The film follows a male orca tracking down and getting revenge on a fishing boat and its captain for intentionally killing the whale's pregnant mate and their unborn calf.
Nolan is an Irish Canadian fisherman living in Newfoundland, who catches marine animals in order to pay the mortgage on his boat, Bumpo, and eventually return to Ireland.
Nolan's first mate, Novak, cuts the dead female loose to distract their attacker, but the orca jumps the boat and takes him with it under the ocean.
Nolan promises Bedford that he will not fight the orca, but that night the whale attacks his home, resulting in crewmember Annie losing her left leg.
Because neither Vincenzoni nor his co-writer Sergio Donati were native English speakers, Robert Towne was hired as an uncredited script doctor to touch up dialogue.
[7] According to Vincenzoni, Richard Harris had begun to drink heavily on set after reading a tabloid magazine and seeing a photograph of his wife Ann Turkel on a beach with a younger man.
"[2] The main orcas used for filming, called Yaka and Nepo, were trained animals from Marineland of the Pacific and Marine World/Africa USA, though artificial rubber whales were also used.
The site's critical consensus reads: "Content to regurgitate bits of better horror movies, Orca: The Killer Whale is a soggy shark thriller with frustratingly little bite.
"[15] A contemporary review published by Variety called the film "man-vs-beast nonsense", and lamented that "fine special effects and underwater camera work are plowed under in dumb story-telling.
"[16] Richard Schickel of Time wrote that the filmmakers behind Orca "thumbed heavily through the literature of the sea in their search for dramatic cliches", and called the film "inept" and "suspenselessly shot".
[17] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post criticized the film's special effects and referred to it as "essentially a rehash of an earlier De Laurentiis hit, Death Wish, with the killer whale in Charles Bronson role.
[19] Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader called the film an "incoherent blend of Moby-Dick, King Kong, and Jaws, hindered by what appears to be extensive reediting".