Stuff To Blow Your MindCan London survive the bond between a giant monster and its young? In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1961 British kaiju film “Gorgo,” starring Bill Travers and William Sylvester. (originally published 1/12/2024)
Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, this is Rob Lamb. Today is Saint Patrick's Day, so we do have an older episode of Weird House Cinema that does, at least in some small way involve an Irish setting. We're going to be talking about the nineteen sixty one European Kaiju movie Gorgo. This this one's pretty fun and has a great monster in it. So let's jump right in.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And on today's episode of Weird House Cinema, we are going to be talking about the nineteen sixty one British Kaiju movie Gorgo, which I just saw for the first time a couple of weeks ago when my friend Ben brought it over for a movie night. So one of the first things you might be thinking is did I hear the first line of the description? Right? Is this a British giant monster movie? Yes? You did? Why is that concept inherently so funny? I don't really know, but to me certainly it is. And I wonder if you have the same thought, Rob, So, like I was interrogating this further, So, Japanese giant monster movie could be funny in execution, but it's not necessarily funny in principle, Like the original Godzilla is not funny at all. It's a very dark, grim serious, great movie. An American giant monster movie, I'd say same thing could be funny in execution, not necessarily funny in principle. But a British giant monster movie where a huge rat creature attacks London is just fundamentally hilarious.
Yeah. I'm not sure quite what it is, because you do find giant monster kaiju movies in various films cultures, and it doesn't feel inherently out of place in other film traditions. But yeah, there's something about the British setting and all the British actors. I don't know. It makes it unique, and it does maybe make it a little bit hilarious unintentionally.
But at the same time, there are a lot of things about this movie that are beautifully executed. It has a similar problem that a lot of giant monster movies have, which is that there's a lot of city stomping at the end, just relentless smashing of buildings and such. It goes on for a long time. That's not unique to Gorgo. But the city smashing looks fantastic. It looks great. They've got really good models. We get to see a creature smashing well known landmarks throughout London, you know, really laying into Big Ben and the Tower Bridge and all that stuff, and it is really pleasurable to watch.
Yeah, I mean, it's the basic formula in play here. Don't go into Gorgo expecting some drastically different from any other giant monster movie that you've seen, but it is well executed. There are a lot of solid talents that were involved in making this film, and it does find some places to do things that, if not entirely unique, at least they come up with an interesting palette with which to paint it.
Yeah, I would agree. There are some other things that work kind of well. I would say in the first act there's an interesting sort of full corror vibe that is unexpected for a movie of this type. We can talk more about that when we get into the plot, but I think we should start off by exploring the question of what is Gorgo right. So Godzilla is a giant bipedal reptile or lizard of some kind with atomic radiation breath who emerges from under the ocean. Gamera is a giant fire breathing turtle from the Arctic that can fly. King Kong is a giant prehistoric ape from Skull Island. What is Gorgo? I would describe Gorgo as a gigantic two the monster with a similar bipedal posture to Godzilla, who looks like a cross between a frilly eared lizard and a satanic rat with red glowing eyes. He comes out of the sea off the coast of an Irish island, and he is thought to be some kind of ancient god, at least at first.
Yeah, and I would also add that he has pretty much has the body of a rock'm sockem robot, not in the sense that it's metallic, but in the basic posture and proportions. It looks like he's ready to throw some punches, and I guess ultimately does throw some punches at major London landmarks.
And the way you can kind of see him rotating his torso as he reaches with his arms.
Yeah, now, if there I had plenty of scenes later in the film to stare at this monster and try and cope with some headcanon for everything I'm seeing. And I will say the teeth. The more I looked at them, the more I started thinking, well, these are like filter feeding teeth. Like, this isn't a qua organism that's had millions and millions of years to sort of evolve. Maybe it's a filter feeder. Maybe that's what those teeth are all about.
That's a good point. So you might think giant toothy rat lizard creature and think a smaller number of large, pointy teeth. You know, maybe each pointy tooth is like the size of a sharpened boulder. But no, instead it's a lot of tiny, pointy teeth. It's more like a mouthful of swords. And so I think with that in mind, you could also look at that as like the bristles or the bleen of a filter feeder. That's a good connection, Rob, thank you.
But you know this is not the only the only connection between this monster and the world of actual terrestrial biology, because the creature's name Gorgo is allegedly based on an actual dinosaur, the Gorgosaurs.
Now they don't say that in the movie, and the movie they later explained that. Well, first, when we learned the name Gorgo, they literally say, we don't know why he's called that. But then the scheming circus operator who is exploiting Gorgo for cash, he explains that he named the creature Gorgo after the gorgon Medusa. So there is a common connective thread that we could get into. But they don't say in the movie that it's named after this dinosaur.
Yeah, so this might have been something that was more of a stronger connection at some earlier phase of production. It could also be something that's been kind of added after the fact. But the truth is there is a gorgosaurus. The gorgosaurus was not named after this movie. This is the literally names fierce lizard. This creature lived during the Late Cretaceous period eighty to seventy three million years ago in parts of what is now the United States and Canada, So you know, I guess its range wouldn't actually have extended over to the British Isles. But anyway, it was a large therapod and we have at least twelve complete or near complete skulls and various partial skeletons to go off of. It was a tyrannosaur, not as big as a t rex, but still quite impressive at eight to nine meters or twenty six to thirty feet in length. It was first described and named by Canadian paleontologist Lawrence Lamb that's not spelled like my name is Lambe in nineteen fourteen. And the gorgo part of the name fierce is in fact related to the ancient Greek word gorgos, which means grim or dreadful, reflected in the naming of the mythical gorgons.
Okay, so at the very least, the real gorgosaurus and the gorgo of the movie get their name from the same place.
Yes, And you know, if this strikes a chord with anyone out there, you're like, where have I heard about gorgosaurus recently? Well, the gorgosar has actually just made the news last month. This was reported about in the New York Times under their Ancient Meat Reporting Desk. This concerns a seventy five million year old gorgosaurus fossil. It was discovered with fossilized stomach contents. This was the first, apparently for a tyrannosaur. It was a juvenile and the stomach contents were the hind limbs of two small feathered dinosaurs. According to Michael Greshko in his New York Times article covering a study authored by Francois Therein, the curator of Dinosaur paleo Ecology at the Royal Tirel Museum in Alberta. They said that if it had grown to adulthood, it would have likely moved on too much bigger prey. But as a smaller critter, it was having to eat the legs of various bird creatures. So at any rate, gorgosaurs still making the headlines, at least, you know, as far as stories about ancient meat and an ancient chicken legs ghost.
Now you included an illustration from the New York Times article. It's an artist's impression of what the living juvenile gorgosaurus would have looked like. And this is a much more spindily creeture than the gorgo of the film, which is which is very dense and bulky, and apart from its rat like head, it's got the more classic sort of storybook illustration of the tyrannosaur that's very sort of bottom heavy and has like big legs and lower body parts.
Right right, but before you Gorgo fans look up this article and say this is not accurate, let me suggest that the Gorgo that we see in this movie has again evolved for life in an aquatic setting over millions of years. So he has kind of like that whale body going on. Ah So, if we're being generous, we might say, well, it's it kind of makes sense.
That's right. Yes, the Gorgo's body has has evolved for insulation purposes.
Yeah, so a little science there, but believe me, the science is not necessary for your appreciation and understanding of this movie.
Okay, so on, We've talked a little bit before on the podcast when we've done other Kaiju or giant monster movies about the various subgenres that these movies fall into, and I thought it might make sense to try to figure out where Gorgo fits into that subgenre map. So a few of the main types of giant monster movies are. I would say, first of all, Kaiju the destroyer. An example of this would be the original Godzilla. A giant beast arrives unexpectedly and brings ruined to humankind, and the monster must somehow be defeated or driven away. Second category, I would call Kaiju the Defender. Good examples here would be the later sequels involving almost any of the popular Kaiju monsters, monsters like Godzilla and Gammera. This is a variation that arises in which the giant monster that was once the Destroyer must now defend us from a more horrible threat, usually either space aliens or a new giant monster that is meaner and more spiny. And I would argue that the emergence of Kaiju the Defender as a subgenre of giant monster movies is part of a broader trend that's not just in giant monster movies, but it's this trend where if you have a series of movies all about the same focal character, that character will almost always become more friendly and approachable over time, even if they began as a villain or an anti hero. So Gamera goes from being a terrifying pyro turtle on a rampage to the friend of all children. You can look to any Vin Diesel movie series for examples of this. The Vin Diesel character will always become nicer as it goes on. Even Freddy Krueger goes from being in the First Nightmare on elm Street movie, this grimy, disgusting child murderer to later on more just kind of like a lethal puck in a sweater, Like he does still kill people, but he's more kind of a prankster and a jokester.
