Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, this is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 1: Today is Saint Patrick's Day, so we do have an
Speaker 1: older episode of Weird House Cinema that does, at least
Speaker 1: in some small way involve an Irish setting. We're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about the nineteen sixty one European Kaiju
Speaker 1: movie Gorgo. This this one's pretty fun and has a
Speaker 1: great monster in it. So let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: on today's episode of Weird House Cinema, we are going
Speaker 3: to be talking about the nineteen sixty one British Kaiju
Speaker 3: movie Gorgo, which I just saw for the first time
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks ago when my friend Ben brought
Speaker 3: it over for a movie night. So one of the
Speaker 3: first things you might be thinking is did I hear
Speaker 3: the first line of the description? Right? Is this a
Speaker 3: British giant monster movie? Yes? You did? Why is that
Speaker 3: concept inherently so funny? I don't really know, but to
Speaker 3: me certainly it is. And I wonder if you have
Speaker 3: the same thought, Rob, So, like I was interrogating this further, So,
Speaker 3: Japanese giant monster movie could be funny in execution, but
Speaker 3: it's not necessarily funny in principle, Like the original Godzilla
Speaker 3: is not funny at all. It's a very dark, grim serious,
Speaker 3: great movie. An American giant monster movie, I'd say same
Speaker 3: thing could be funny in execution, not necessarily funny in principle.
Speaker 3: But a British giant monster movie where a huge rat
Speaker 3: creature attacks London is just fundamentally hilarious.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm not sure quite what it is, because you
Speaker 1: do find giant monster kaiju movies in various films cultures,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't feel inherently out of place in other
Speaker 1: film traditions. But yeah, there's something about the British setting
Speaker 1: and all the British actors. I don't know. It makes
Speaker 1: it unique, and it does maybe make it a little
Speaker 1: bit hilarious unintentionally.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, there are a lot of
Speaker 3: things about this movie that are beautifully executed. It has
Speaker 3: a similar problem that a lot of giant monster movies have,
Speaker 3: which is that there's a lot of city stomping at
Speaker 3: the end, just relentless smashing of buildings and such. It
Speaker 3: goes on for a long time. That's not unique to Gorgo.
Speaker 3: But the city smashing looks fantastic. It looks great. They've
Speaker 3: got really good models. We get to see a creature
Speaker 3: smashing well known landmarks throughout London, you know, really laying
Speaker 3: into Big Ben and the Tower Bridge and all that stuff,
Speaker 3: and it is really pleasurable to watch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's the basic formula in play here.
Speaker 1: Don't go into Gorgo expecting some drastically different from any
Speaker 1: other giant monster movie that you've seen, but it is
Speaker 1: well executed. There are a lot of solid talents that
Speaker 1: were involved in making this film, and it does find
Speaker 1: some places to do things that, if not entirely unique,
Speaker 1: at least they come up with an interesting palette with
Speaker 1: which to paint it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would agree. There are some other things that
Speaker 3: work kind of well. I would say in the first
Speaker 3: act there's an interesting sort of full corror vibe that
Speaker 3: is unexpected for a movie of this type. We can
Speaker 3: talk more about that when we get into the plot,
Speaker 3: but I think we should start off by exploring the
Speaker 3: question of what is Gorgo right. So Godzilla is a
Speaker 3: giant bipedal reptile or lizard of some kind with atomic
Speaker 3: radiation breath who emerges from under the ocean. Gamera is
Speaker 3: a giant fire breathing turtle from the Arctic that can fly.
Speaker 3: King Kong is a giant prehistoric ape from Skull Island.
Speaker 3: What is Gorgo? I would describe Gorgo as a gigantic
Speaker 3: two the monster with a similar bipedal posture to Godzilla,
Speaker 3: who looks like a cross between a frilly eared lizard
Speaker 3: and a satanic rat with red glowing eyes. He comes
Speaker 3: out of the sea off the coast of an Irish island,
Speaker 3: and he is thought to be some kind of ancient god,
Speaker 3: at least at first.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I would also add that he has pretty
Speaker 1: much has the body of a rock'm sockem robot, not
Speaker 1: in the sense that it's metallic, but in the basic
Speaker 1: posture and proportions. It looks like he's ready to throw
Speaker 1: some punches, and I guess ultimately does throw some punches
Speaker 1: at major London landmarks.
Speaker 3: And the way you can kind of see him rotating
Speaker 3: his torso as he reaches with his arms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now, if there I had plenty of scenes later
Speaker 1: in the film to stare at this monster and try
Speaker 1: and cope with some headcanon for everything I'm seeing. And
Speaker 1: I will say the teeth. The more I looked at them,
Speaker 1: the more I started thinking, well, these are like filter
Speaker 1: feeding teeth. Like, this isn't a qua organism that's had
Speaker 1: millions and millions of years to sort of evolve. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's a filter feeder. Maybe that's what those teeth are
Speaker 1: all about.
Speaker 3: That's a good point. So you might think giant toothy
Speaker 3: rat lizard creature and think a smaller number of large,
Speaker 3: pointy teeth. You know, maybe each pointy tooth is like
Speaker 3: the size of a sharpened boulder. But no, instead it's
Speaker 3: a lot of tiny, pointy teeth. It's more like a
Speaker 3: mouthful of swords. And so I think with that in mind,
Speaker 3: you could also look at that as like the bristles
Speaker 3: or the bleen of a filter feeder. That's a good connection, Rob,
Speaker 3: thank you.
Speaker 1: But you know this is not the only the only
Speaker 1: connection between this monster and the world of actual terrestrial biology,
Speaker 1: because the creature's name Gorgo is allegedly based on an
Speaker 1: actual dinosaur, the Gorgosaurs.
Speaker 3: Now they don't say that in the movie, and the
Speaker 3: movie they later explained that. Well, first, when we learned
Speaker 3: the name Gorgo, they literally say, we don't know why
Speaker 3: he's called that. But then the scheming circus operator who
Speaker 3: is exploiting Gorgo for cash, he explains that he named
Speaker 3: the creature Gorgo after the gorgon Medusa. So there is
Speaker 3: a common connective thread that we could get into. But
Speaker 3: they don't say in the movie that it's named after
Speaker 3: this dinosaur.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this might have been something that was more
Speaker 1: of a stronger connection at some earlier phase of production.
Speaker 1: It could also be something that's been kind of added
Speaker 1: after the fact. But the truth is there is a gorgosaurus.
Speaker 1: The gorgosaurus was not named after this movie. This is
Speaker 1: the literally names fierce lizard. This creature lived during the
Speaker 1: Late Cretaceous period eighty to seventy three million years ago
Speaker 1: in parts of what is now the United States and Canada,
Speaker 1: So you know, I guess its range wouldn't actually have
Speaker 1: extended over to the British Isles. But anyway, it was
Speaker 1: a large therapod and we have at least twelve complete
Speaker 1: or near complete skulls and various partial skeletons to go
Speaker 1: off of. It was a tyrannosaur, not as big as
Speaker 1: a t rex, but still quite impressive at eight to
Speaker 1: nine meters or twenty six to thirty feet in length.
Speaker 1: It was first described and named by Canadian paleontologist Lawrence
Speaker 1: Lamb that's not spelled like my name is Lambe in
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen. And the gorgo part of the name fierce
Speaker 1: is in fact related to the ancient Greek word gorgos,
Speaker 1: which means grim or dreadful, reflected in the naming of
Speaker 1: the mythical gorgons.
