Harpoon Whale Watching Massacre (3 Stars)

This is an Icelandic horror film. After the ban on whale hunting in 1986, fishermen found a new way of making money. They took tourists on boat trips to watch whales. As they proudly proclaimed, Iceland is the country with the third largest number of whales, after Japan and Norway.

The film shows a mixed group of mostly obnoxious foreigners: a horny drunk Frenchman, a chauvinistic Japanese man constantly bullying his wife, an American, an Indian family and a few others I couldn't identify.

The ship's captain has an accident and is unable to steer the boat, so it sails in a random direction. The passengers are taken on board by a whale boat. Saved? Not quite. It's a family of unemployed whale hunters who want to kill everyone. Is there a reason for it? No. When did mass murderers ever need a reason for their crimes?

The DVD I watched today isn't in the original Icelandic, it's dubbed into English or German. I started by watching it with English dialogue, but it was awful. The dubbing artists sounded bored. So I switched to the German dialogue, and wow! It was like night and day. Germans take their dubbing seriously. Most German dubbing artists are experienced stage actors, so they can perform well. Why can't the English and Americans do such a good job?

"Harpoon" (shortening the title) is "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" set at sea. There's a lot of gore and senseless violence. Normally I'd like a film like this, but the problem, compared to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", is what I mentioned above. The victims are so unpleasant that I didn't care when they were killed. Good riddance!

	Order from Amazon.com
	Order from Amazon.de