Yeah, it becomes more of like a peewee Herman kind of a character as opposed to just a nightmare monster from your mind, that sort of thing.
Right, So in the later sequels in these movies you often get Kaiju the defender. Next, I would say is the pity the Kaiju movie. Great example here is sort of the original King Kong, Like a dangerous but in many ways admirable and noble monster is kidnapped or imprisoned or otherwise exploited by greedy humans, and in the end you have emotional sympathy for the creature in the way that it has been mistreated by humankind.
Yeah, and obviously there are numerous sub classifications that we could point out here, but well, one that comes to mind as well as essentially the ware Kaiju option. So not an amazing colossal situation where just a human gets big and then does big stuff, but a situation where a protagonist transforms into a giant monster that is distinct from just a giant human. The twenty sixteen film Colossal starring Anne Hathaway comes to mind that has a fun twist on this concept, and there's also nineteen sixty five's Frankenstein Versus Beragon that involves something like this as well, with a small boy transforming into a giant Frankenstein's monster.
Hmmm, I don't think I've seen either of those. I certainly haven't seen the one with Anne Hathaway. Does Ann is Anne Hathaway the one who transforms into a giant monster?
Yes, she is, or it's a so spoilers if if you if you haven't seen this, just skip like you know, a few minutes ahead. But the basic concept, if memory serves, is that she she has the spells where she becomes the monster or controls the monster with her impulses, but is not conscious of the fact. So it's not a physical transformation. Uh. It's it's it's something else, it's it's it's a very fun film. It's it's it's it's a comedy.
Uh.
But it has a giant monster and it has a number of wonderful actors in it. Well worth checking out.
That does sound interesting. I'll have to look that up. But okay, So where does Gorgo fit into the these subgenres? I would say Gorgo has elements of the first Kusu the Destroyer, and elements of the third the Pity the Monster film, less of the second, which makes sense because this is the first Gorgo movie. This is not like a later sequel, and usually they don't become defenders of people or friend to all children until later on, so it has elements of both. I would say, especially in the first act, the monster really does seem scary and seem like a threat. But as the film goes on, yeah, you really come to sympathize with the monster spoiler monsters over the I don't know, just like gloating, egotistical naval commanders who think that launching some more bombs at them will finally solve the problem.
Right right, It's ultimately going to be a draw, and you realize, well, we can't really oppose Gorgo anymore. We must form an alliance with Gorgo. Clearly, if they'd made more Gorgo movies, it would have been Gorgo protecting the British Isles from some other menace.
Right, But Rob, you brought to my attention the fact that there was a Gorgo comic series that seems to have happened after the movie. So, if I understand correctly, the character was created for the film, but then there were comics made in the wake of that, and I haven't read these comics, but just judging by looking at some of the covers online, Gorgo does appear to go through the exact same like heel to face turn we see in these other Monsters, because in the first issue he's just yeah, like you know, looming over London opposing some kind of threat. But by the last issue, it looks like he's the only thing that can save the world from communism. Yeah.
Yeah, these covers are definitely worth looking up. I was surprised because I think i'd run across the idea before that there was some sort of a comic book adaptation, and that alone is not surprising. I was thinking, oh, it's a one off, you know, they did a comic book adaptation of the movie, But no, it's like it's a whole run with Gorgo fighting various threats including communism and giant squidsed it. You know, it's that sort of thing, big furry monsters with horns on their head, cyclopses, you name it.
Yeah, So for a brief survey, issue number one, Rob, I've added these images to the outline so we can comment on them as we look. Issue number one is just Gorgo standing. There's London in the background because he big ben. You see the tower and the clock, and then some guys on the ground with flame throwers blasting up at Gorgo's hands, and Gorgo just looks done. He's got a kind of like grinning through the pain look on his face.
Yeah, yeah, And I assume this one is basically an adaptation of the picture, or you know, an abbreviation of it anyway.
Right, But then by issue number three we see a cover that is some kind of mad scientists trying to harness Gorgo's power. Gorgo looks different now, by the way. He's kind of he's got a different shape, and he's kind of bubbly all over in a lighter shade of like yellow green. But he's standing there and he's sort of reeling back. Gorgo looks like it's a more defensive posture, and this mad scientist is poking at him with this shock ray, and the mad scientist is saying, I can control you. With you at my command, I will rule the world. Yeah.
Like, clearly, Gorgo is a force of nature that is going to be potentially exploited by bad actors in the human realm, and therefore the real villains are the mad scientists.
That's right. So that's three. By issue number five, we've got the title Gorgo Clashes with the Sea Beast, where he's just it's a Kaiju meat slam. Now he's just wrestling with another giant monster. This looks like some kind of octopus inspired type creature, though. I have to say the illustration is funny because it looks like they're about to kiss. Doesn't it like Gorgo's even sort of holding the back of the octopus's head like he's going to dip him for a kiss.
Yeah. Yeah. It says Gorgo clashes with the Sea Beast and the Unforgettable the Day Manhattan Died, which raises all sorts of questions. Why is Gorgo going over to Manhattan? Is like, is there like a Gorgo sharing program or treaty between the UK and the United States At this point, I'm not sure.
Oh, you know, they do invoke NATO later in the uh oh in the movie yeah, and then it goes on. So, like I included issue number ten, there's more fighting that looks kind of like kissing. This is where Gorgo is fighting the Venusian Terror. It says they came from an alien world bent on destroying Earth and its inhabitants. Could even the mighty Gorgo stop them. Don't miss the Venusian Terror. What is the Venusian Terror? Well, you see a couple of flying saucers in the background that almost kind of look like they have eyes, like they're kind of placid, smiley faces. But then the Venusian monster is a cyclops being with a long yellow snake tongue, one big eye, and one big horn on the top of his head.
Yep, and he's licking Gorgo in the face. It really seems like maybe this is a big misunderstanding. The Venusian tear doesn't really want to hurt anyone. He just wants a little snuggling, a little little face licking.
That's it. Yeah, he is cute. And then, like we said, finally, by like the end of the series, we've got Gorgo in one of them. I don't know what's going on here. He's fighting a giant guy just like a guy who kind of looks like Dracula, but he's Gorgo sized. I think they must have blown him up with mad science somehow. He's fighting Gorgo. And then also Gorgo is fighting somebody called General Thung, and we see General Thung saying that with together we will destroy all imperialistic nations, and Gorgo, I guess is gonna gonna prevent that? I don't know.
Yeah, Gorgo's politics are fully explored in this particular issue, I'm sure, Yeah, but all of that comes later. This movie is about then this would be my elevator pitch. It's the British Isles versus giant.
Monster, that is exactly it.
All right, well, let's go ahead and have that trailer audio so everyone can hear some of the destruction that's coming their way.
FA No motion picture of our time has ever unleashed shut spectacle of such scope and realism as up from the depths of prehistoric mystery rages Virgo. The Headlines of the World plays the fabulous story of this monster from another age?
Can it pulled?
It romps up vast soub ocean cavern by unprecedented volcanic action, and the Headlines screamed. The story of the reckless skin divers who capture the monster and put it on exhibition.
Sap the debts you're joint.
Take it easy.
I can't go home and go back to see where belongs?
Why maybe to see they're silly skins for you gorgo.
But the headlines do not record the story of the little boy who had a curious sympathy and understanding for the fantastic creature. What strange secret does he know that scientists only suspect.
You're trying to say, there maybe a fully grown one of these things around somewhere.
How big would a full grown one be an approximate guess the infant the adult that'll make an early two hundred feet tall. Freaking terrible ventuance against the civilization that has captured its offspring, powering over the cities of the world, has millions flee. It's awesome terror. Nothing can stop it, defying the porce of the army, the might of the navy, na Montanie.
Ready to open fiser file, then.
Even the fury of the jets and a writing proshundo. Fights never before beheld by human eyes, and adventures never be more experienced by any man no woman.
All right, Well, if you want to go out and watch gorgo before proceeding with this episode. It is widely available in physical and digital formats and on multiple streaming platforms. You can even grab it on Blu Ray and again. The film was also covered by Mystery Science Theater three thousand in a nineteen ninety eight episode, and I think that's available in different formats as well. All right, let's talk about the people behind this film, starting at the top with the director. Eugene Lourie born nineteen oh three died nineteen ninety one, Russian born French art director and ultimately director. His production design work goes back to the early nineteen thirties, but his first directorial credit was nineteen fifty three's The Beast from twenty thousand fathoms. This one, of course, has an excellent ray Harry Housen. Lizard in it, a giant lizard monster the terrorizes the city and in one memorable scene, eats a cop.