Speaker 3: Okay, so at the very least, the real gorgosaurus and
Speaker 3: the gorgo of the movie get their name from the
Speaker 3: same place.
Speaker 1: Yes, And you know, if this strikes a chord with
Speaker 1: anyone out there, you're like, where have I heard about
Speaker 1: gorgosaurus recently? Well, the gorgosar has actually just made the
Speaker 1: news last month. This was reported about in the New
Speaker 1: York Times under their Ancient Meat Reporting Desk. This concerns
Speaker 1: a seventy five million year old gorgosaurus fossil. It was
Speaker 1: discovered with fossilized stomach contents. This was the first, apparently
Speaker 1: for a tyrannosaur. It was a juvenile and the stomach
Speaker 1: contents were the hind limbs of two small feathered dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: According to Michael Greshko in his New York Times article
Speaker 1: covering a study authored by Francois Therein, the curator of
Speaker 1: Dinosaur paleo Ecology at the Royal Tirel Museum in Alberta.
Speaker 1: They said that if it had grown to adulthood, it
Speaker 1: would have likely moved on too much bigger prey. But
Speaker 1: as a smaller critter, it was having to eat the
Speaker 1: legs of various bird creatures. So at any rate, gorgosaurs
Speaker 1: still making the headlines, at least, you know, as far
Speaker 1: as stories about ancient meat and an ancient chicken legs ghost.
Speaker 3: Now you included an illustration from the New York Times article.
Speaker 3: It's an artist's impression of what the living juvenile gorgosaurus
Speaker 3: would have looked like. And this is a much more
Speaker 3: spindily creeture than the gorgo of the film, which is
Speaker 3: which is very dense and bulky, and apart from its
Speaker 3: rat like head, it's got the more classic sort of
Speaker 3: storybook illustration of the tyrannosaur that's very sort of bottom
Speaker 3: heavy and has like big legs and lower body parts.
Speaker 1: Right right, but before you Gorgo fans look up this
Speaker 1: article and say this is not accurate, let me suggest
Speaker 1: that the Gorgo that we see in this movie has
Speaker 1: again evolved for life in an aquatic setting over millions
Speaker 1: of years. So he has kind of like that whale
Speaker 1: body going on. Ah So, if we're being generous, we
Speaker 1: might say, well, it's it kind of makes sense.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yes, the Gorgo's body has has evolved for
Speaker 3: insulation purposes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a little science there, but believe me, the
Speaker 1: science is not necessary for your appreciation and understanding of
Speaker 1: this movie.
Speaker 3: Okay, so on, We've talked a little bit before on
Speaker 3: the podcast when we've done other Kaiju or giant monster
Speaker 3: movies about the various subgenres that these movies fall into,
Speaker 3: and I thought it might make sense to try to
Speaker 3: figure out where Gorgo fits into that subgenre map. So
Speaker 3: a few of the main types of giant monster movies are.
Speaker 3: I would say, first of all, Kaiju the destroyer. An
Speaker 3: example of this would be the original Godzilla. A giant
Speaker 3: beast arrives unexpectedly and brings ruined to humankind, and the
Speaker 3: monster must somehow be defeated or driven away. Second category,
Speaker 3: I would call Kaiju the Defender. Good examples here would
Speaker 3: be the later sequels involving almost any of the popular
Speaker 3: Kaiju monsters, monsters like Godzilla and Gammera. This is a
Speaker 3: variation that arises in which the giant monster that was
Speaker 3: once the Destroyer must now defend us from a more
Speaker 3: horrible threat, usually either space aliens or a new giant
Speaker 3: monster that is meaner and more spiny. And I would
Speaker 3: argue that the emergence of Kaiju the Defender as a
Speaker 3: subgenre of giant monster movies is part of a broader
Speaker 3: trend that's not just in giant monster movies, but it's
Speaker 3: this trend where if you have a series of movies
Speaker 3: all about the same focal character, that character will almost
Speaker 3: always become more friendly and approachable over time, even if
Speaker 3: they began as a villain or an anti hero. So
Speaker 3: Gamera goes from being a terrifying pyro turtle on a
Speaker 3: rampage to the friend of all children. You can look
Speaker 3: to any Vin Diesel movie series for examples of this.
Speaker 3: The Vin Diesel character will always become nicer as it
Speaker 3: goes on. Even Freddy Krueger goes from being in the
Speaker 3: First Nightmare on elm Street movie, this grimy, disgusting child
Speaker 3: murderer to later on more just kind of like a
Speaker 3: lethal puck in a sweater, Like he does still kill people,
Speaker 3: but he's more kind of a prankster and a jokester.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it becomes more of like a peewee Herman kind
Speaker 1: of a character as opposed to just a nightmare monster
Speaker 1: from your mind, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Right, So in the later sequels in these movies you
Speaker 3: often get Kaiju the defender. Next, I would say is
Speaker 3: the pity the Kaiju movie. Great example here is sort
Speaker 3: of the original King Kong, Like a dangerous but in
Speaker 3: many ways admirable and noble monster is kidnapped or imprisoned
Speaker 3: or otherwise exploited by greedy humans, and in the end
Speaker 3: you have emotional sympathy for the creature in the way
Speaker 3: that it has been mistreated by humankind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and obviously there are numerous sub classifications that we
Speaker 1: could point out here, but well, one that comes to
Speaker 1: mind as well as essentially the ware Kaiju option. So
Speaker 1: not an amazing colossal situation where just a human gets
Speaker 1: big and then does big stuff, but a situation where
Speaker 1: a protagonist transforms into a giant monster that is distinct
Speaker 1: from just a giant human. The twenty sixteen film Colossal
Speaker 1: starring Anne Hathaway comes to mind that has a fun
Speaker 1: twist on this concept, and there's also nineteen sixty five's
Speaker 1: Frankenstein Versus Beragon that involves something like this as well,
Speaker 1: with a small boy transforming into a giant Frankenstein's monster.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, I don't think I've seen either of those. I
Speaker 3: certainly haven't seen the one with Anne Hathaway. Does Ann
Speaker 3: is Anne Hathaway the one who transforms into a giant monster?
Speaker 1: Yes, she is, or it's a so spoilers if if
Speaker 1: you if you haven't seen this, just skip like you know,
Speaker 1: a few minutes ahead. But the basic concept, if memory serves,
Speaker 1: is that she she has the spells where she becomes
Speaker 1: the monster or controls the monster with her impulses, but
Speaker 1: is not conscious of the fact. So it's not a
Speaker 1: physical transformation. Uh. It's it's it's something else, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a very fun film. It's it's it's it's a comedy.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: But it has a giant monster and it has a
Speaker 1: number of wonderful actors in it. Well worth checking out.
Speaker 3: That does sound interesting. I'll have to look that up.
Speaker 3: But okay, So where does Gorgo fit into the these subgenres?
Speaker 3: I would say Gorgo has elements of the first Kusu
Speaker 3: the Destroyer, and elements of the third the Pity the
Speaker 3: Monster film, less of the second, which makes sense because
Speaker 3: this is the first Gorgo movie. This is not like
Speaker 3: a later sequel, and usually they don't become defenders of
Speaker 3: people or friend to all children until later on, so
Speaker 3: it has elements of both. I would say, especially in
Speaker 3: the first act, the monster really does seem scary and
Speaker 3: seem like a threat. But as the film goes on, yeah,
Speaker 3: you really come to sympathize with the monster spoiler monsters
Speaker 3: over the I don't know, just like gloating, egotistical naval
Speaker 3: commanders who think that launching some more bombs at them
Speaker 3: will finally solve the problem.
