Is Moby Dick the original kaiju? Maybe. But anyways, Moby Dick 2010.

Back in 1969, Captain Jonah Ahab (Barry Bostwick) lost his left leg, his sub and his crew to a giant whale. Now, in 2010, he believes that monstrous thing was Moby Dick, “a legendary sea creature of evil and immortality.” I had to take that line from Wikipedia because I liked it so much. 

Anyway, this whale keeps taking out U.S. Navy ships, and we can’t have that. The USS Essex gets wiped out, but the Pequod is where Ahab and a crew of marine scientists are, searching the seas for Dick, Moby Dick.

When I was a kid, there was a book-on-record ad that played one line from every novel adaptation. The only one I remember is “There she blows! There she blows! A hump like a snowhill! ‘Tis Moby Dick!” For decades, I’ve yelled this for no reason, always thinking it was “a hook like a snowhill,” which makes so much less sense. What’s wrong with me?

At the end of the movie, Moby Dick has killed almost everyone, sunk multiple ships, lost an eye and then dodged nukes. I’m going to write that again. It dodges nukes. These idiots wipe out an entire island, and Moby Dick swims away, and only Dr. Michelle Herman (Renee O’Connor, of course, you know her as Xena’s wife, Gabrielle) survives, but again, if you didn’t get it above, they just nuked the entire area, so she’s going to end up like the cast of The Conqueror. 

The whale can walk on land, and Bostwick built his own weapon, telling MediaMikes, “I didn’t want to be embarrassed by the fact that they only had a dollar and a quarter, you know, to make that movie. I still have that gun mounted in my workshop. I felt the gun had to be something reflective of the character…much larger than life.”

The IMDB facts for this movie all come from what I can only imagine is a disgruntled Navy veteran, who left notes like “None of the uniforms and insignia (or lack thereof) are appropriate for U.S. Navy personnel in the situations shown in the film.” and “The characters constantly state that this event in the film happened between Naval vessels of the 3rd Fleet off of San Diego, CA. Any and all United States Naval ships in and around San Diego are in the 7th Fleet. The 3rd Fleet is located much farther north, near Washington State.”

You can watch this on Tubi.