Is this the one attacking New York or somewhere else?
I think it's New York. This is one I've never seen in full, but I've certainly seen the monster clips. Anytime you see Harry Housen retrospective. You're going to see clips from this film for sure. And this movie was a hit. Seems to have cubmitted Laurie as a giant monster director, and he followed this up with nineteen fifty eight's The Colossus of New York. This is about a giant robot body that has a dead boy's brain in it. I included a still for you here, Joe OFV said Robot.
I have considered suggesting this for the show before. I think we may come around to it one day, because, from what I understand, is a similar concept to Tammy and the t Rex, except instead of a t Rex body, it's a giant sort of colossus being.
Then there's also nineteen fifty nine's The Giant Behemoth. This has another giant dinosaur in it, less memorable, not a ray her at Harry House in Creation. And then he also did an episode of the nineteen fifty nine TV series World of Giants. This was an incredible Shrinking Man inspired show. I couldn't find details on the specific episode he did and what kind of giant aka normal sized insect or what have you might have been featured in that episode. Now, Michael Weldon and his Psychotronic Movie Guides points out that the six sess of nineteen fifty threes Beast was actually an inspiration on fifty four's Godzilla, and I've read elsewhere that Godzilla was also inspired by the commercial success of a nineteen fifty two re release of nineteen thirty three's King Kong. So you can think of those two films as two primary predecessors to Godzilla and therefore the vast world of Kaiju that we have before us. So that's the director. A couple of writers attached to this. There's Robert L. Richard, who of nineteen oh nine through nineteen eighty four, American writer of mostly westerns. Another one of these individuals who lost their Hollywood career due to the Blacklist during this time period. Daniel James as the other writer of nineteen eleven through nineteen eighty eight, also blacklisted from Hollywood for his political views. He worked as an uncredited writer on The Beast from twenty thousand Fathoms as well as The Giant Behemoth served as Earlier in his career, he had as assistant director on the nineteen forty Charlie Chaplin movie The Great Dictator, all right, let's get into the cast. The towering lead man in this is Bill Travers playing the character Joe Ryan.
There's really sort of there are really sort of two leads in this movie. There's there's Sam and Joe the characters, and you know, one is Bill Travers and the other is William Sylvester. And I was thinking them as Bill trev and Bill sill.
Well obviously for the lead, and I mean in terms of billing and in terms of height, and maybe that's all they decided on it. Big Bill Travers is your lead here. He lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety four. Yeah, I looked it up. I was like, how tall was this guy? Apparently six six, So that's that's that's a big guy by most standards. And it's clear in the film, you know, this is this guy's he's almost as tall as Gorgo basically. But anyway, British leading man and animal rights activists who mostly worked in mainstream dramas, with this being I believe his only sci fi or horror film. Everything else is more traditional real world sort of stuff. His most famous and ultimately most influential film was nineteen sixty six Is Born Free This was an adaptation of George and Joy Adamson's book about their experiences raising a lion cub in Kenya, and it led to a kind of spiritual follow up with the same stars called Ring of Bright Water in nineteen sixty nine. Bill Travers's wife, Virginia mckinnab born nineteen thirty one, was his co star in both of those pictures, and their experience with the films, especially the first one, Born Free this open apparently opened up their eyes to various challenges concerning captive wild animals in the world, and they created the Born Free Foundation in nineteen eighty four, which is still very active. It works to quote ensure that all wild animals, whether living in captivity or in the wild, are treated with compassion and respect and are able to live their lives according to their needs. And you can learn more about that organization at Bornfree dot org dot UK.
That's interesting given the themes of Gorgo. Yeah, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think I heard you mentioned Gorgo as a sighted inspiration for this activism. But Gorgo also has themes of animal rights and captivity.
I mean, maybe it was there in the background, and maybe Gorgo is what pushed it over the edge. But no, they never mentioned Gorgo with It's not the Gorgo Foundation, it's the Born Free Foundation.
Now I say this not to tarnish his acting or his activism by association, but there's kind of an elephant in the room with this guy, which I know of being brought up multiple times independently when talking about this movie with people, which is that in some shots he kind of looks like Steven Sagall. Here it helps that he's tall. Sometimes at like certain angles he makes a kind of Stephen Segall face. And there's also a kind of energy that I don't know if this exactly makes sense, rob but like the fact that he doesn't take off his captain even when they come on board land that kind of has a sigall thing too.
Okay, all right, fair enough, fair enough. Now you mentioned that William Sylvester plays the other main character, the character Sam Slade, And this is a guy that I think a lot of people will recognize he was. He lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety five. His most recognizable role is that of doctor Haywood R. Floyd in Stanley Cooprit's nineteen sixty eight masterpiece two thousand and one of Space Odyssey.
So he is the character in two thousand and one who we see him when we first transition from the prologue into the future. He's like taking a shuttle to the moon and then arrives there to investigate the anomaly found buried on the moon. Is that right?
Yeah? Yeah, so it's you see him early in the film, and he is I mean, not too early, because early enough you're only seeing.
Hominids and.
Tapers and so forth. But yeah, one of the first modern humans you encounter. And I don't know about anyone else, but like watching this film and recognizing him from two thousand and one, it kind of added a little extra class to this picture, you know, like like two thousand and one can't help but where it could rub off on any other picture you see some of the various actors from that film.
Yeen, though, of course Gorgo did come first, so you could look at it as Bill Sill bringing that class of Gorgo into the production of two thousand and one.
Certainly, you certainly could, But you know, it wasn't all like generational, all time best sci fi films for William Sylvester, other folks might recognize him from the TV series Gemini Man and the TV movie from seventy six as well Writing with Death. This was pieced together from I think like a couple of episodes of Gemini Man and was featured on Mystery Science Theater three thousand.
Oh yeah, I have vague memories of that one.
His other credits include nineteen sixty four's Devil Doll, sixty five's Devils of Darkness, and he also pops up in nineteen seventy eights Heaven Can Wait.
There's only so much that is demanded of the actors in Gorgo, but I think I would say William Sylvester stands out in this movie as doing maybe the most with his role of anyone.
Yeah, and he gets the smoke a lot. Let's smoke a lot.
He's the one who we first see really seeming to feel bad about what's happening to Gorgo. Apart from a child actor who we'll talk about in a bit, all right.
A couple other characters of note. We have Professor Hendrix, played by Joseph O'Connor ten through two thousand and one, Irish actor and playwright with extensive Shakespearean stage credits. His films include nineteen sixty four's The Gorgon, So it's in both Gorgo and The Gorgon. This is the Terence Fisher Hammer film, starring both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. He was in nineteen sixty nine's And of the Thousand Days, ninety eight's Elizabeth, nineteen ninety nine's The Messenger and this is pretty cool too. He served as the narrator in the Voice of the ERSKX in nineteen eighty two's The Dark Crystal. Oh wow, yeah, So that voice you hear at the end, that's Joseph O'Connor. I had no idea, all right, So that's Professor Hendrix. And then there's this character Dorkin.
Oh what a skiez.
Yeah. Dorkan is played by Martin Benson, who lived nineteen eighteen through twenty ten. English character actor whose credits include nineteen fifty six is the King and I, sixty three Is Cleopatra, sixty four is a Shot in the Dark sixty nine's Goldfinger. He plays one of the mobsters that the villain in that is involved in his scheme to radiate a bunch of gold.
I believe he is the guy who objects to goldfingers plan and they're like, oh, oh, you know, that's fine, you don't have to be part of this. So they go put him in a car and then they put the car in a trash compactor. Classic.
All right, then you got seventy six is the Omen seventy sevens Jesus of Nazareth in nineteen ninety nine's Angela's Ashes. So yeah, I don't think he was ever. He was very much a character actor, often like a little further down the listings, but had major roles in a number of big pictures.
Dorkin is the greedy, unscrupulous circus proprietor in this film who exploits Gorgo for profit, and I think Benson does a great job with this role. He's like he's out Carnival, barking about how you know, oh, the Irish government may soon put a stop to what we're doing to Gorgo, so come and get your tickets now while there's still a chance.
There's a window for Gorgo exploitation.
Yeah, all right.
