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 Fisherman from England catch a "60 foot tall deep-sea creature." They call
this an "unusual catch." The monster is taken to London for a circus and then
they find out that the creature is really just a baby. The creature's mother
comes looking for it and "wreaks havoc on the city." The Star Classics box
then concludes with this odd bit of hype, "if all those terrible horror
thrillers haven't taken the edge off, here's a good one." 1961, 75 minutes, VHS
Gorgo is the uninspired tale of a man in a bad rubber suit knocking down a bunch of
flimsy models of British landmarks. Apparently the British were feeling
slighted that Godzilla didn't deem their country important enough to stomp so
they choked up this hairball for all to see. Our derivative story starts in
the ocean as most of these giant monster on the loose movies do. These things
are either hiding in the depths of the ocean or are locked away in some giant
mountain. Don't sail in uncharted deep waters with mysterious volcanic
activity and strange dead fish floating and do not dynamite any mountain on an
island called "Monster Island." These would seem to be some reasonable
precautions to take. But man is a daring species and determined to battle the
great unknown so it is that we find the crew of the SS Sumthinorother sailing
around in the iceberg laden waters off the coast of Ireland. Some of the crew
are deep sea diving when the water up ahead mysteriously starts to churn.
Before you know it a giant volcano has emerged from the ocean and explodes all
over the place! The model of their ship starts to pitch back and forth as
waves as big as the ones I see when I exit the bath wash across the deck of
this snap together (no glue required - would dissolve in water!) ship by
Monogram. People fall all over the place and I saw a crew member actually try
to save a barrel as all heck was breaking loose! The brave captain is
battling to save the ship and suddenly I'm smelling a Perfect Storm situation here! But this guy is no Clooney and Marky-Mark is nowhere to be
seen! Which is good since those mariners managed to get their ship sunk and
everyone on board killed. No the captain of the Gorgobuster is made of sterner
stuff, and he looks like Steven Seagal, minus the greasy pony-tail and gut.
Somehow they survive this dustup and make for shore. Along the way they see
lots of weird looking dead fish. This means that everything in the way-deep
part of the ocean has been rousted and who knows what lurks down there? They land at a seaside fishing village and meet up with a crabby archeologist
who tells them they can't stay more than 24 hours for some reason or other.
They also meet up with a scruffy kid who you just know is going to be stowing
away, getting in Gorgo's path and causing all kinds of problems down the road.
Our main characters are the Captain and his little buddy. They're just generic
British dudes and I can't remember their names so we'll just call them Fish and
Chips. So Fish and Chips are shown some of the archeologist's findings by the
little kid who looks like something out of a Dickens novel, and it seems that
the archeologist is finding lots of gold from a sunken Viking ship. Later on
in the harbor, the locals are diving and they keep disappearing. One of them
comes up and then croaks. Fish or Chips declares that he "died of fright."
Being the he-men (Fish dresses like the guy on the Old Spice commercials - or
is it Irish Spring?) they dive in to look around and see what's making these
pansies poop their wetsuits. They go underwater and see something, but can't
tell what it is. That night a monster rises out of the water and begins it's
attack on the village. This is Gorgo and he looks like a little bargain
basement Godzilla. He's not too big (he is only a baby Gorgo, after all), but
he's still a handful (they all are at that age!). The fisherman, being the
complete idiots that they are start chucking spears at it, and you can imagine
that that has no effect on a little Gorgo throwing a tantrum. I should point
out at this time that Gorgo's bellowing screech sounds like a blender trying to
crush ice or something. The special effects are of course atrocious, but the
picture on my VHS tape was so awful I couldn't really tell how bad. I'm
assuming the new release by VCI on DVD has a much better picture, but my 15
year old video tape of a 30 year old movie just didn't have it, picture-wise.
