Word: orcas
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Bluhdorn is hoping to repeat the success of The Godfather with one of the dozen or so movies that Paramount will introduce this year: Orca, the saga of a killer whale, produced by Dino de Laurentiis, or Looking for Mr. Goodbar, a Richard Brooks adaptation of the best-selling novel. Columbia is putting its big bets on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, another science adventure epic, and The Deep, a successor to Jaws, which is the highest-grossing motion picture of all time (MCA's count of the worldwide gross: $196 million). A rash of copycat productions...
This perfectly ill-assorted trio sets out in the Orca, Quint's leaky craft, to bring the marauding great white to his reward. Ideal adversary that he is, the shark proves stronger and more wily than anyone suspected. The men go after him with rifles. They try to slow him down with barrels, fight him, tire him, tow him. In desperation Hooper descends below the surface in a shark cage (the sequence for which Carl Rizzo was hired), armed with a poison gun that will get the job done-if he can shoot it directly into the creature...
...back 50 million years (v. 5 million for man) to the time the first cetaceans abandoned the land and took to the waters. Of the 87 species still extant, the biggest is the blue whale, whose tongue alone weighs as much as an elephant. Most highly developed is Orcinus orca, the "killer whale," which may be the only higher animal on earth that knows no fear. Then there is the humpback whale, renowned for its intricate but remarkably precise "songs," and the river dolphins that navigate far inland during floods, remembering underwater topography so well that they never get trapped...
...make it the prerace favorite, but there was no shortage of high-velocity competition. Miami Boatbuilder Dick Bertram was at the helm of his diesel-powered Brave Moppie, the 1965 world champion. Following in the example of his father, a champion hydroplane racer, Gar Wood Jr. was driving Orca, a needle-nosed, 47-ft. monster that packed 1,200 horses under its deck. British hopes were pinned on Surfury, a molded plywood 36-footer with twin supercharged engines that generated 525 h.p. apiece...
...Biscayne Bay into the heaving Gulf Stream. Within minutes, last year's Griffith winner, Bill Wishnick, was back at the dock: his co-driver Allen Brown had smashed both ankles on the jolting deck of their 28-ft. Broad Jumper. About the same time, Gar Wood Jr. bounced Orca onto a sand bar off Cape Florida, clambered out, and watched helplessly as his $150,000 craft split open and sank...