I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here, but it is worth noting that in small uncredited roles we also have future UFO lead ed bishop who lived thirty two through two thousand and five, and then we also have Nigel Green, John Wood, Fred Wood. All three would later go would go on to be bigger name actors there and there. I wasn't able to spot most of them. I think I spotted one or both of the Woods. And then as far as the monsters go, there's a stunt man by the name of Dave Wilde inside the monster suit. I couldn't find out much about him, but I do like to acknowledge the person wearing the monster suit whenever possible. All right, now, behind the scenes, you actually have a number of notable names here. We'll try not to spend too much time on him here. But the cinematographer for this was Freddie Young, who lived nineteen oh two through nineteen ninety eight, British cinematographer best known for his Oscar winning work on David Lean's films Lawrence of Arabia from sixty two, Doctor Shivago from sixty five and Ryan's Daughter from nineteen seventy. So this is right before Lawrence of Arabia.
Wow.
He also worked on sixty seven's You Only Live Twice, seventy one's Nicholas and Alexandra and nineteen seventy two's The Asphix.
Wow Freddy got around.
Yeah, big name, big name. Yeah. Another one, Elliot Scott, was the art director on This So Lived nineteen fifteen through nineteen ninety three. He'd worked previously on nineteen fifty eight's Tom Thumb, which was a kind of a big special effects feature of the time period.
I believe.
He went on to work as art director on such films as sixty four's Children of the Damned, nineteen seventies No Blade of Grass, and he served as production designer on a ton of big films nineteen eighties The Water in the Woods, eighty one's Dragon Slayer, eighty three's The Pirates of Penzance, eighty four's Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom eighty six is Labyrinth, eighty eights, who framed Roger Rabbit and nineteen eighty nine's Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade.
Oh Jen, a lot of high profile work. Wow Yeah.
Then we have Tom Howard Special Photographic Effects Live nineteen tenth through nineteen eighty five. He was a visual effects expert who worked on a number of award winning and legendary special effects film, including Tom Thumb nineteen sixty three's The Haunting and nineteen sixty eight two thousand and one A Space Odyssey. As we'll discuss, there are a lot of monster suit effects in this, a lot of like miniature set effects, but there's also a fair amount of chroma key replacement stuff, you know, like blue green screen type effects. I'm thinking of special early on in the film when when you know, however, two main characters out on the water about to go scuba diving, like clearly they did some combination of on location and sat with the ocean thrown in the background. And then finally the score is by and I may not be pronouncing this correctly. Angelo Francisco Lavagnino, who lived nineteen oh nine through nineteen eighty seven, an Italian composer whose other scores include nineteen fifty five Lost Continent and a whole slew of Spaghetti westerns and Sword and Sandal epics. His score for Lost Continent was a winner at the Cans Film Festival. So you know, it's it's a fine sweeping orchestral score here. It fits the grandeur that is Gorgo. But that's about all I can say for it.
Yeah. Well, sometimes it's funny because clearly something it's trying to do, especially at the beginning, is blend this thundering, you know, suite of monster horns with the lilting Irish folk melodies. And you know, I'd say it does that fairly successfully. Though it's a kind of amusing thing to hear. So I guess we're transitioning to the plot now. And the movie opens with that score that combines like the you know, the dramatic monster music with the Irish sounding folk melody, and that is playing while we see the titles and the title is there are such like block letters in the title here. I love the heaviness of it, like you can imagine the teams that built the pyramids putting together the Gorgo title.
That's right. Yeah, when they drop the title Gorgo here, it is like a thousand feet tall. It's like a biblical epic font. It looks like it should be comically Monty Python style crushing something. And then this alone was amazing. But then they kept using it like smaller of course, but they kept using it for the rest of the credits, and I loved it.
Strong choice. So the action begins with a steamship out on the sea, and we see the men of the crew all looking out over the sea with concern. Something is troubling them, and then we see what they're looking at. Far out in the distance, there is a patch of ocean that appears to be at a rolling boil. It is this giant, white, frothy mass swirling around ominously, and soon a diver in scuba gear comes up to the ladder on the side of the ship. From the water and from the diver we learned that these are salvage operators, and while they're certainly worried about the boiling ocean, there is money to be made. A shipwreck worth a fortune is down below, so the dive continues until disaster strikes. The boiling region of the ocean suddenly irrupts. Something comes out of it looks kind of like a vult cannic mountaintop poking up out of the water, and the ship is rocked by brutal waves. It nearly turns over. We see cargo from the deck being washed overboard, sailors fighting to keep the vessel afloat, and the boat is nearly destroyed, and then we cut to the next morning. The violence has subsided, but the ship is very damaged. It's engine has taken on water. We see this giant propeller making a weak effort to spin, and here assessing the problem, we meet our two main characters. Actually I guess we met them before, but we sort of get to know them. So there is Captain Joe Ryan played by Bill Travers, and then there is the first mate, Sam Slade, played by William Sylvester. Now, honestly, the first time I watched this, though they don't look the same, I couldn't tell much of a difference between these two guys. I didn't really separate them. In my mind, they were just like the two salvage guys. Captain Joe is the taller guy, he's the guy wearing the captain's hat. But on rewad I could see more of the differences between their characters.
Yeah, this film doesn't set them up as being like an antagonistic to each other.
Like.
They clearly have a great working relationship and therefore they line up on a lot of things. You know, another film might have gone in a different direction where you know one of them's good, one of them's bad. You know one of them wants to cut corners and the other one is by the book and it's not really what we have.
Here, certainly not in the beginning. They do have more differences later on in the film.
Yeah, because you throw a giant monster into a relationship, even a working relationship, and it changes everything that's right.
So Sam and Joe figured that the boat is going to take three or four days to repair, and they're out of fresh water, so they need to go ashore at the nearest port, which is on a small island where they're off the coast of Ireland by the way, but it's a small island called Nara, and so our salvage buddies take a dinghy into the port and along the way we see some kind of strange creatures that appear to be dead floating in the water. They're like weird float I mean, we see these models. At one point, Bill Travers like picks one up out of the water and holds it up for us to see. And they're like these rubber fish that I think have legs and they have things poking out of their eyes.
Yeah, big rubber monster fish everywhere, like weird enough looking that you would have it seems like it would have been more alarming, But I guess yeah, they're just like, well, these are strange, not familiar with this species.
Yeah, Bill Travs says, never seen anything like that before, and then just throws it back.
Yeah, they pick one up, look at it, throw it back in.
But I don't know, maybe when you're a salvage operator, you are just constantly seeing things like, oh, that's a weird thing from the ocean. Don't know what that is.
Yeah, cryptozoology hadn't been invented yet, so you couldn't like take a picture of it and claim that it's a you know, some sort of fantastic creature. They're just like, well that's expected.
Really, it's a chepiccopra, it's got to be. So. Yeah. They determined that the whole ocean floor must have been torn up by what appeared to be a volcanic coertion, the thing that damaged their boat. But they dock, they meet some local fishermen who are not very friendly and mostly don't speak English. They just kind of cuss them out in Gaelic, and eventually they come to a house where they meet a little boy who will become another one of the main characters of this movie. The boy is Sean. He is introduced as an orphan boy who assists the harbormaster mccarton. And you know what, I give credit to this child actor. He does a much better job than you might expect with his role. But also they have him dressed up in some funny clothes. When we were watching it, Rachel was observing that, like they just have Sean in these gigantic clothes, like he's wearing this huge sweater tucked into huge pants.
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, he does become important. He's an important character, not just a one off. And as we kind of alluded to earlier, Yeah, this whole first act has kind of a full car vibe to it. A solid mysterious atmosphere is rolled out, and I'd say they also venture into sort of like soft lovecrafty and othering of the Irish here with this whole like, oh, they can't understand them. There's something creepy going on here in this this Irish village, which I mean, as we'll find out, nothing really that creepy is going on, but they kind of create this air of mystery.
Well, yeah, the way they're first introduced, you might expect that the like all the people on the island are part of a cult that worships Gorgo or something. That's not the case. They're like, they're just as baffled and terrified by Gorgo as anybody else, it seems. Yeah. But anyway, So Sean invites our heroes into the harbor Master's cabin and he informs them that macarton is not the harbor Master. Mccarton is not actually a local Sean says, instead a city man. He is a government man. Calls himself an archaeologist. So I was a little confused by this. Mccarton is simultaneous the harbormaster and a working archaeologist.
Yeah, I feel like a lot of roles were combined into one. This was originally just gonna be the whole movie, his tinkering around in the small village.