Speaker 1: Right right, It's ultimately going to be a draw, and
Speaker 1: you realize, well, we can't really oppose Gorgo anymore. We
Speaker 1: must form an alliance with Gorgo. Clearly, if they'd made
Speaker 1: more Gorgo movies, it would have been Gorgo protecting the
Speaker 1: British Isles from some other menace.
Speaker 3: Right, But Rob, you brought to my attention the fact
Speaker 3: that there was a Gorgo comic series that seems to
Speaker 3: have happened after the movie. So, if I understand correctly,
Speaker 3: the character was created for the film, but then there
Speaker 3: were comics made in the wake of that, and I
Speaker 3: haven't read these comics, but just judging by looking at
Speaker 3: some of the covers online, Gorgo does appear to go
Speaker 3: through the exact same like heel to face turn we
Speaker 3: see in these other Monsters, because in the first issue
Speaker 3: he's just yeah, like you know, looming over London opposing
Speaker 3: some kind of threat. But by the last issue, it
Speaker 3: looks like he's the only thing that can save the
Speaker 3: world from communism. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these covers are definitely worth looking up. I was
Speaker 1: surprised because I think i'd run across the idea before
Speaker 1: that there was some sort of a comic book adaptation,
Speaker 1: and that alone is not surprising. I was thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a one off, you know, they did a comic
Speaker 1: book adaptation of the movie, But no, it's like it's
Speaker 1: a whole run with Gorgo fighting various threats including communism
Speaker 1: and giant squidsed it. You know, it's that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: big furry monsters with horns on their head, cyclopses, you
Speaker 1: name it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So for a brief survey, issue number one, Rob,
Speaker 3: I've added these images to the outline so we can
Speaker 3: comment on them as we look. Issue number one is
Speaker 3: just Gorgo standing. There's London in the background because he
Speaker 3: big ben. You see the tower and the clock, and
Speaker 3: then some guys on the ground with flame throwers blasting
Speaker 3: up at Gorgo's hands, and Gorgo just looks done. He's
Speaker 3: got a kind of like grinning through the pain look
Speaker 3: on his face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I assume this one is basically an
Speaker 1: adaptation of the picture, or you know, an abbreviation of
Speaker 1: it anyway.
Speaker 3: Right, But then by issue number three we see a
Speaker 3: cover that is some kind of mad scientists trying to
Speaker 3: harness Gorgo's power. Gorgo looks different now, by the way.
Speaker 3: He's kind of he's got a different shape, and he's
Speaker 3: kind of bubbly all over in a lighter shade of
Speaker 3: like yellow green. But he's standing there and he's sort
Speaker 3: of reeling back. Gorgo looks like it's a more defensive posture,
Speaker 3: and this mad scientist is poking at him with this
Speaker 3: shock ray, and the mad scientist is saying, I can
Speaker 3: control you. With you at my command, I will rule
Speaker 3: the world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like, clearly, Gorgo is a force of nature that is
Speaker 1: going to be potentially exploited by bad actors in the
Speaker 1: human realm, and therefore the real villains are the mad scientists.
Speaker 3: That's right. So that's three. By issue number five, we've
Speaker 3: got the title Gorgo Clashes with the Sea Beast, where
Speaker 3: he's just it's a Kaiju meat slam. Now he's just
Speaker 3: wrestling with another giant monster. This looks like some kind
Speaker 3: of octopus inspired type creature, though. I have to say
Speaker 3: the illustration is funny because it looks like they're about
Speaker 3: to kiss. Doesn't it like Gorgo's even sort of holding
Speaker 3: the back of the octopus's head like he's going to
Speaker 3: dip him for a kiss.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. It says Gorgo clashes with the Sea Beast
Speaker 1: and the Unforgettable the Day Manhattan Died, which raises all
Speaker 1: sorts of questions. Why is Gorgo going over to Manhattan?
Speaker 1: Is like, is there like a Gorgo sharing program or
Speaker 1: treaty between the UK and the United States At this point,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Oh, you know, they do invoke NATO later in the
Speaker 3: uh oh in the movie yeah, and then it goes on. So,
Speaker 3: like I included issue number ten, there's more fighting that
Speaker 3: looks kind of like kissing. This is where Gorgo is
Speaker 3: fighting the Venusian Terror. It says they came from an
Speaker 3: alien world bent on destroying Earth and its inhabitants. Could
Speaker 3: even the mighty Gorgo stop them. Don't miss the Venusian Terror.
Speaker 3: What is the Venusian Terror? Well, you see a couple
Speaker 3: of flying saucers in the background that almost kind of
Speaker 3: look like they have eyes, like they're kind of placid,
Speaker 3: smiley faces. But then the Venusian monster is a cyclops
Speaker 3: being with a long yellow snake tongue, one big eye,
Speaker 3: and one big horn on the top of his head.
Speaker 1: Yep, and he's licking Gorgo in the face. It really
Speaker 1: seems like maybe this is a big misunderstanding. The Venusian
Speaker 1: tear doesn't really want to hurt anyone. He just wants
Speaker 1: a little snuggling, a little little face licking.
Speaker 3: That's it. Yeah, he is cute. And then, like we said, finally,
Speaker 3: by like the end of the series, we've got Gorgo
Speaker 3: in one of them. I don't know what's going on here.
Speaker 3: He's fighting a giant guy just like a guy who
Speaker 3: kind of looks like Dracula, but he's Gorgo sized. I
Speaker 3: think they must have blown him up with mad science somehow.
Speaker 3: He's fighting Gorgo. And then also Gorgo is fighting somebody
Speaker 3: called General Thung, and we see General Thung saying that
Speaker 3: with together we will destroy all imperialistic nations, and Gorgo,
Speaker 3: I guess is gonna gonna prevent that? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Gorgo's politics are fully explored in this particular issue,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, Yeah, but all of that comes later. This
Speaker 1: movie is about then this would be my elevator pitch.
Speaker 1: It's the British Isles versus giant.
Speaker 3: Monster, that is exactly it.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's go ahead and have that trailer
Speaker 1: audio so everyone can hear some of the destruction that's
Speaker 1: coming their way.
Speaker 4: FA No motion picture of our time has ever unleashed
Speaker 4: shut spectacle of such scope and realism as up from
Speaker 4: the depths of prehistoric mystery rages Virgo. The Headlines of
Speaker 4: the World plays the fabulous story of this monster from
Speaker 4: another age?
Speaker 3: Can it pulled?
Speaker 4: It romps up vast soub ocean cavern by unprecedented volcanic action,
Speaker 4: and the Headlines screamed. The story of the reckless skin
Speaker 4: divers who capture the monster and put it on exhibition.
Speaker 2: Sap the debts you're joint.
Speaker 1: Take it easy.
Speaker 4: I can't go home and go back to see where belongs?
Speaker 3: Why maybe to see they're silly skins for you gorgo.
Speaker 4: But the headlines do not record the story of the
Speaker 4: little boy who had a curious sympathy and understanding for
Speaker 4: the fantastic creature. What strange secret does he know that
Speaker 4: scientists only suspect.
Speaker 2: You're trying to say, there maybe a fully grown one
Speaker 2: of these things around somewhere.
