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| Title: GORGO Year: 1961 Rating: *** |
While GORGO seems like an unapologetic GODZILLA ripoff, director Eugène Lourié had already made BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, which, released a year before the Japanese GODZILLA/GOJIRA, was a direct inspiration...
However, the movie that inspired both creature-features, RKO's classic KING KONG, is what GORGO is primarily based on: a gigantic beast is taken from its remote sea-surrounding-island home, and turned into a corporate carnival attraction... breaking free at one point from a banal photographer's intrusive flashbulb...
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| Bill Travers and William Sylvester in GORGO |
And like Lourié's 20,000 FATHOMS' British reboot BEHEMOTH THE SEA MONSTER/THE GIANT BEHEMOTH, there are two equally-important leading men, one American, the other British...
William Sylvester and Bill Travers are side-by-side in the capturing and selling of the titular beast: although that's not entirely true since the initially-caged GORGO has an even bigger mother that (right when the carnival story gains traction) rises from the ocean and battles the entire English Navy...
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| Gorgo from GORGO |
These sequences are mostly padded with actual archive-war footage, and during the third-act... that includes the inevitable stampeding on London (particularly Big Ben).... the human characters are practically forgotten...
Technically, instead of the director's usual stop-motion effects, GORGO is the GODZILLA-style man-in-a-costume... yet the coolest-looking element is the sleekly reptilian bright-red-eyed/rising-gills constructed-head shown during close-ups, a detriment to most giant-monster vehicles, the original KONG included...
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| Gorgo from GORGO |
And, without a leading lady (what would the genre be without Fay Wray?), the wiser-yet-more-vulnerable character is child actor Vincent Winter, one of the most naturally down-to-earth/non-melodramatic kid roles ever...
The only real problem's that it feels like these otherwise worthwhile human co-leads are ultimately watching GORGO (along with the audience) as opposed to being an integral part in its exploiting-nature/cautionary-tale premise.
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| Gorgo from GORGO |
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| Gorgo from GORGO |
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| Gorgo from GORGO |
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| Bill Travers and William Sylvester in GORGO |
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| Vincent Winter in GORGO |
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| William Sylvester in GORGO |
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