That's a good point. This in an earlier draft. I wonder if this was two different characters that were combined into one. Yeah, could have been anyway. Sean says he works for mcarton, quote, cleaning up the things he finds, and Seawan asks if they want to see these things that he cleans up for mcarton. Turns out mccarton is he's got like a back room where he is piling up a secret stash of priceless Viking artifacts left over from a great sea battle a thousand years ago when the Irish drove off the Vikings and sank their ships. And Sean says that apparently fighting in the Irish's corner was a sea spirit called Ogra, and he points up to a figure of like a dragon head that I guess is supposed to be a representation Ogra.
It's a nice shot, I mean, in a way, it kind of reminds me of the early scenes in The Exorcist where we haven't seen anything demonic yet. We see that statue of the zoo Zu and it's you know, it's ominous and really one of the creepier moments of a film that you know, in its later stages is less concerned with being subtly creepy and more in your face.
Yeah, the dogs are fighting in the rubbisheep well while he's looking at the statue. Yeah.
Yeah, And in a similar way, this is a movie that is going to be very in your face later on. But at this point we haven't seen the monster and we just have this nice subtle idea, you know, the sort of the mythic potency of the idea.
So just then in the artifact room, they are interrupted by mccarton, the city man. McCartin is borderline hostile from the get go. He seems to be wanting to protect his stash of Viking stuff, and he says, by orders of the local authorities, no ship is allowed to put into port at Nara for more than twenty four hours without a permit. So Joe and Sam plea for help. After all, he's like, you know, the ocean boiled, something wrecked our engine. But mccarton will not budge on this. He's like, I don't make the rules. It's never established who does make the rules. But they cannot come into port except to get some water and leave. So on the way back to their ship, Sam and Joe run into some local boats who at first cust them out in Gaelic and then report that they are waiting for some divers to come up. And when one of the divers does turn up, he is dead. At this so they pull him on board the boat, and Sam looks at the dead diver and concludes that he died of fright. And I always wonder how you can tell that in movies just by looking at people.
Yeah, yeah, without like a Star Trek medical scanner device. Usually sometimes there's a vision that they make it abundantly clear, like suddenly the hair is turned white, or they're like severe distortions allah the ring. But for the most part in films like this, it's like, out, let's touch him on the neck. He's dead, Jim.
So we get a diving scene next. Sam and Joe are on the case. They're trying to figure out what are they trying to figure out? I don't know. They go down to investigate, I think, what could have scared the diver that killed him.
And they also are just suspicious. They're suspicious of this archaeologist. They're like, something is up, and we want to find out what is up and what he's up to. And that's why they're going freelance.
Here, that's right. So they just they like scoop it down. And I really like in this scene that they just kind of see gorgo. He's just down there swimming around the water is murky, so you don't get a great look at him yet, but you just see this like lizard rat swimming through the water. And they come back up. They're sitting there in their scuba gear smoking cigarettes, and Joe says, what did you see, Sam? And Sam says, I don't know, but whatever it was and never want to see it again. Unfortunately you will in the next scene. So later on the salvage ship they're bringing aboard barrels. I think this is the fresh water they asked for, and Sean the child shows up on the boat. He says that mccarton wants to see them, uh, and then he also says that the permit is a heathen lie. I didn't know exactly what this meant.
Yeah, but Sean is ready to sell out his village to any outsider salvage crew that is just halfway nice to it.
Yeah, there's nothing so far to establish that Joe and Sam are nice people like they.
They're like everybody's in the business of finding stuff lost on the seafloor and stealing it for your own purposes. Yeah, but it's implied that that these guys are okay, whereas the archaeologist is clearly up to no good.
He's a city man. Yeah. Yeah, Are Sam and Joe not citymen? What makes one a city man?
I guess they're they're they're seenen. They're navy men.
Right, Okay, Yeah, there are men of the salt. Yeah, of the salt in the wind. Okay. So the next thing that happens is the atmosphere gets pretty cool, like the locals appear to be preparing for something weird. I would say this scene like a cross between Jaws and The wicker Man. We see locals loading into boats rowboats with flaming torches and harpoons and one harpooneer spies something in the water and then lets his dart fly, and then we see gorgo. We see this head, this like rat lizard type head pop up out of the water with red eyes, with a with a harpoon I think, stuck in his eye. And Sean informs us that this is Ogre, this is the sea spirit. So then we get kind of a battle scene that is Ogre versus the boat Posse. And then after this, Ogre comes on shore and attacks the harbor. He's like stomping around smashing things, and mccarton seems to be in command of the locals. He's like he's like commanding a group of men with rifles who get into formation and shoot it Ogra. But does it do anything, of course, not.
How did they control the monster in ancient times? I feel like like ultimately the the alluded to backstory is far more fascinating than anything we'd get into later on in the film, Like what was that encounter like between the Irish and their monster and the Viking invaders? Like I want to see that prequel.
Yeah, we never really learned any more about that, do we.
Yeah, maybe they controlled the monster with the religion. That's that would make sense, That would be interesting.
But I do like a lot of the way the scene looks like there are some shots of, you know, from a distance, of the monster, the monster sort of walking through the harbor, and then you see all the people running around with their fires and torches trying to stand off against him. It is a It's actually a surprisingly dark and cool looking scene. Yeah, I agree, But of course the locals are completely ineffective at repelling the creature. Their harpoons and bullets do nothing. But the outsider Sam and Joe they have an idea. They have the idea of throwing sticks at Gorgo. Technically, they throw flaming torches at Gore or Ogra, whatever the creature is called. At this point, I can't remember what we specified so far. So far, but to be clear, nobody in the movie has said the word Gorgo yet. That name will come later. So they throw some torches. Gorgo gets the torches stuck in his teeth. Then he squeals, walks backwards into the water, almost as if moving in reverse. I think this actually is a reverse shot, and then sinks back into the waves.
So they drove him away.
It worked, right, And after the attack the locals are mad at mccarton and I wasn't your wily Is Gorgo his fault? Don't see any reason to think.
So now, I mean, I mean, we know the viewer knows that this probably has something to do with the volcanic activity, yeah, and that they're thinking, oh, it's because he's still in all that Viking gold. But that, I mean, did it unless you were going to make some sort of crazy hypothesis in which the theft of Viking gold from the seafloor caused some sort of volcanic reaction.
There's no indication of that in the film or and also from what I can tell, no indication that Gorgo cares about the Viking artifacts or the gold anyway. So the locals are mad at mccarton. They start saying, hey, we want to leave with Sam and Joe on their salvage ship when it's repaired, but mccarton tries to talk them out of that, and eventually Sam and Joe retreat with mccarton into his harbormaster's shack to discuss a deal. They know that Macarton is secretly trying to protect the Viking treasure, which I guess he plans to keep for himself. He reveals that he has a safe full of what looked like Holy Grails.
Yeah, yeah, different Holy Grail prototypes in there.
Yeah, he's got, like I can see at least fifteen Holy Grails in there. And Sam and Joe offer a trade. They say, if Macarton pays them off in some of the Viking gold, they will get rid of the monster for him. So they make a deal. So they leave, but then Sean the kid follows them and he does not like the idea of them catching Ogra. He catches up to them and he says, it's a bad thing. You're doing a terrible bad thing, mister Ryan, And then Joe Ryan kneels next to the kid. He says, why don't you call me Joe, and Sean says okay Joe, And Joe says okay Sean. End of conversation. So next time a child accuses you of doing evil, just remember you get on a first name basis. It'll totally distract them.
But I love the set up here, Like we're really cooking with gas now. The idea is that these guys are going to catch the monster in order to make that sweet Viking gold, and so this is the challenge ahead of them. There's no indication that they actually have the ability to do this, but they're going to set out and try to do it anyway.
That's right. Well, at first they're like, how would you even kill a creature like that? Maybe you'd use dynamite or something, But then they consider, actually, what is a creature like that worth alive? Maybe it's worth more alive. So from here move on to the bathistsphere scene. Though this bathistphere is not a sphere. It is not spherical. It's sort of the Bathist cylinder. And Joe gets into this metal contraption with some portholes on it that looks incredibly small inside, and I don't know, this is a cool scene concept though it doesn't look as amazing as I think it could have.
Weldon points out that this section of the film is pretty much a direct remake of a scene in The Beast from twenty thousand Fathoms, and so I had to look it up because again I've only really seen the monster sequences from that movie. And indeed there's another Bathtisphere segment that you can watch. So they basically were like, well, that worked last time, let's do it again. But yeah, to your point, I think it works better in the mind that it does on screen, at least by modern standards. I don't know, maybe this was a lot more impressive at the time.
