ANGEL HEART (1987)

New York City, 1955. Low-rent private detective Mickey Rourke is hired by the mysterious Robert De Niro to locate a man who did not fulfill his contract with De Niro due to a neurological injury he suffered during WWII.  An injury that's exactly like the one that Mickey Rourke also suffered in WWII...which caused him to lose his memory!  What are the odds?!!!  Anyway, the clues soon lead Rourke to New Orleans where he snoops around and a number of people end up dead.  One dude with his ping-ding cut off.

I love Satan as much as the next person, but ANGEL HEART really takes the viewers intelligence for granted.  I would find it hard to believe that anybody could not correctly predict the ending of the movie within the first 10 minutes.  But whatever, it's still a mildly entertaining ride.  Chickens, nice photography, boring nudity, glowing eyeballs that looked dumb as hell, okay pace, unbelievable story, style over substance, good acting, mediocre script, promises of violence that's never shown on screen, disappointing ending.

I'd really like to see somebody take another shot at this story.  It's a good idea.  In the correct hands it could be creepy and disturbing as fook.  Unfortunately, this version is just a solid "average".

ORCA (1977)

After an opening scene that is so laughable that it almost seems like a warning to walk away, we're introduced to a crotchety old boat captain who concocts a plan to capture a live male orca.  Of course, being a heartless idiot with a shitty boat, all he ends up doing is slaughtering a female orca and her baby.  The female's baby daddy witnesses the whole horrible ordeal (as do we) and proceeds to spend the rest of the movie tormenting the captain. The End.

Films like ORCA, help me appreciate JAWS even more than I already do.  If you think about it, the basic story for JAWS was pretty simple: one individual shark (who happens to be very large) starts feeding on humans near a quiet fishing village/tourist destination...the humans fight back.  Bam!  That's all you need.  Unfortunately, the people behind ORCA decided that it's be a good idea to add a deeper psychological aspect to the story...guess what?  Nobody cares!  Audiences want to see sharks, whales, alligators, giant hamsters, wookalars, whatever gnawing on people and people fighting back...NOT a pregnant whale being chopped up and hoisted out of the ocean as it's giving birth and then the newborn being murdered!!!  That whole scene was just terrible, I hated it.  I was definitely on the side of the whale after that!

Misguided story aside, ORCA is okay...for a lower budget 1970's ripoff flick.  The pace moves along quickly enough, but the whole thing just looked like a movie.  The majority of the shots of the whales either looked fake as fuck or like shots of whales in captivity.  Passable acting from a cast that is too good for this script, depressing beginning and ending, topless scuba diver, lame kills, questionable scenes early on of live sharks that might or might not have been animal cruelty.

I didn't hate ORCA, but I damn sure never want to see it again. If you need me, I just be in my room watching JAWS again or maybe even THE GREAT ALLIGATOR or THE LAST SHARK.