathartic kick. A granny delivers a baseball bat to the ‘nads; one tuffie is electrocuted via bed frame; and even the kids get in on the action, pouring pots of boiling water. Those aren’t spoilers so much as reasons for you to watch this relentlessly downbeat exercise in nihilism. —Rod Lott

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Brian De Palma sure loves exploring the idea of doubles, duplicates and just plain dupes, and Sisters is one of his finest and earliest such ventures. Opening with a sly trick pulled on his viewers, the psycho thriller centers on French-Canadian model/actress Danielle (Margot Kidder, so good I temporarily forgot she was Superman’s Lois Lane), who’s struggling to make it in New York.

She’s also struggling with the guilt piled upon her by her twin sister, Dominique, especially when Danielle brings home a date (Lisle Wilson, The Incredible Melting Man), which also irks Danielle’s jealous ex-husband, the odd-looking (to say the least) Emil (Bill Finley, Eaten Alive).

It’s difficult to discuss Sisters without spoiling the story’s several twists, so I won’t go beyond details further than Danielle’s across-the-street apartment neighbor, journalist Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt, TV’s Soap, saddled with horrible ’70s hair), witnessing a murder through the window. This allows De Palma to explore his other cinematic obsession: voyeurism.

Call him a Hitchcock rip-off artist if you like, but to do so would be to short-change yourself from a gripping mystery made all the more disturbing by Bernard Herrmann’s score. De Palma established his split-screen storytelling device here — not just a gimmick, but an effective tool to tighten the screws of suspense on his audience. And that he can wield a considerable amount of tension out of a simple act of icing a cake is … well, icing on the cake. —Rod Lott

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In this odd but enjoyable thriller (aka The Beasts’ Carnival) from Spanish hyphenate Paul Naschy, he plays Bruno Rivera, who’s hired by an organization affiliated with his Asian girlfriend (Eiko Nagashima) to snag some diamonds. Syke! He double-crosses them and takes the jewels for himself, but the ruse is not without bloodshed.

Injured, Bruno awakes in the sprawling countryside chalet of Don Simón (Lautaro Murúa), whose two hot daughters (Silvia Aguilar and Azucena Hernández) climb Mount Naschy — but at least at separate times, mind you. While the chalet affords Bruno some safety (and much sexy time), the criminals still come calling for their bling, despite rumors that the place is haunted.

One unfortunate guy gets fed to the family pigs, in a scene that predates that ever-so-controversial one from Hannibal by a full two decades. Strangely, it’s intercut with a sex scene. Other animals at play and in danger in the film include a beetle and a scorpion.

I wonder if Human Beasts refers to the white character who patronizes and hits on his African-American maid/mistress with, “Be a good black girl and light my fire! … Sweet little Raquel, save me some of that stew you make. The one from the other day was finger-licking good. … And you are the best cook in the world, black momma!” (I took three years of Spanish; I know what “negra” means without having to read subtitles.) —Rod Lott

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A little game for you. Read the following, and think of who could best personify such a monster: “When he grins, birds fall off telephone lines. When he looks at you a certain way, your prostate goes bad, and your urine burns. The grass yellows up and dies where he spits. … He has the name of a thousand demons.”

Did you answer Christian Slater? Of course you didn’t. You thought of Al Pacino, or maybe Javier Bardem. Gary Oldman? But in the no man’s land of direct-to-video fare, you get Slater, the poor man’s Jack Nicholson, hardly an untalented actor but hopelessly miscast in portraying such devastating evil.

But then, most everyone involved in Dolan’s Cadillac is vastly out of their depth. Wes Bentley, the very poor man’s Tobey Maguire, can barely summon a passable hissy fit, let alone the rage of man whose wife was killed by Slater’s human trafficker. Director Jeff Beesley has done plenty of Canadian TV comedy work, but is nowhere near talented enough to capture any of the tension of Stephen King’s original short story. The ending, on the page a pleasingly ironic tale of revenge with healthy dollops of righteous anger, is, onscreen, kind of silly.

It’s best to look at Cadillac not as another DTV release, but as a guide to some of the best Canadian character actors working today. Greg Byrk (Immortals) would have made a far better Dolan; Aidan Devine (A History of Violence) classes up the joint; Eugene Clark (Land of the Dead) is always a commanding figure; and Emmanuelle Vaugier (Mirrors 2) is way too smart and classy to end up with a sad sack like Bentley. They all deserve better. —Corey Redekop

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