Also, the bathistphere in this movie is like a tartist and that it is much bigger on the inside then on the outside. We see Joe Ryan inside there, and I don't know, it's quite roomy actually on the inside though.
Yeah, especially concerns how big this actor is again, yeah, he has he has so much room. And if you're curious about all this, we did some episodes of stuff to blow your mind back in the day about the Bathisphere and about the construction of it and the size of it, and some of the amazing observations that were made with it. It's an amazing story and I can totally understand wanting to capture that in the film, and I guess to a certain extent they do. Like I like the idea of of of the small capsule being lowered into this vast, unexplored world, like of that world as vast and as large scale as your giant monsters, though being very much an outsider in it, in this vulnerable little capsule.
Well, I mean, the thing to remember about the Bathisphere is that it has no propulsion of its own, so it's just dangling by this cable. So if it were to somehow that's it. You're not coming back up. Yeah. Well, anyway, so they send Joe down there and they make contact. There's a Gorgo attack. Gorgo attacks the Bathosphere and ooh, you hear these like tin can crunching sounds and you see water spraying on the inside. But there is not a catastrophic implosion. Joe is not killed. Instead, the ship successfully traps Gorgo in a net.
It's kind of a lackluster finish to that though, because it's like the bathistphere. Oh, high technology, and then they just use a net just yeah.
Yeah, yeah, and then we get some news reports and I can't remember what we've said about this already, but from here on out the movie will become highly reliant on news reports for both plot exposition and for exploration of themes. Uh, we're just going to get reporters telling us what's going on and what it means, over and over.
Yeah, it basically goes all Santa Claus conquers the Martians for a bit here where it's yeah, a bunch of news expert interviews, and of course our all time favorite stock footage. So much stock footage, though at least this time around it's British military stock footage, which has, you know, a different texture to it compared to the like nineteen fifties and sixties US military stock footage that you see in so many films of that era.
Yeah, we haven't gotten exactly to the point where stock footage becomes super prevalent yet. That'll come a little later into the second act. Right now, we're at the at the like peak newscaster stuff. So we get a newscast where this guy at a desk explains what's happening. He says, the headlines of the entire world are being monopolized by the news of the capture of a fantastic monster seemingly of prehistoric origin off the coast of Ireland. Puzzled scientists are already speculating that the monster may have been released from some vast suboceanic cavern far beneath Earth's crust by unprecedented volcanic eruptions which occurred in the last week. And then meanwhile, we also get this other guy who, like we cut to a different newscaster who says some scientific authorities are suggesting that the whole thing is merely an elaborate Irish hoax. Nevertheless, the Irish government are sending two of their top paleontologists to claim the creature for Ireland if it does exist.
I also have to throw in here that, you know, I think all organisms are of prehistoric origin, if you want to be technical about it. So I don't really know what that means. What do you mean of prehistoric origin? I know, I know what they're getting at, but I'm just not sure it makes sense.
You know, We've watched a lot of movies with plot exposition via like a newsdesk segment, and I feel like at some point we should go back and rank the newscaster segments. I want to say, these guys, they're no Dick Cutting. Now what was he that he was in a creature with the Adam brain right? He was, Yes, yeah, he's the Walter Krung kind of monster attacks. Always always Trustick Cutting. Let's see here. Oh yeah. Then we get the transport segment. So we see gorgo on the salvage ship. He's like tied up in ropes and nets. He's being taken somewhere. The scientists from Dublin who are mentioned in the news report, they arrive on the boat and they say, this animal is of enormous scientific value. You must take it to Dublin immediately, and its skin must be kept wet. But then, when the scientists are out of earshot Sam and Joe, one of them pulls out like a letter. They got, I think, which is a better offer. It is from Dorkin's circus in London, and they say that Dorkin is offering them thirty thousand against fifty percent of the gross So are these hardened mercenaries going to turn Gorgo over to the clutches of science for a pittance of compensation? Hell no, No, they're going to go They're going to send him to the circus of Dorkin. So they set the course for London. I think the scientists from Dublin are still on the ship as the ship is like departing, like going in the other direction to take the monster to London. So I assume they're protesting the entire time. Oh. Also, Sean comes along on the ship and I don't know why, but he's on the ship now. I think he has now just become the ward of Sam and Joe. And Sean comes to Oh he comes out in the middle of the night and talks to Gorgo. He's like, I came to let you go back to the sea, and tries to release him. But then Joe comes out and gets mad at Sean and he says, you, little nuthead, I have a gutton notion to toss you over the side.
But we get a little bit of the natural affinity that a young child has for a giant monster. You know, this is of course something recently see especially in the Gamera movies. Camera is a friend to children.
Yeah, it's never established that Gorgo is a friend to all children. But Sean is like naturally drawn to Gorgo. There are scenes later where Gorgo spoiler Gorgo's mother is destroying London and Sean while all the crowds are running away, Sean runs.
Toward kids get Kaijuk. They understand that's part of the connection.
So anyway, Joe and Sam they put armed guards on Gorgo. They say, if that thing moves, start shooting. But why would they do that. Isn't like this thing being alive. Their meal ticket as so Gorgo, I think kills a guard in the middle of the night. And they also mentioned that Gorgo is dripping some kind of phosphorescent ooze into the water as they travel that won't come back. Later they arrive in London and we get a bunch of shots of London and some things that are interesting. Rob I included one screenshot for you to look at here, because what we're looking at is like in the background a real of the Thames with like the Tower Bridge in the background. But then in the foreground there is a it's supposed to be a tent like a circus tent that says Gorgo over the top of it, so now we're actually seeing the name, and then there are painted cutouts of people in front of the circus tent, so they're not actors. They're like stands of people. But it cuts away pretty quickly, so if you weren't able to pause, you might think they were really standing there.
Yeah, it gets just a quick mat painting here.
It's not in there interesting. So there's some conflict here. When they arrive in London, the scientists from Dublin are mad that Sam and Joe have decided to sell the animal to Dorkin instead of handing it over for research, and they point out that it may be carrying unknown diseases or parasites. It hasn't been studied yet, but Dorkin has got that sweet cash for them. And Dorkin also makes assurances to the scientists. He's like, don't worry, you know, we'll We'll be giving you every opportunity to study the creature while it is held in a con creep pit for the gauking crowds I'm selling tickets to. And Dorkin is a real like pencil mustache, bow tie wearing money freak.
Yeah, yeah, it's very clear that he is a villain in this picture. We're not giving a lot of reason to sympathize with this case.
Oh, and then we get the Gorgo in chains parade through London. I think this scene was amazing. So there is like this parade of trucks or lorries I guess that say Dorkins Circus and say Gorgo on them. And one of them is like a flatbed truck that has Gorgo on the trailer and he's like wrapped in a big tarp that says Gorgo, covered in chains, and it feels like it's like tied to Saint Dronicus, like marching into Rome with the Queen of the Goths in a cage. But it's all for Dorkin and and I guess it was Dorkin's idea to call the creature Gorgo because it's written on all of his circus stuff.
Well he knows you got to brand it, so that makes sense. And yeah, this this whole sequence is pretty great because it's it's weird, and also you get lots of period shots of London. I really enjoy just seeing all of like the neon and the signage and so forth, So this is a lot of fun.
Yeah, and these are real location shots, so they actually must have like driven a truck with a thing that said Gorgo on it in front of Buckingham Palace and stuff like that, and we get another newscast that's saying we bring you the in our most unusual telecast today, we bring you the arrival of Gorgo. This creature, which should have been extinct ten million years ago, is truly an awesome sight as it is transported through the streets of modern London on its way to Battersea Park and there's a big sign for Gordon's Gin in the background, so it's just ads all over the place and the newscast goes on. Of course, Londoners are notoriously skeptical, and a good many we've spoken to still seem to think it's some kind of circus stunt. The animal is real, take my word for it. And they go on to it to say, well, the streets have been cleared, but you know, rest assured there is no danger. The animal has been given a large dose of tranquilizer and actually being so close to this thing, I could do with a large dose of tranquilizer myself. But jokes aside, the animal has killed a number of persons already. Oh and finally, this is also the newscast where when the guy is saying, oh, we've arrived at Battersea Park where Gorgo as he is called we don't know why, will be exhibited to the public. And Gorgo is like you can just straight up see Gorgo on the back of the truck, like his eyes are open and they're glowing red, but he's all tied down, and Gorgo in captivity like this does look very pitiable, like they achieve in tugging on the heart strings, Like I'm already feeling bad for Gorgo and they haven't even really gotten to the part where you're supposed to feel super bad for him yet.