Speaker 4: How big would a full grown one be an approximate
Speaker 4: guess the infant the adult that'll make an early two
Speaker 4: hundred feet tall. Freaking terrible ventuance against the civilization that
Speaker 4: has captured its offspring, powering over the cities of the world,
Speaker 4: has millions flee. It's awesome terror. Nothing can stop it,
Speaker 4: defying the porce of the army, the might of the navy,
Speaker 4: na Montanie.
Speaker 1: Ready to open fiser file, then.
Speaker 4: Even the fury of the jets and a writing proshundo.
Speaker 4: Fights never before beheld by human eyes, and adventures never
Speaker 4: be more experienced by any man no woman.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, if you want to go out and
Speaker 1: watch gorgo before proceeding with this episode. It is widely
Speaker 1: available in physical and digital formats and on multiple streaming platforms.
Speaker 1: You can even grab it on Blu Ray and again.
Speaker 1: The film was also covered by Mystery Science Theater three
Speaker 1: thousand in a nineteen ninety eight episode, and I think
Speaker 1: that's available in different formats as well. All right, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the people behind this film, starting at the
Speaker 1: top with the director. Eugene Lourie born nineteen oh three
Speaker 1: died nineteen ninety one, Russian born French art director and
Speaker 1: ultimately director. His production design work goes back to the
Speaker 1: early nineteen thirties, but his first directorial credit was nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three's The Beast from twenty thousand fathoms. This one,
Speaker 1: of course, has an excellent ray Harry Housen. Lizard in it,
Speaker 1: a giant lizard monster the terrorizes the city and in
Speaker 1: one memorable scene, eats a cop.
Speaker 3: Is this the one attacking New York or somewhere else?
Speaker 1: I think it's New York. This is one I've never
Speaker 1: seen in full, but I've certainly seen the monster clips.
Speaker 1: Anytime you see Harry Housen retrospective. You're going to see
Speaker 1: clips from this film for sure. And this movie was
Speaker 1: a hit. Seems to have cubmitted Laurie as a giant
Speaker 1: monster director, and he followed this up with nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: eight's The Colossus of New York. This is about a
Speaker 1: giant robot body that has a dead boy's brain in it.
Speaker 1: I included a still for you here, Joe OFV said Robot.
Speaker 3: I have considered suggesting this for the show before. I
Speaker 3: think we may come around to it one day, because,
Speaker 3: from what I understand, is a similar concept to Tammy
Speaker 3: and the t Rex, except instead of a t Rex body,
Speaker 3: it's a giant sort of colossus being.
Speaker 1: Then there's also nineteen fifty nine's The Giant Behemoth. This
Speaker 1: has another giant dinosaur in it, less memorable, not a
Speaker 1: ray her at Harry House in Creation. And then he
Speaker 1: also did an episode of the nineteen fifty nine TV
Speaker 1: series World of Giants. This was an incredible Shrinking Man
Speaker 1: inspired show. I couldn't find details on the specific episode
Speaker 1: he did and what kind of giant aka normal sized
Speaker 1: insect or what have you might have been featured in
Speaker 1: that episode. Now, Michael Weldon and his Psychotronic Movie Guides
Speaker 1: points out that the six sess of nineteen fifty threes
Speaker 1: Beast was actually an inspiration on fifty four's Godzilla, and
Speaker 1: I've read elsewhere that Godzilla was also inspired by the
Speaker 1: commercial success of a nineteen fifty two re release of
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three's King Kong. So you can think of
Speaker 1: those two films as two primary predecessors to Godzilla and
Speaker 1: therefore the vast world of Kaiju that we have before us.
Speaker 1: So that's the director. A couple of writers attached to this.
Speaker 1: There's Robert L. Richard, who of nineteen oh nine through
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, American writer of mostly westerns. Another one
Speaker 1: of these individuals who lost their Hollywood career due to
Speaker 1: the Blacklist during this time period. Daniel James as the
Speaker 1: other writer of nineteen eleven through nineteen eighty eight, also
Speaker 1: blacklisted from Hollywood for his political views. He worked as
Speaker 1: an uncredited writer on The Beast from twenty thousand Fathoms
Speaker 1: as well as The Giant Behemoth served as Earlier in
Speaker 1: his career, he had as assistant director on the nineteen
Speaker 1: forty Charlie Chaplin movie The Great Dictator, all right, let's
Speaker 1: get into the cast. The towering lead man in this
Speaker 1: is Bill Travers playing the character Joe Ryan.
Speaker 3: There's really sort of there are really sort of two
Speaker 3: leads in this movie. There's there's Sam and Joe the characters,
Speaker 3: and you know, one is Bill Travers and the other
Speaker 3: is William Sylvester. And I was thinking them as Bill
Speaker 3: trev and Bill sill.
Speaker 1: Well obviously for the lead, and I mean in terms
Speaker 1: of billing and in terms of height, and maybe that's
Speaker 1: all they decided on it. Big Bill Travers is your
Speaker 1: lead here. He lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety four. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I looked it up. I was like, how tall was
Speaker 1: this guy? Apparently six six, So that's that's that's a
Speaker 1: big guy by most standards. And it's clear in the film,
Speaker 1: you know, this is this guy's he's almost as tall
Speaker 1: as Gorgo basically. But anyway, British leading man and animal
Speaker 1: rights activists who mostly worked in mainstream dramas, with this
Speaker 1: being I believe his only sci fi or horror film.
Speaker 1: Everything else is more traditional real world sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: His most famous and ultimately most influential film was nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six Is Born Free This was an adaptation of
Speaker 1: George and Joy Adamson's book about their experiences raising a
Speaker 1: lion cub in Kenya, and it led to a kind
Speaker 1: of spiritual follow up with the same stars called Ring
Speaker 1: of Bright Water in nineteen sixty nine. Bill Travers's wife,
Speaker 1: Virginia mckinnab born nineteen thirty one, was his co star
Speaker 1: in both of those pictures, and their experience with the films,
Speaker 1: especially the first one, Born Free this open apparently opened
Speaker 1: up their eyes to various challenges concerning captive wild animals
Speaker 1: in the world, and they created the Born Free Foundation
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty four, which is still very active. It
Speaker 1: works to quote ensure that all wild animals, whether living
Speaker 1: in captivity or in the wild, are treated with compassion
Speaker 1: and respect and are able to live their lives according
Speaker 1: to their needs. And you can learn more about that
Speaker 1: organization at Bornfree dot org dot UK.
Speaker 3: That's interesting given the themes of Gorgo. Yeah, correct me
Speaker 3: if I'm wrong. I don't think I heard you mentioned
Speaker 3: Gorgo as a sighted inspiration for this activism. But Gorgo
Speaker 3: also has themes of animal rights and captivity.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe it was there in the background, and
Speaker 1: maybe Gorgo is what pushed it over the edge. But no,
Speaker 1: they never mentioned Gorgo with It's not the Gorgo Foundation,
Speaker 1: it's the Born Free Foundation.
Speaker 3: Now I say this not to tarnish his acting or
Speaker 3: his activism by association, but there's kind of an elephant
Speaker 3: in the room with this guy, which I know of
Speaker 3: being brought up multiple times independently when talking about this
Speaker 3: movie with people, which is that in some shots he
Speaker 3: kind of looks like Steven Sagall. Here it helps that
Speaker 3: he's tall. Sometimes at like certain angles he makes a
Speaker 3: kind of Stephen Segall face. And there's also a kind
Speaker 3: of energy that I don't know if this exactly makes sense,
Speaker 3: rob but like the fact that he doesn't take off
Speaker 3: his captain even when they come on board land that
Speaker 3: kind of has a sigall thing too.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, fair enough, fair enough. Now you mentioned
Speaker 1: that William Sylvester plays the other main character, the character
Speaker 1: Sam Slade, And this is a guy that I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people will recognize he was. He lived
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety five. His most recognizable
Speaker 1: role is that of doctor Haywood R. Floyd in Stanley
Speaker 1: Cooprit's nineteen sixty eight masterpiece two thousand and one of
Speaker 1: Space Odyssey.
