input: Many have stated that Orca Killer Whale is a Jaws rip-off. This is not really true, though the enormous commercial success of Jaws undoubtedly made these man .vs. beast stories more attractive propositions for film-makers in the second half of the '70s. Orca Killer Whale would be better described as a modern-day retread of Moby Dick. It's a story about obsession. On one hand a whale's obsessive quest to avenge the death of its mate; on the other a bounty hunter's obsessive quest to kill the whale before it can claim any more lives. Sadly, Orca- Killer Whale emerges a very disappointing film, its fundamentally interesting ideas somewhat ruined by hammy performances and preposterous plotting.

Shark hunter Nolan (Richard Harris) encounters a marine-life researcher Rachel Bedford (Charlotte Rampling) diving off the Atlantic coast of Canada. Their meeting almost ends in disaster when Rachel's team are attacked by a Great White Shark, but a Killer Whale arrives in the nick of time to stop the shark. After this, Nolan becomes increasingly obsessed with capturing a Killer Whale and selling it to an aquarium. But his plans backfire when he accidentally kills a pregnant female of the species while the distraught male looks on. Rachel tells Nolan that a Killer Whale is an incredibly intelligent mammal with a strong memory and feelings just like a human. Worse still, native Umilak (Will Sampson) warns him that the whale will always remember its grief and do everything it can to have revenge. Nolan initially tries to forget about the whole regrettable incident, but the whale causes havoc in the fishing town and the disgruntled locals begin to demand that Nolan puts to sea to track it down and destroy it. Eventually Nolan is forced to pursue the Killer Whale the hunt leads all the way to the desolate ice floes of the Arctic Ocean, where man and beast play out their final fatal battle against each other.

Two things stand out in this film. One is the haunting score by Ennio Morricone (perhaps the greatest composer of film music of all-time, his talents wasted on various tenth-rate clunkers during the 70s and 80s). The other is the amazing widescreen photography of Ted Moore, which makes the film consistently pleasing to the eye. In every other department, Orca Killer Whale is a shoddy film that does nothing to enhance the reputation of its talented cast and crew. Harris appears extremely ill throughout the film, his hair bedraggled, black rings around his eyes and skin deathly pale. His performance lacks the usual vitality. Rampling strikes a lot of sexy poses but fails to convince with her long-winded and ill-informed explanations about the ways of whales. The rest of the actors are wasted in brief and undeveloped roles, the most memorable of which sees Bo Derek getting her leg bitten off by the vengeful whale. The plot is total nonsense from start to finish, with such preposterous sequences as the whale deliberately starting a fire in the fishing village that engulfs and destroys the local refinery! Although it's credible to suppose that whales are intelligent creatures with genuine emotions, the idea that a whale could plot revenge against a single human adversary and carry it out so calculatedly is utterly absurd. Orca Killer Whale is really one for completists of the man .vs. beast cycle from the late 70s. Most will come away from the film shaking their heads in disbelief and grinding their teeth with despair.

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: Munchies starts in deepest darkest Peru (looks more like a dirt road to me) where archaeologist Simon Watterman (Harvey Korman) & his son Paul (Charles Stratton) are on an expedition. Simon thinks that ancient Aztec buildings were in fact spacecraft control centres & he is on a mission to gain proof that alien lifeforms have visited Earth, while in once such structure he discovers a strange small creature which he sticks in his backpack & takes back home with him to the small American town of Sweetwater in California. Simon feels that the creature is the proof he has been looking for & for some inexplicable reason decides to leave the thing at home while he goes to share his discovery. Simon ask's Paul & his wife Cindy (Nadine Van der Velde) to take care of it. Meanwhile Simon's brother & fast-food businessman Cecil Watterman (Harvey Korman again) steals the creature so his brother won't make any money out of it, but his idiotic stepson Dude (Jon Stafford) has a fight with it & chops it up with a knife but the individual parts grow back into separate little creatures that proceed to cause much havoc amongst the townspeople...

Directed by Bettina Hirsch this has to be one of the worst horror comedy's ever, if not the worst. The script by Lance Smith is so unfunny it's painful. Every joke in Munchies misses the target by the proverbial mile, I doubt the humour in this piece of crap would even appeal to pre-teens. There just isn't anything even remotely funny or even amusing in Munchies as far as I'm concerned. The basic story is crap too, they just happen to find this creature running around with no explanation of what it is, why no-ones ever seen it before, how it manages to learn English so quickly & how it learns to drive etc. The whole thing is a big Gremlins (1984) rip-off with none of the elements that made that film so good. The character's are moronic, the stupid Deputy (Charlie Phillips) & his dad (Hardy Rawls), Cecil wearing an embarrassing wig & fake moustache & his air head wife Melvis (Alix Elias) & more besides. They just plain embarrass & are ridiculous, I defy anyone to find any of this rancid rubbish funny. Basically Munchies fails spectacularly at being either a comedy or horror & ends up being, yes you've guessed it, crap.

Director Hirsch was obviously working with a low budget here & it shows, the entire thing takes place in two houses, the desert, some caves & a miniature golf course. This is really cheap & incompetent film-making. The special effects on the Munchies themselves are really awful, their just dolls that have no movement unless someone off camera pulls a string attached to it's arm. I cannot stress how bad the effects are, these things wouldn't convince my 4 year old nephew (as proved by me & him yesterday!). Total incompetence all the way, this film sucks.

Technically the film is terrible, bad special effects, lame production design, rubbish sets & well, just everything's crap. The acting is rotten through & through, from the cops to Korman who has two roles both of which prove he can't act & isn't funny.

Munchies is a really bad film that fails in everything that it tries to achieve, sure watch it if you want I won't stop you but just don't say you weren't warned! My advice would be to watch Gremlins again instead, but the decision is yours!

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pos/neg ans:
negative