Yeah, you know, I can't help but feel as cool as these scenes are, Dorkin's kind of giving it away here, like everyone gets a free peak at Gorgo, and then he's gonna sell tickets to have Gorgo do more than just be present.
I don't know that's a good point, yeah, Dorkin, you would think he'd be keeping more of a lid on it, or maybe just trying to give people the tiniest tease so that they will have to come pay for a ticket. But no, like you can see you can see Gorgo's face on the truck because.
We know from King Kong that like a ticketed King Kong presentation consists of King Kong chained on stage and there's not much to it. I remember The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror has some jokes kind of alluding to this fact that, like, like, what was the rest of the show going to consist of? You just sit there looking at King Kong? But you know, what's the Gorgo show going to consist of? Is there an opening act? Is there some sort of a finale you're working towards. Is he going to do any trick or is he just going to be tied up more or less like he is in this whole sequence.
He was supposed to read Gorgo then puppet show. Yeah, but so oh and we see so like for some reason, Sam and Joe are still involved, and they don't just like hand Gorgo off to Dorkin at the port and then take their money and go. They're like they seem to be Gorgo's full time caretakers.
Now, yeah, despite having no qualifications, no qualifications for this at all.
Right, they're they're salvage divers. What what do they what do they know about Gorgo? But Joe, Joe Ryan still has his captain's hat on by the way, But there's like a Dorkin press conference, and this is the part where one of the reporters is like, you know, is it true that you stole this from the Irish government? And Dorkin is like, yeah, they may take it back soon. So you've got to get your tickets to see Gorgo today while it's still here. So yeah, like we said, Joe and Sam they're still in handling Gorgo and during transport they're trying to put it in its enclosure, and Gorko is awakened from his tranquilizer slumber by camera flashes of irresponsible reporters. That seems familiar. Was that in King Kong? I think maybe it was? And there is a brief Gorgo rampage at the circus where he is eventually driven back. He's driven into his concrete pit by men with flame throwers. There seems to be a theme that fires Gorgo's weakness, but Gorgo kills some people with his tail on the way back to his concrete pit, including a friend of Joe and Sam's named Mike, and Sam seems more disturbed by this than Joe does, but eventually they get Gorgo locked away and then we're just treated to some shots of like London having Gorgo fever. So there are double decker buses that all say Gorgo on the side of them. We see the I guess it's Piccadilly Circus maybe, or you know, some like streets of London where there are just Gorgo signs all over the place, next to big posters for Schwepes and Gordon's Gin and stuff. We see fireworks for Gorgo. There's cotton candy and rides at the circus, and Dorkin is out like barking in front of the circus entrance saying everyone in the world is talking about Gorgo, but only you can see him. Only five shillings ladies and gentlemen.
Uh.
And they're you know, they're selling ice cream and stuff. And we see all of the British circus goers standing at the edge of this concrete pit where Gorgo is in chain, standing in like a puddle of water. They're all eating cotton candy and bananas and gaulking at this creature and just poor Gorgo.
Yeah, yeah, we you feel a lot of sympathy for the monster at this point, because yeah, he's just he's in this pit and people are gawking at him, and he does not belong here. Gorgo was born.
Free exactly, and he's also he's supposed to be in the sea. This is a point that Sean makes multiple times. It's not just that he's in captivity, that's bad enough, but he's being kept on land and like hosed down with water. Gorgo is a sea creature. And we get a scene where we see how Sam and Joe are dealing with their success. Differently, Joe is like living it up. We see he's got like a nice new suit on and he seems to be flashing his wealth. And Sam, meanwhile, is shown apparently just like hiding in a trailer at the circus where perhaps Sean is living. Like Sean, the kid is seen sleeping there. Again, it's not exactly clear, but it almost suggests that like Sam and Joe have adopted Sean. Maybe I don't like they are taking care of him now. And Sam is seen drinking heavily and he says and like Joe comes in and says, hey, you know, how about coming out and having a few drinks, And Sam's like, I'm having a few drinks right now. Sam is clearly not happy with how things are going, and Joe is like, stop having feelings. Let's just take the money and you know, be happy. But Sam has a Sam has a bad premonition about everything. He's like, something bad's gonna happen. I can just feel it suddenly, And what do you know, it's it's prescient because they get a phone call and it's an urgent meeting with the scientists from Dublin and they're like, hey, we figured something out. The creature you captured is not an adult specimen. Yeah, whoops, not an adult specimen. And then Sam says, you mean it isn't fully grown. They say no, in fact, it's very early in infancy. And they're like, okay, well what would an adult look like? And then they open up this page where they just like put a finger down on this illustration of two gorgo skeletons that are exactly the same, but one is like ten times bigger than.
The other, and it's you know, it's not quite an actual Gorgosaurus skeleton that they have illustrated here, but it is more in keeping with a realistic This may be another dinosaur species that they're just using the skeleton illustration from, but it is very hard to imagine the monster that we've seen having this skeleton at at the center of it. There's a lot of meat on those bones.
Yeah, and they're upset. They're like, wow, that would make the adult nearly two hundred feet tall. And the scientists are like, yep, so obviously we got to notify the authorities. And Joe responds by saying, what are you trying to do stir up a whole hornet's nest because of a few calculations on a piece of paper. Nuts to that, Nuts to that, I say. Then next we see Gorgo back in his enclosing. So he's in this concrete pit and it's surrounded by electric fencing, but we see Gorgo testing the fences for weaknesses systematically. He remembers Clever Girl exactly. Meanwhile, back on Nara Island, remember Macarton, the corrupt archaeologist and harbor master. While we see him in his harbor master shack, just examining his precious Viking gold with a magnifying glass. I guess this is all he does in his free time. And he's sitting there and then suddenly a Gorgo like creature rises up out of the sea and attacks Nara and McMartin or mccarton is crushed, and so oh you know what's next. This is Gorgo's mom and the Gorgo matriarch is on the way to London.
Oh man, he messed up.
Now humans, So we see all the British radio operators, naval authorities, they're trying to make contact with Nara Island, but not a word from them. And then so the next thing is, let's see if we can use our precious national stock footage reserves to figure out what's going on. So we see lots of naval engagements, so stock footage of like battleships moving their guns around and firing into the water and chugging along, and then close ups of just admirals with binoculars looking out over the water. There is a naval engagement between a battleship and Gorgo's mother. Who do you think is going to prevail here?
It's going to be the monster.
But of course we see the authorities back in London making these gloating statements about how the creature was undoubtedly destroyed, you know, it could not possibly be a match for our navy. But then they get a phone call and we see this guy on the phone. He's like, oh really capsized. Oh't know. So they're getting the bad news and they figure out that the creature is Gorgo's mother, and it is on the way to London, following a trail left in the sea, the ooze that had been dripping off of Gorgo when they traveled by boat.
M she's coming after him.
So what are you going to do. We've got a bigger, you know, ten times bigger monster on the way. Sam has an idea, as Sam says, well, we got to turn Gorgo loose. We got to let him loose and send him back to the sea while we've still got a chance. But Dorkin and Joe do not want to lose out on their profits. Joe says, what's the matter with you? This is the twentieth century. There must be some way of handling an overgrown animal. And the admirals give assurances that there will be no problem stopping this creature. So like the authorities are like, no, no, no, don't release Gorgo. You keep making money at the circus. We will defeat the monster. And then later that night we see Sam. Sam gets drunk and tries to release Gorgo, and this leads to a fight with Joe, in which Sam is knocked unconscious and Gorgo is not released. Sean is just here like watching these adults fight. And then Gorgo's mother arrives, and from here until the end of the movie, it is just a long series of Mother Gorgo attacks Mother Gorgo versus more of the British Navy. They launch torpedoes, they bombard her with heavy guns, they drop depth charges, all to no effect. She penetrates the defense, swims up the estuary, up the river, and she's coming for Battersea Park. There's a scene where she's like coming up into the harbor. I guess this is on the river in London, and the military tries to stop her by dumping petrol in the river and setting it on fire, and she clearly doesn't like that, but she is not deterred, and Robbi caught a picture. There's one scene where it just cuts to these random onlookers who are like watching Mother Gorgo gets set on fire with these faces like wow, so cool.
Yeah, And we also get a burning man stunt in all of this, which was also quite terrifying.
Oh is that wait, what do you have in mind? Somebody in the Gorgo suit or a human.
Human at some point in all of this, I mean, there's a some of the chaos kind of melts together in my mind. But I distinctly remember at least one shot of a man on fire.
