cult film freak: EUGÉNE LOURIÈ DIRECTS WILLIAM SYLVESTER IN BRITAIN'S 'GORGO'

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...

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...

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...

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.