Speaker 3: So he is the character in two thousand and one
Speaker 3: who we see him when we first transition from the
Speaker 3: prologue into the future. He's like taking a shuttle to
Speaker 3: the moon and then arrives there to investigate the anomaly
Speaker 3: found buried on the moon. Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, so it's you see him early in the film,
Speaker 1: and he is I mean, not too early, because early
Speaker 1: enough you're only seeing.
Speaker 3: Hominids and.
Speaker 1: Tapers and so forth. But yeah, one of the first
Speaker 1: modern humans you encounter. And I don't know about anyone else,
Speaker 1: but like watching this film and recognizing him from two
Speaker 1: thousand and one, it kind of added a little extra
Speaker 1: class to this picture, you know, like like two thousand
Speaker 1: and one can't help but where it could rub off
Speaker 1: on any other picture you see some of the various
Speaker 1: actors from that film.
Speaker 3: Yeen, though, of course Gorgo did come first, so you
Speaker 3: could look at it as Bill Sill bringing that class
Speaker 3: of Gorgo into the production of two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: Certainly, you certainly could, But you know, it wasn't all
Speaker 1: like generational, all time best sci fi films for William Sylvester,
Speaker 1: other folks might recognize him from the TV series Gemini
Speaker 1: Man and the TV movie from seventy six as well
Speaker 1: Writing with Death. This was pieced together from I think
Speaker 1: like a couple of episodes of Gemini Man and was
Speaker 1: featured on Mystery Science Theater three thousand.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I have vague memories of that one.
Speaker 1: His other credits include nineteen sixty four's Devil Doll, sixty
Speaker 1: five's Devils of Darkness, and he also pops up in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eights Heaven Can Wait.
Speaker 3: There's only so much that is demanded of the actors
Speaker 3: in Gorgo, but I think I would say William Sylvester
Speaker 3: stands out in this movie as doing maybe the most
Speaker 3: with his role of anyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he gets the smoke a lot. Let's smoke
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 3: He's the one who we first see really seeming to
Speaker 3: feel bad about what's happening to Gorgo. Apart from a
Speaker 3: child actor who we'll talk about in a bit, all right.
Speaker 1: A couple other characters of note. We have Professor Hendrix,
Speaker 1: played by Joseph O'Connor ten through two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: Irish actor and playwright with extensive Shakespearean stage credits. His
Speaker 1: films include nineteen sixty four's The Gorgon, So it's in
Speaker 1: both Gorgo and The Gorgon. This is the Terence Fisher
Speaker 1: Hammer film, starring both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. He
Speaker 1: was in nineteen sixty nine's And of the Thousand Days,
Speaker 1: ninety eight's Elizabeth, nineteen ninety nine's The Messenger and this
Speaker 1: is pretty cool too. He served as the narrator in
Speaker 1: the Voice of the ERSKX in nineteen eighty two's The
Speaker 1: Dark Crystal. Oh wow, yeah, So that voice you hear
Speaker 1: at the end, that's Joseph O'Connor. I had no idea,
Speaker 1: all right, So that's Professor Hendrix. And then there's this
Speaker 1: character Dorkin.
Speaker 3: Oh what a skiez.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Dorkan is played by Martin Benson, who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: eighteen through twenty ten. English character actor whose credits include
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six is the King and I, sixty three
Speaker 1: Is Cleopatra, sixty four is a Shot in the Dark
Speaker 1: sixty nine's Goldfinger. He plays one of the mobsters that
Speaker 1: the villain in that is involved in his scheme to
Speaker 1: radiate a bunch of gold.
Speaker 3: I believe he is the guy who objects to goldfingers
Speaker 3: plan and they're like, oh, oh, you know, that's fine,
Speaker 3: you don't have to be part of this. So they
Speaker 3: go put him in a car and then they put
Speaker 3: the car in a trash compactor. Classic.
Speaker 1: All right, then you got seventy six is the Omen
Speaker 1: seventy sevens Jesus of Nazareth in nineteen ninety nine's Angela's Ashes.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't think he was ever. He was
Speaker 1: very much a character actor, often like a little further
Speaker 1: down the listings, but had major roles in a number
Speaker 1: of big pictures.
Speaker 3: Dorkin is the greedy, unscrupulous circus proprietor in this film
Speaker 3: who exploits Gorgo for profit, and I think Benson does
Speaker 3: a great job with this role. He's like he's out Carnival,
Speaker 3: barking about how you know, oh, the Irish government may
Speaker 3: soon put a stop to what we're doing to Gorgo,
Speaker 3: so come and get your tickets now while there's still
Speaker 3: a chance.
Speaker 1: There's a window for Gorgo exploitation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here,
Speaker 1: but it is worth noting that in small uncredited roles
Speaker 1: we also have future UFO lead ed bishop who lived
Speaker 1: thirty two through two thousand and five, and then we
Speaker 1: also have Nigel Green, John Wood, Fred Wood. All three
Speaker 1: would later go would go on to be bigger name
Speaker 1: actors there and there. I wasn't able to spot most
Speaker 1: of them. I think I spotted one or both of
Speaker 1: the Woods. And then as far as the monsters go,
Speaker 1: there's a stunt man by the name of Dave Wilde
Speaker 1: inside the monster suit. I couldn't find out much about him,
Speaker 1: but I do like to acknowledge the person wearing the
Speaker 1: monster suit whenever possible. All right, now, behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: you actually have a number of notable names here. We'll
Speaker 1: try not to spend too much time on him here.
Speaker 1: But the cinematographer for this was Freddie Young, who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen oh two through nineteen ninety eight, British cinematographer best
Speaker 1: known for his Oscar winning work on David Lean's films
Speaker 1: Lawrence of Arabia from sixty two, Doctor Shivago from sixty
Speaker 1: five and Ryan's Daughter from nineteen seventy. So this is
Speaker 1: right before Lawrence of Arabia.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: He also worked on sixty seven's You Only Live Twice,
Speaker 1: seventy one's Nicholas and Alexandra and nineteen seventy two's The Asphix.
Speaker 3: Wow Freddy got around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, big name, big name. Yeah. Another one, Elliot Scott,
Speaker 1: was the art director on This So Lived nineteen fifteen
Speaker 1: through nineteen ninety three. He'd worked previously on nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: eight's Tom Thumb, which was a kind of a big
Speaker 1: special effects feature of the time period.
Speaker 3: I believe.
Speaker 1: He went on to work as art director on such
Speaker 1: films as sixty four's Children of the Damned, nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: No Blade of Grass, and he served as production designer
Speaker 1: on a ton of big films nineteen eighties The Water
Speaker 1: in the Woods, eighty one's Dragon Slayer, eighty three's The
Speaker 1: Pirates of Penzance, eighty four's Indiana Jones and The Temple
Speaker 1: of Doom eighty six is Labyrinth, eighty eights, who framed
Speaker 1: Roger Rabbit and nineteen eighty nine's Indiana Jones in the
Speaker 1: Last Crusade.