Oh interesting, I don't recall that, but I believe you. There are a lot of effects back to back here, so they kind of like they wash over you. At some point, but we see the army and civil defense authorities making emergency announcements. They start clearing out the streets. They're running around on bullhorns saying don't panic, will be notified when the emergency is over. These shots of people running around, there are tanks in the streets. We see officials discuss the possibility of using atomic weapons, but they decide against it wisely.
Uh.
And then we see Gorgo's mother just smashing landmarks, so she comes up on the tower bridge smashes it. At some point we get close ups on these British soldiers and I'm like, why do they look like they're they're outfitted to go fight in World War One?
I assume this was the standard uniform of the day. Gorgo would get it, right.
I believe it. Yeah, they it is surprisingly antiquated looking like uniforms and helmets. But maybe that that was the outfit in sixty one. Yeah, but you know, nothing stop in Mother Gorgo. So uh, as we were talking about earlier, the city smashing does go on for a long time and it gets somewhat tedious. I would say, Uh, this is I would say, kind of a low point for a lot of giant monster movies. And it's a tough balance because in way, the city smashing is what you're there for. That's a part of the part of the appeal of the movie. On the other hand, in a lot of these movies, there's just more of it than you actually need.
Eyes are always bigger than your stomach. Yeah. Yeah, this looks great and they're like, oh wow, it's still it's still happenings, still going, but you know the really memorable moments of course, when the monster keys in on a particular landmark and we do get some of that action here.
Yeah, exactly. So this one has the same issue a lot of these movies do. The smashing I think goes on a little too long. There's a surplus of it. But on the other hand, as we said earlier, it's superb model work. I love the way a lot of this looks. It's very tactle and pleasurable smashing to observe. At one point, I think, actually the army like accidentally shoots Big Ben or the clock tower. They like launch a missile through it, trying to hit mother Gorgo. So, you know, how do you think this is going to end? Well, power of tanks and guns and bombs stop Gorgo's mother, what do you think? No, So we see, you know, our characters running around trying to get out of Harm's way. At one point, Sean is like drawn to Gorgo's mother. He's like approaching her when everybody else is fleeing, and we see Joe have kind of a hero turn. Joe has been the selfish, the more selfish, greedy one in this act so far, but when Shawn is in Harm's way, Joe goes to rescue him and bring him out of harms way, and we see Joe and Sean they're chased into the underground and then the tunnels are collapsing and flooding, but they make it out.
Yeah, this segment with in the tunnels I thought was very effective. Like in general, all of the monster destruction going on you know, even though, like you said, there's a lot of it, but we do cut to all of these scenes of the crowds in full panic mode and like the street level understanding of the destruction and then our character level understanding of the destruction, and that does make it feel a lot more real. And there's one segment in particular where Joe and Sean are just in there in the crowd crush. Everyone's just going down into the tunnels, into the subway tunnels there, and there's this terrifying scene where like they make it into the tunnels proper and behind them again crowds of people and then the steveln collapses like Gorgo just destroys all of them and like hundreds of people die. It's you know, it would seem to be the case anyway, and only Joe and Sean make it out. And I was like, oh, that that was effective, Like that made me feel the chaos and the destruction of these sequences. So it's not just man in rubber suit fall on bridge.
Yeah, I would emphasize that, like nothing this year does not look funny, Like this is a the way it's visually realized. These scenes are very like dark and grim.
Yeah.
So of course as the chaos is going on, we get a lot more radio reports, you know, like the radio reporter says, like Piccadilly the heart of London. Words can't describe it. There's been nothing like it, not even in the worst of the blitz. This section is a complete shambles, people running mad with fear, and we see on the street level there's like a there's an End Times profit who's wearing a sign that says repent the end is nigh. And we see the admirals and the Dublin scientists trying to come up with a plan to like electrocute Mother Gorgo. The admirals like how much voltage, well, we need and the Dublin scientist is like, h two to three million volts but that's only a guess. Yeah, then why do you even say it?
It?
Really they do a great job of making it feel rather hopeless because at this point there's just no real plan and it seems like nothing is going to stop the absolute destruction of the city unless they were maybe to do something like release Little Gorgo, which nobody is actually doing.
Yeah, Sam suggested before this all started. Sam was right. Sam was right. Uh, so they've got this plan. You know, we get a lot of moralizing from the radio reporters talking about, you know, the whire all the electricity of London has been redirected to the wires, to this animal small enclosure. Will it be enough? Will it be enough to stop this huge beast? Where will the miracle be granted or will it be yet another of man's puny efforts to oppose this irresistible force of ancient nature.
The miracle, the miracle of keeping this mother monster from her young And like in a way, I mean, I guess it's it's a rather effective part of the film here, because it's like just do the the the like, like the answer is right there in front of you, Like why don't you do that? Release the monster? Why like this this desperate, uh you know, egotistical uh desire to defeat nature instead of like bending it least a little bit to it here and instead they're just going to invite absolute destruction.
Rob you're not understanding. Dorkin would lose some money.
I mean that's right because on top of the tickets, the concessions alone, like he was banking on that.
Yeah, yeah, all right, So in the end, Mother Gorgo. She makes it through. She rescues her baby, and Gorgo and Mother Gorgo they trek back out to the ocean. They get in the water and they start swimming away and get the more of the like crazy commentary from the radio reporter saying, we've prayed for a miracle. Maybe our prayers have been answered. It's this speech that goes on for a long time. He's saying. In the end, she turns with her young, leaving the prostrate city, leaving the haunts of man, and leaving Man himself to ponder the proud boast that he alone is lord of all creation. It is a very he tampered in God's domain kind of ending. Yeah, and then we in the end, actually they give the last word to Shan, the child who who's watching the creatures leave, and Sean says, you're going back now, back to the sea. And I do have to say in the final shot where they're showing Gorgo and Mother Gorgo going back into the water, they make little Gorgo look really tiny in comparison.
Yeah. Yeah, it kind of drives home the obscenity of the whole act of keeping this creature hostage.
Yeah, so that's the end of Gorgo, Pity the Monster.
Yeah, yeah, you know it's reflecting back on it more here. I feel like it does have a strong message that it's trying to drive home and yeah you can't help. But wonder if this too might have had an impact on the Star. You know, this might have like laid some of the groundwork for Bill Traver's later involvement in animal rights activism. I mean, not officially, but maybe a little bit in addition to Born Free.
So that's a final verdict. I think Gorgo is a tremendously enjoyable movie. It's, of course, as I said in the beginning, funny and very concept funny in some elements of execution, quite strong in other elements of execution. So I think it's a fairly good entry in the giant monster movie canon. You know, it's not quite your on the level of like your original Godzilla and stuff like that, but of the sort of mid level big monsters. It's one of the better ones. I think.
Do you think they could come back and do a Shin Gorgo Gorgo movie inspired by Shin Godzilla.
Where half of it is like the British Navy having meetings and then having meetings about other meetings that should be organized.
Yeah, we didn't get enough meetings in this film about relations with Ireland, about Gorgo rights, who has the rights to the monster, and the exporting of the monster and so forth. A lot that could be done there.
For listeners who don't recall and the pat We're big fans of shin Godzilla. I haven't seen the more recent one, Godzilla Minus one, but I've been hearing very good things about it.
Yeah, same, same. So it's a reminder that even though the giant monster movie, you know, we think of it as being just very formulaic and if you've seen one, you've seen them all, and that everything that could be done has been done and the only upgrade you're going to get are going to be effects based, right, But it's not the case. Like clearly, there are still interesting stories to tell with giant monsters, and they keep coming, and I say that's wonderful. I'm all for it.
Here here all right.
We're going to go ahead and close the book on Gorgo here, but we'd love to hear from you if you have thoughts on Gorgo on other Kaiju movies that we mentioned in this episode, or once we didn't mention just what your favorites are. We'd love to hear from you. We'll share the email address in just a moment here and you can write into us. Just a reminder to everyone that Stuff will Blow Your Mind is primarily a podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you want a list of all the movies we've covered so far, the best place to go is to head on over to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T E r bosd dot com. Our username is weird House, and we have a list of all the films we've covered, and sometimes there's a peek ahead at what's coming up next. Also, while I have you, if you have not rated and reviewed the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed, do so. It helps us out well, leave us a nice review, leave us a bunch of stars. And I should also add that if you listen to this podcast on Apple on an Apple device or you're using like Apple Podcast, pop in there and make sure that you're still subscribed, that you're still receiving downloads that also helps us.
Out huge things. As always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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