Orca

[Andrew]

The whale's name is not K'tha-jon and it does not have a waldo harness filled with tools.

Mere words cannot express how much I love you right now. Startide Rising references just get me right there. Now if only Brin would pick up some of those threads he introduced in that book and dropped in all the subsequent ones but that's got nothing to do with the review, which would have been awesome even without the SR reference.

The fictional universe he created for "Startide Rising" is full of possibilities and the other books I've read were good, but I read "Startide Rising" first and it has always been my favorite.  I don't like putting too many references to other works in the reviews, but K'tha-jon and the whale's quotes in Trinary seem quite natural.

I've seen it off and on over the years since, it just gets worse and worse the older I get. And Andrew, when I've seen parts of it on AMC in recent years, they show the orca fetus scene, I know it was edited heavily around when this was a staple of syndicated movie packages on local stations, because when I saw the scene on AMC for the first time, I had absolutely no memory of it and was thrown for a second.

Makes you wonder about all those films we remember from network television in the 70's and 80's.  Were there over-the-top scenes missing from a lot of them?

[Mr. DS]

I rate the whale fetus scene as one of the most disturbing images I've ever seen in a movie.  And very little disturbs me in movies. Overall this film isn't a bad watch and Harris's character is refreshing in the fact he understands he's done wrong.  Too bad it gets lumped into the "Jaws rip-off" field a lot. 

[Yaddo 42]

Makes you wonder about all those films we remember from network television in the 70's and 80's.  Were there over-the-top scenes missing from a lot of them?

No doubt, I've had those Whoa! Where did that come from? moments.

I remember seeing The Longest Yard on pay cable after years of only seeing TV edits, and being surprised how much rawer the language was than I would have guessed from the edits.

From Beyond was another one that had tons of stuff missing or cut around when it was in regular rotation. Yet our local independent/later Fox station (where it was shown a lot) used to air uncut films during the late night movie (especially on weeknights) during the "safe harbor" hours. I saw the uncut version of The Klansman that way, with all the rapes, nudity, violence, and racist language there plain as day. They Live got edited, Dolls and Day of the Dead (IIRC) didn't.

I saw part of Robocop this afternoon on our CW station (lazy stupid Sunday), there's big chunks of that film missing obviously. They pretty much left out when Clarence runs down his cohort who's been covered in toxic waste and he disintegrates from the impact. Also lots of blood from wounds, various impacts of bullets and such, most of Miguel Ferrer's fun with the party girls (sex and drugs) before he is killed - all missing with pretty ridiculous jumpy cuts.