Speaker 3: Oh Jen, a lot of high profile work. Wow Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then we have Tom Howard Special Photographic Effects Live nineteen
Speaker 1: tenth through nineteen eighty five. He was a visual effects
Speaker 1: expert who worked on a number of award winning and
Speaker 1: legendary special effects film, including Tom Thumb nineteen sixty three's
Speaker 1: The Haunting and nineteen sixty eight two thousand and one
Speaker 1: A Space Odyssey. As we'll discuss, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of monster suit effects in this, a lot of like
Speaker 1: miniature set effects, but there's also a fair amount of
Speaker 1: chroma key replacement stuff, you know, like blue green screen
Speaker 1: type effects. I'm thinking of special early on in the
Speaker 1: film when when you know, however, two main characters out
Speaker 1: on the water about to go scuba diving, like clearly
Speaker 1: they did some combination of on location and sat with
Speaker 1: the ocean thrown in the background. And then finally the
Speaker 1: score is by and I may not be pronouncing this correctly.
Speaker 1: Angelo Francisco Lavagnino, who lived nineteen oh nine through nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven, an Italian composer whose other scores include nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five Lost Continent and a whole slew of Spaghetti
Speaker 1: westerns and Sword and Sandal epics. His score for Lost
Speaker 1: Continent was a winner at the Cans Film Festival. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's a fine sweeping orchestral score here.
Speaker 1: It fits the grandeur that is Gorgo. But that's about
Speaker 1: all I can say for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, sometimes it's funny because clearly something it's trying
Speaker 3: to do, especially at the beginning, is blend this thundering,
Speaker 3: you know, suite of monster horns with the lilting Irish
Speaker 3: folk melodies. And you know, I'd say it does that
Speaker 3: fairly successfully. Though it's a kind of amusing thing to hear.
Speaker 3: So I guess we're transitioning to the plot now. And
Speaker 3: the movie opens with that score that combines like the
Speaker 3: you know, the dramatic monster music with the Irish sounding
Speaker 3: folk melody, and that is playing while we see the
Speaker 3: titles and the title is there are such like block
Speaker 3: letters in the title here. I love the heaviness of it,
Speaker 3: like you can imagine the teams that built the pyramids
Speaker 3: putting together the Gorgo title.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, when they drop the title Gorgo here,
Speaker 1: it is like a thousand feet tall. It's like a
Speaker 1: biblical epic font. It looks like it should be comically
Speaker 1: Monty Python style crushing something. And then this alone was amazing.
Speaker 1: But then they kept using it like smaller of course,
Speaker 1: but they kept using it for the rest of the credits,
Speaker 1: and I loved it.
Speaker 3: Strong choice. So the action begins with a steamship out
Speaker 3: on the sea, and we see the men of the
Speaker 3: crew all looking out over the sea with concern. Something
Speaker 3: is troubling them, and then we see what they're looking at.
Speaker 3: Far out in the distance, there is a patch of
Speaker 3: ocean that appears to be at a rolling boil. It
Speaker 3: is this giant, white, frothy mass swirling around ominously, and
Speaker 3: soon a diver in scuba gear comes up to the
Speaker 3: ladder on the side of the ship. From the water
Speaker 3: and from the diver we learned that these are salvage operators,
Speaker 3: and while they're certainly worried about the boiling ocean, there
Speaker 3: is money to be made. A shipwreck worth a fortune
Speaker 3: is down below, so the dive continues until disaster strikes.
Speaker 3: The boiling region of the ocean suddenly irrupts. Something comes
Speaker 3: out of it looks kind of like a vult cannic
Speaker 3: mountaintop poking up out of the water, and the ship
Speaker 3: is rocked by brutal waves. It nearly turns over. We
Speaker 3: see cargo from the deck being washed overboard, sailors fighting
Speaker 3: to keep the vessel afloat, and the boat is nearly destroyed,
Speaker 3: and then we cut to the next morning. The violence
Speaker 3: has subsided, but the ship is very damaged. It's engine
Speaker 3: has taken on water. We see this giant propeller making
Speaker 3: a weak effort to spin, and here assessing the problem,
Speaker 3: we meet our two main characters. Actually I guess we
Speaker 3: met them before, but we sort of get to know them.
Speaker 3: So there is Captain Joe Ryan played by Bill Travers,
Speaker 3: and then there is the first mate, Sam Slade, played
Speaker 3: by William Sylvester. Now, honestly, the first time I watched this,
Speaker 3: though they don't look the same, I couldn't tell much
Speaker 3: of a difference between these two guys. I didn't really
Speaker 3: separate them. In my mind, they were just like the
Speaker 3: two salvage guys. Captain Joe is the taller guy, he's
Speaker 3: the guy wearing the captain's hat. But on rewad I
Speaker 3: could see more of the differences between their characters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this film doesn't set them up as being like
Speaker 1: an antagonistic to each other.
Speaker 3: Like.
Speaker 1: They clearly have a great working relationship and therefore they
Speaker 1: line up on a lot of things. You know, another
Speaker 1: film might have gone in a different direction where you
Speaker 1: know one of them's good, one of them's bad. You
Speaker 1: know one of them wants to cut corners and the
Speaker 1: other one is by the book and it's not really
Speaker 1: what we have.
Speaker 3: Here, certainly not in the beginning. They do have more
Speaker 3: differences later on in the film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you throw a giant monster into a relationship,
Speaker 1: even a working relationship, and it changes everything that's right.
Speaker 3: So Sam and Joe figured that the boat is going
Speaker 3: to take three or four days to repair, and they're
Speaker 3: out of fresh water, so they need to go ashore
Speaker 3: at the nearest port, which is on a small island
Speaker 3: where they're off the coast of Ireland by the way,
Speaker 3: but it's a small island called Nara, and so our
Speaker 3: salvage buddies take a dinghy into the port and along
Speaker 3: the way we see some kind of strange creatures that
Speaker 3: appear to be dead floating in the water. They're like
Speaker 3: weird float I mean, we see these models. At one point,
Speaker 3: Bill Travers like picks one up out of the water
Speaker 3: and holds it up for us to see. And they're
Speaker 3: like these rubber fish that I think have legs and
Speaker 3: they have things poking out of their eyes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, big rubber monster fish everywhere, like weird enough looking
Speaker 1: that you would have it seems like it would have
Speaker 1: been more alarming, But I guess yeah, they're just like, well,
Speaker 1: these are strange, not familiar with this species.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bill Travs says, never seen anything like that before,
Speaker 3: and then just throws it back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they pick one up, look at it, throw it
Speaker 1: back in.
Speaker 3: But I don't know, maybe when you're a salvage operator,
Speaker 3: you are just constantly seeing things like, oh, that's a
Speaker 3: weird thing from the ocean. Don't know what that is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, cryptozoology hadn't been invented yet, so you couldn't like
Speaker 1: take a picture of it and claim that it's a
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of fantastic creature. They're just like,
Speaker 1: well that's expected.
Speaker 3: Really, it's a chepiccopra, it's got to be. So. Yeah.
