Screenplay: John Loring & Daniel Hyatt
Starring: Bill Travers, William Sylvester, Vincent Winter, Christopher Rhodes
Release Date: March 29, 1961
The British kaiju opus GORGO is a very basic meat and potatoes affair, telling a story we’ve all seen dozens of times before. Man discovers enormous monster. Man captures monster for profit. Man runs screaming from monster’s much larger mother, leaving a trail of urine to collect amidst the rubble. A simple, universally relatable tale really, and one which, with the aid of some really neat exploding models, GORGO more than capably pulls off.
The film opens with a ship trawling for treasure of the coast of Ireland. After an underwater volcanic eruption nearly sinks the vessel, Captain Joe Ryan (Travers) and his first mate Sam (Sylvester) take refuge on Nara Island for repairs. Upon arrival they meet an archaelogist (Rhodes) who has also been dredging the area, and who has suffered the loss of several men by an unseen aquatic life form. This abominable behemoth doesn’t stay hidden for long, as a giant reptilian creature arises from the waters and attempts to stomp the tiny harbor town to bits. The creature, which is eventually named Gorgo, is without a doubt the weakest aspect of this film, resembling a pug-eared Tyrannosaur wearing a windbreaker and puppeted by the Frankenstein Monster. I found it incredibly disheartening to see all of the work the special effects crew put into building large scale miniatures on this flick, only to have it all undermined by a creature that is literally falling apart at the seams, it’s surface crinkling and wrinkling like the fabric it’s made out of with every step.
Joe and Sam finally strike a deal with the scientist to capture the creature and take it from the island, in exchange for some of his recovered treasure. Their method of capture is puzzling at best, requiring Joe to get inside of a diving bell that is then lowered to the bottom of the sea. I suppose the bell is supposed to function as bait, but if that’s the case, why in the hell would anybody get inside? The ruse pays off, though, as Gorgo attacks the submersible and the sailors throw their nets overboard, immediately ensnaring the creature and immediately solidifying it’s reputation as the most easily defeated pussy since Godzilla’s son Minilla got bitch-slapped by Mothra.
The next fifteen minutes or so are the driest patch in the film, with Joe and Sam blowing off a pair of Irish scientists who attempt to claim the monster for their university, instead opting to take the creature to London where they can turn a profit. On the voyage home they discover a stowaway, a young Irish boy who derides the men for their greedy nature, claiming that Gorgo is an innocent creature that should be allowed it’s freedom. As we all know, gargantuan hellbeasts are the friends of all children, but Messrs. Joe and Sam obviously missed out on that memo and tell the kid to shove it. I think I’m just going to refer to these two as SamJo from now on, as this flick has one lead too many, and the two could have easily been folded into one character, making this already threadbare plot even leaner. Also, they seem like a really cute couple!
So SamJo and their newly-adopted son make it back to England and parade the creature on a flatbed around Picadilly Circus (which happened to feature an awesome banner for Hammer’s DRACULA the day they were filming) announcing the show they’ve put together with their new partner, the unfortunately named Dorkin’s Circus. Hey, it’s like the filmmakers are openly mocking me for watching their movie! Everyone seems to be consumed by Gorgo-Mania, which is just fine, until Gorgo’s much, much larger mother rises from the murky depths and utterly decimates Nara Island before making a beeline for London, obliterating the Royal Navy along the way, in search of her spawn. Basically the exact same plot as JAWS III, but with a monster that looks way more realistic than Louis Gossett, Jr.
And so the film finally settles in to it’s only reason for existing, as thousands of Londoners flee through the streets while richly detailed models explode and are trampled by a creature that looks like a drunken Kraid from SUPER METROID on a meth-fueled bender. The effects in this sequence, as in the rest of the film, are all over the place. For every impressive explosion, there are at least a dozen blue screen shots so poorly composited that the blue element splashes all over the screen. Still, I can’t help but admire how ambitious some of the techniques on display are, especially given the era and what I can only assume was an, at best, very modest budget.
The human characters are totally unremarkable bores, but at a brisk 77 minutes GORGO’s brevity is one of it’s prime saving graces. There is a bit of dead air as Messrs. Sam and Joe Blandings go through the chore of setting the plot in motion, but we never have to wait very long for some goofy blue screen effect or a guy in a floppy, dead-eyed monster suit to trash a village or three. Unfortunately movies like GORGO rarely get made any more, and when they do they usually tend to outstay their welcome (I’m looking at you, TRANSFORMERS movies!) GORGO was clearly made by people who knew exactly what kind of story they were telling, and more importantly knew exactly how to tell that story in the quickest, most efficient and entertaining way, and get the hell out.
My Rating:
7/10
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