Gorgo

source: Gorgo

Trailer—Gorgo

Gorgo

This was my favorite movie as a kid. I'm glad to see that it's getting a decent amount of praise here. The rubber monster suit may not hold up that well but when the monster attacks London the movie evokes a sense up panic and hysteria unmatched in any other monster film (certainly not in the American Godzilla, where the hero can calmly converse with a drug store cashier while the a cartoon lizard is destroying New York a few blocks away!). The music score is beautiful and the opening scenes have a fine Irish fish tale atmosphere. It's too bad the film seems to be only available in grainy, murky copies. One thing bugs me: for years I've been reading about "Momma" Gorgo coming to rescue "her" baby, but at no time in the movie is the sex of the parent mentioned! That may have been Dad trouncing Big Ben.

One of my favorite Sci-Fi creature flicks. After an undersea earthquake, a baby sea monster is captured off the Irish coast and is put in a London circus. The creature called Gorgo escapes and raises havoc. Turn the excitement up a notch when the infant creature's mother comes to reclaim her baby. This movie has a better look and feel than most small budget features. Cast includes: Bill Travers, Bruce Seton, William Sylvester and Christopher Rhodes. Gorgo is large enough, but wait until you see mama!

I marvel at how realistic this movie is. Not so much when it comes to Gorgo (although the scenes of Gorgo in captivity look to me as realistic as anything in "Jurassic Park"), but the acting is just great. Just as in "The Day the Earth Caught Fire", I really believed these characters existed and that the situations they were going through were real. In other words, the movie is played "straight"...and brilliantly so. The suspense is palpable...and, at the end, you really don't know how it will end. But I guarantee you, that the ending is one you will remember for a long time...including the wonderful music composed for this film by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino. The score from this movie, by the way, is available on the MORE MONSTROUS MOVIE MUSIC album reviewed here: http://www.cinemusic.net/reviews/ 2000/monstrous_movie_music.html I highly recommend this movie...as a precautionary tale of how foolish it can be to think we are the masters of all life on Earth.

I think I was aged about eight when I went to the cinema with my cousins one Saturday morning, back in the days when you saw two films for your money - the B movie followed by the main feature. On this occasion I can't even remember what the main feature was because the first movie was Gorgo. It was my first exposure to giant scaly monster movies and I quickly became a big fan. Watching the movie recently on DVD I was impressed by the relatively high production values for a film of this type. The effects are not bad, certainly not laughable as in many monster movies. There is also a great happy ending for mama and baby Gorgo. Quite a rarity. This is pure escapism. If you've come home from a hard day at work you don't want to relax in front of the TV watching period drama or thought-provoking message movies. No, you want to see a giant prehistoric behemoth trashing the puny world of men, and Gorgo delivers!

Gorgo is the third of the monster on the loose movies to be directed by Eugene Lourie. It came two years after The Giant Behemoth and was the only monster movie to be directed by him to be made in colour. This is an excellent movie with great special effects. This is the British version of Godzilla and the monsters look impressive, despite them being men in monster suits. The acting in this is quite good and there is an excellent music score too. This was made towards the end of the craze for giant monster movies. This movie is a must for monster movie fans and I enjoyed it very much. This is British monster movie action at its best. Enjoy! Rating: 4 stars out of 5.

GORGO is hardly a perfect film but it does have several things working in its favor which make it more entertaining than many other giant monster films. One is director Eugene Lourie, certainly no stranger to giant monster films directing THE BEAST FROM 20000 FATHOMS, THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK, THE GIANT BEHEMOTH as well as GORGO. In terms of Special FX and Ending, only the first film named above is better than GORGO. The FX work(done by Tom Howard) in GORGO is truly well-accomplished and for the time and era was rather ground breaking. The Ending is also truly unique amongst giant monster films which usually all end the same way but this one certainly doesn't. The problems lie mostly with lack of character development and some serious leaps of logic. Still there are times this film can be quite suspenseful particularly once Mama Gorgo comes on the scene. The huge red-eyed Mama rising out of the water is certainly memorable stuff.

Ocean volcanic eruption brings many deep sea fishes to the surface. Divers researching the ocean finds not only the fishes, but a reptilian monster from the deep. They succeed in capturing the monster, and brings it back to London, but a closer study shows that it's only an infant, and a lot bigger adult is expected to exist somewhere. The adult shows up, to search for its missing offspring, and London is under attack by a 200 ft tall monster. This might be a British version of Godzilla, but it's the first time a monster is portrayed as a family. The production is very good for a movie of this sorts, and has aged well. It was even more sensational back in the '60s when the movie was made. It's a classic monster movie that has its place in movie history, and still a good entertainment to watch.