Speaker 3: They determined that the whole ocean floor must have been
Speaker 3: torn up by what appeared to be a volcanic coertion,
Speaker 3: the thing that damaged their boat. But they dock, they
Speaker 3: meet some local fishermen who are not very friendly and
Speaker 3: mostly don't speak English. They just kind of cuss them
Speaker 3: out in Gaelic, and eventually they come to a house
Speaker 3: where they meet a little boy who will become another
Speaker 3: one of the main characters of this movie. The boy
Speaker 3: is Sean. He is introduced as an orphan boy who
Speaker 3: assists the harbormaster mccarton. And you know what, I give
Speaker 3: credit to this child actor. He does a much better
Speaker 3: job than you might expect with his role. But also
Speaker 3: they have him dressed up in some funny clothes. When
Speaker 3: we were watching it, Rachel was observing that, like they
Speaker 3: just have Sean in these gigantic clothes, like he's wearing
Speaker 3: this huge sweater tucked into huge pants.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but yeah, he does become important. He's an
Speaker 1: important character, not just a one off. And as we
Speaker 1: kind of alluded to earlier, Yeah, this whole first act
Speaker 1: has kind of a full car vibe to it. A
Speaker 1: solid mysterious atmosphere is rolled out, and I'd say they
Speaker 1: also venture into sort of like soft lovecrafty and othering
Speaker 1: of the Irish here with this whole like, oh, they
Speaker 1: can't understand them. There's something creepy going on here in
Speaker 1: this this Irish village, which I mean, as we'll find out,
Speaker 1: nothing really that creepy is going on, but they kind
Speaker 1: of create this air of mystery.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, the way they're first introduced, you might expect
Speaker 3: that the like all the people on the island are
Speaker 3: part of a cult that worships Gorgo or something. That's
Speaker 3: not the case. They're like, they're just as baffled and
Speaker 3: terrified by Gorgo as anybody else, it seems. Yeah. But anyway,
Speaker 3: So Sean invites our heroes into the harbor Master's cabin
Speaker 3: and he informs them that macarton is not the harbor Master.
Speaker 3: Mccarton is not actually a local Sean says, instead a
Speaker 3: city man. He is a government man. Calls himself an archaeologist.
Speaker 3: So I was a little confused by this. Mccarton is
Speaker 3: simultaneous the harbormaster and a working archaeologist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like a lot of roles were combined
Speaker 1: into one. This was originally just gonna be the whole movie,
Speaker 1: his tinkering around in the small village.
Speaker 3: That's a good point. This in an earlier draft. I
Speaker 3: wonder if this was two different characters that were combined
Speaker 3: into one. Yeah, could have been anyway. Sean says he
Speaker 3: works for mcarton, quote, cleaning up the things he finds,
Speaker 3: and Seawan asks if they want to see these things
Speaker 3: that he cleans up for mcarton. Turns out mccarton is
Speaker 3: he's got like a back room where he is piling
Speaker 3: up a secret stash of priceless Viking artifacts left over
Speaker 3: from a great sea battle a thousand years ago when
Speaker 3: the Irish drove off the Vikings and sank their ships.
Speaker 3: And Sean says that apparently fighting in the Irish's corner
Speaker 3: was a sea spirit called Ogra, and he points up
Speaker 3: to a figure of like a dragon head that I
Speaker 3: guess is supposed to be a representation Ogra.
Speaker 1: It's a nice shot, I mean, in a way, it
Speaker 1: kind of reminds me of the early scenes in The
Speaker 1: Exorcist where we haven't seen anything demonic yet. We see
Speaker 1: that statue of the zoo Zu and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's ominous and really one of the creepier moments of
Speaker 1: a film that you know, in its later stages is
Speaker 1: less concerned with being subtly creepy and more in your face.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the dogs are fighting in the rubbisheep well while
Speaker 3: he's looking at the statue. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And in a similar way, this is a movie
Speaker 1: that is going to be very in your face later on.
Speaker 1: But at this point we haven't seen the monster and
Speaker 1: we just have this nice subtle idea, you know, the
Speaker 1: sort of the mythic potency of the idea.
Speaker 3: So just then in the artifact room, they are interrupted
Speaker 3: by mccarton, the city man. McCartin is borderline hostile from
Speaker 3: the get go. He seems to be wanting to protect
Speaker 3: his stash of Viking stuff, and he says, by orders
Speaker 3: of the local authorities, no ship is allowed to put
Speaker 3: into port at Nara for more than twenty four hours
Speaker 3: without a permit. So Joe and Sam plea for help.
Speaker 3: After all, he's like, you know, the ocean boiled, something
Speaker 3: wrecked our engine. But mccarton will not budge on this.
Speaker 3: He's like, I don't make the rules. It's never established
Speaker 3: who does make the rules. But they cannot come into
Speaker 3: port except to get some water and leave. So on
Speaker 3: the way back to their ship, Sam and Joe run
Speaker 3: into some local boats who at first cust them out
Speaker 3: in Gaelic and then report that they are waiting for
Speaker 3: some divers to come up. And when one of the
Speaker 3: divers does turn up, he is dead. At this so
Speaker 3: they pull him on board the boat, and Sam looks
Speaker 3: at the dead diver and concludes that he died of fright.
Speaker 3: And I always wonder how you can tell that in
Speaker 3: movies just by looking at people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, without like a Star Trek medical scanner device.
Speaker 1: Usually sometimes there's a vision that they make it abundantly clear,
Speaker 1: like suddenly the hair is turned white, or they're like
Speaker 1: severe distortions allah the ring. But for the most part
Speaker 1: in films like this, it's like, out, let's touch him
Speaker 1: on the neck. He's dead, Jim.
Speaker 3: So we get a diving scene next. Sam and Joe
Speaker 3: are on the case. They're trying to figure out what
Speaker 3: are they trying to figure out? I don't know. They
Speaker 3: go down to investigate, I think, what could have scared
Speaker 3: the diver that killed him.
Speaker 1: And they also are just suspicious. They're suspicious of this archaeologist.
Speaker 1: They're like, something is up, and we want to find
Speaker 1: out what is up and what he's up to. And
Speaker 1: that's why they're going freelance.
Speaker 3: Here, that's right. So they just they like scoop it down.
Speaker 3: And I really like in this scene that they just
Speaker 3: kind of see gorgo. He's just down there swimming around
Speaker 3: the water is murky, so you don't get a great
Speaker 3: look at him yet, but you just see this like
Speaker 3: lizard rat swimming through the water. And they come back up.
Speaker 3: They're sitting there in their scuba gear smoking cigarettes, and
Speaker 3: Joe says, what did you see, Sam? And Sam says,
Speaker 3: I don't know, but whatever it was and never want
Speaker 3: to see it again. Unfortunately you will in the next scene.
Speaker 3: So later on the salvage ship they're bringing aboard barrels.
Speaker 3: I think this is the fresh water they asked for,
Speaker 3: and Sean the child shows up on the boat. He
Speaker 3: says that mccarton wants to see them, uh, and then
Speaker 3: he also says that the permit is a heathen lie.
Speaker 3: I didn't know exactly what this meant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but Sean is ready to sell out his village
Speaker 1: to any outsider salvage crew that is just halfway nice
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's nothing so far to establish that Joe and
Speaker 3: Sam are nice people like they.
Speaker 1: They're like everybody's in the business of finding stuff lost
Speaker 1: on the seafloor and stealing it for your own purposes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's implied that that these guys are okay, whereas
Speaker 1: the archaeologist is clearly up to no good.
Speaker 3: He's a city man. Yeah. Yeah, Are Sam and Joe
Speaker 3: not citymen? What makes one a city man?
Speaker 1: I guess they're they're they're seenen. They're navy men.