Finally someone decides that since they're fresh out of spears, it's time to
break out the
torches. Angry mob of villagers drives off terrible beast with fire! Well, we
all know that that's how you take care of monster business. Ain't no
self-respecting monster out there who likes having it's rump singed! The next day Fish and Chips meet with the archeologist with a proposition. It
went kind of like this: "We couldn't help but noticing you got a little
Gorgo-sized problem, pardner," says Fish. "Yeah, and we just happen to have
ourselves a Gorgo catcher aboard our ship. We might be persuaded to help you
out. That is, if we could also help you out of some Viking gold," Chips
continues. So a deal is struck and Fish and Chips go off to make big plans to
catch Gorgo. And what a glorious plan it was! Fish or Chips goes down in a
diving bell and waits for Gorgo to wake up from its morning nap. Gorgo shows
up and starts gnawing on the diving bell, then they drop a net from the boat
onto the distracted Gorgo. They haul him up and that's that! Why didn't the
Japanese ever think to do that with Godzilla? I guess it's that great old
British ingenuity. First the Chunnel, now this. Once they have Gorgo cuffed
and stuffed as we say in the biz, some eggheads from Dublin University show up
and say that if Fish and Chips can convince Gorgo to come play football for
them that they would be well compensated. Fish and Chips agree, but little do
these pointy heads know that Fish has already struck a deal with the owner of
Dorkins Circus to display Gorgo in London! So they sail to London, a crew
member is killed by Gorgo, that little kid we all hate stows away, and he even
tries to set Gorgo free! If I was captain the only thing I'd say to that was
"twerp overboard!" They arrive in London and Gorgo is a huge sensation. They
pump him full of tranquilisers and then strap him to the back of a flatbed truck
and drive him through London with this tarp on him and a banner with the word
"Gorgo" scrawled across it. Classy!  The money starts rolling in, but then there is a problem back at the village
where they first Gorgonapped their baby monster. It seems that Mrs. Gorgo has
finally gotten back from work and is wondering what happened to her kid. She
comes ashore and stomps the island and the archeologist is killed. Then the
British military gets involved. I think that you can imagine how that turns
out considering they needed the good ole US of A to bail them out whenever the
Krauts get a hankering for a rumble. Mrs. Gorgo ignores the fighter jets
trying to shoot her down and she sinks a British destroyer like it was a
Japanese trawler in the way of submarine joyride. Then she heads for London to
find her baby. How she knew he was there, I have no idea. Maybe she was
watching CNN. When she arrives there, she does it in classic
guy-in-rubber-suit-style: in slow motion! These scenes where the monsters
stomp powerplants and windup tanks are always played out real slow like so that
you can get a good look at how fake everything is. I think this must be in the
contracts of the visual effects artists. They try to burn her up, but that
doesn't seem to work, so the city goes to Plan B which is panic! For the rest
of the movie you get scenes of people running screaming through the streets as
foam rubber rubble falls on some of them. Mrs. Gorgo continues to stomp her way
across London, bashing Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower and all those other British
landmarks nobody but the Brits care about, along the way. Somehow or other
Fish and Chips and that stupid
little kid are still involved though they just seem to running around subway
tunnels for no discernible reason. Finally once the city fathers figured out
that Plan B, while good in theory, in practice, it just didn't slow Mrs. Gorgo
down. So they come up with Plan C which is to electrocute her. They're going
to do this by channeling all the power in the city to the power lines where her
baby is being held hostage. So, is the Gorgo family the good guys in this now,
or what? A monster is coming to rescue her baby and we're going to electrocute
her once she gets there? Go humans!  Mrs. Gorgo finally finds her baby. She gets tangled up in the power lines and
there's a lot of sparks and explosions, but it doesn't slow her down. She
breaks her baby out and they head off into the sea. All the while we have this
irritating news reporter who is on the scene breathlessly recounting the action
in a stream of purple prose that would have made Dan Rather blush. I was
hoping that the Gorgos would turn around, gangstomp the guy and then go
swimming off into the sunset, but no such luck. This dude was just rehashing
everything we'd just seen! Give it a rest, it wasn't that memorable as far as
monster attacks go! Gorgo's problem is that it's a rip off of a dubious film
genre to begin with - the rubber suited monster epic. You tolerate Godzilla,
because the first movie actually was good and had a message and the rest were
all
just kind of silly Saturday afternoon time wasters that are humorous in their
own way. Gorgo wasn't amusing, it wasn't original, it didn't have a cool
monster, and there would have been no problem if they had just dumped that
little lizard back into the sea. The main characters became irrelevant once
the mother Gorgo arrived. They were reduced to running around in panic like
everyone else. And why should I have been rooting for them anyway? They were
just as greedy as that no good archeologist. I've seen where the DVD that VCI
released has some extras and most likely a really sweet picture, but who in the
world is going to pay $24.95 for this Godzilla-wannabe? And extras? What kind
of extras could there be for a movie so inconsequential, even in its own genre?
And why would you want them? The only thing this mindnumber has going for it
is it's fat free 75 minute running time.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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