Speaker 3: Right, Okay, Yeah, there are men of the salt. Yeah,
Speaker 3: of the salt in the wind. Okay. So the next
Speaker 3: thing that happens is the atmosphere gets pretty cool, like
Speaker 3: the locals appear to be preparing for something weird. I
Speaker 3: would say this scene like a cross between Jaws and
Speaker 3: The wicker Man. We see locals loading into boats rowboats
Speaker 3: with flaming torches and harpoons and one harpooneer spies something
Speaker 3: in the water and then lets his dart fly, and
Speaker 3: then we see gorgo. We see this head, this like
Speaker 3: rat lizard type head pop up out of the water
Speaker 3: with red eyes, with a with a harpoon I think,
Speaker 3: stuck in his eye. And Sean informs us that this
Speaker 3: is Ogre, this is the sea spirit. So then we
Speaker 3: get kind of a battle scene that is Ogre versus
Speaker 3: the boat Posse. And then after this, Ogre comes on
Speaker 3: shore and attacks the harbor. He's like stomping around smashing things,
Speaker 3: and mccarton seems to be in command of the locals.
Speaker 3: He's like he's like commanding a group of men with
Speaker 3: rifles who get into formation and shoot it Ogra. But
Speaker 3: does it do anything, of course, not.
Speaker 1: How did they control the monster in ancient times? I
Speaker 1: feel like like ultimately the the alluded to backstory is
Speaker 1: far more fascinating than anything we'd get into later on
Speaker 1: in the film, Like what was that encounter like between
Speaker 1: the Irish and their monster and the Viking invaders? Like
Speaker 1: I want to see that prequel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we never really learned any more about that, do we.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe they controlled the monster with the religion. That's
Speaker 1: that would make sense, That would be interesting.
Speaker 3: But I do like a lot of the way the
Speaker 3: scene looks like there are some shots of, you know,
Speaker 3: from a distance, of the monster, the monster sort of
Speaker 3: walking through the harbor, and then you see all the
Speaker 3: people running around with their fires and torches trying to
Speaker 3: stand off against him. It is a It's actually a
Speaker 3: surprisingly dark and cool looking scene. Yeah, I agree, But
Speaker 3: of course the locals are completely ineffective at repelling the creature.
Speaker 3: Their harpoons and bullets do nothing. But the outsider Sam
Speaker 3: and Joe they have an idea. They have the idea
Speaker 3: of throwing sticks at Gorgo. Technically, they throw flaming torches
Speaker 3: at Gore or Ogra, whatever the creature is called. At
Speaker 3: this point, I can't remember what we specified so far.
Speaker 3: So far, but to be clear, nobody in the movie
Speaker 3: has said the word Gorgo yet. That name will come later.
Speaker 3: So they throw some torches. Gorgo gets the torches stuck
Speaker 3: in his teeth. Then he squeals, walks backwards into the water,
Speaker 3: almost as if moving in reverse. I think this actually
Speaker 3: is a reverse shot, and then sinks back into the waves.
Speaker 1: So they drove him away.
Speaker 3: It worked, right, And after the attack the locals are
Speaker 3: mad at mccarton and I wasn't your wily Is Gorgo
Speaker 3: his fault? Don't see any reason to think.
Speaker 1: So now, I mean, I mean, we know the viewer
Speaker 1: knows that this probably has something to do with the
Speaker 1: volcanic activity, yeah, and that they're thinking, oh, it's because
Speaker 1: he's still in all that Viking gold. But that, I mean,
Speaker 1: did it unless you were going to make some sort
Speaker 1: of crazy hypothesis in which the theft of Viking gold
Speaker 1: from the seafloor caused some sort of volcanic reaction.
Speaker 3: There's no indication of that in the film or and
Speaker 3: also from what I can tell, no indication that Gorgo
Speaker 3: cares about the Viking artifacts or the gold anyway. So
Speaker 3: the locals are mad at mccarton. They start saying, hey,
Speaker 3: we want to leave with Sam and Joe on their
Speaker 3: salvage ship when it's repaired, but mccarton tries to talk
Speaker 3: them out of that, and eventually Sam and Joe retreat
Speaker 3: with mccarton into his harbormaster's shack to discuss a deal.
Speaker 3: They know that Macarton is secretly trying to protect the
Speaker 3: Viking treasure, which I guess he plans to keep for himself.
Speaker 3: He reveals that he has a safe full of what
Speaker 3: looked like Holy Grails.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, different Holy Grail prototypes in there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's got, like I can see at least fifteen
Speaker 3: Holy Grails in there. And Sam and Joe offer a trade.
Speaker 3: They say, if Macarton pays them off in some of
Speaker 3: the Viking gold, they will get rid of the monster
Speaker 3: for him. So they make a deal. So they leave,
Speaker 3: but then Sean the kid follows them and he does
Speaker 3: not like the idea of them catching Ogra. He catches
Speaker 3: up to them and he says, it's a bad thing.
Speaker 3: You're doing a terrible bad thing, mister Ryan, And then
Speaker 3: Joe Ryan kneels next to the kid. He says, why
Speaker 3: don't you call me Joe, and Sean says okay Joe,
Speaker 3: And Joe says okay Sean. End of conversation. So next
Speaker 3: time a child accuses you of doing evil, just remember
Speaker 3: you get on a first name basis. It'll totally distract them.
Speaker 1: But I love the set up here, Like we're really
Speaker 1: cooking with gas now. The idea is that these guys
Speaker 1: are going to catch the monster in order to make
Speaker 1: that sweet Viking gold, and so this is the challenge
Speaker 1: ahead of them. There's no indication that they actually have
Speaker 1: the ability to do this, but they're going to set
Speaker 1: out and try to do it anyway.
Speaker 3: That's right. Well, at first they're like, how would you
Speaker 3: even kill a creature like that? Maybe you'd use dynamite
Speaker 3: or something, But then they consider, actually, what is a
Speaker 3: creature like that worth alive? Maybe it's worth more alive.
Speaker 3: So from here move on to the bathistsphere scene. Though
Speaker 3: this bathistphere is not a sphere. It is not spherical.
Speaker 3: It's sort of the Bathist cylinder. And Joe gets into
Speaker 3: this metal contraption with some portholes on it that looks
Speaker 3: incredibly small inside, and I don't know, this is a
Speaker 3: cool scene concept though it doesn't look as amazing as
Speaker 3: I think it could have.
Speaker 1: Weldon points out that this section of the film is
Speaker 1: pretty much a direct remake of a scene in The
Speaker 1: Beast from twenty thousand Fathoms, and so I had to
Speaker 1: look it up because again I've only really seen the
Speaker 1: monster sequences from that movie. And indeed there's another Bathtisphere
Speaker 1: segment that you can watch. So they basically were like, well,
Speaker 1: that worked last time, let's do it again. But yeah,
Speaker 1: to your point, I think it works better in the
Speaker 1: mind that it does on screen, at least by modern standards.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe this was a lot more impressive
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 3: Also, the bathistphere in this movie is like a tartist
Speaker 3: and that it is much bigger on the inside then
Speaker 3: on the outside. We see Joe Ryan inside there, and
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's quite roomy actually on the inside though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially concerns how big this actor is again, yeah,
Speaker 1: he has he has so much room. And if you're
Speaker 1: curious about all this, we did some episodes of stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind back in the day about the
Speaker 1: Bathisphere and about the construction of it and the size
Speaker 1: of it, and some of the amazing observations that were
Speaker 1: made with it. It's an amazing story and I can
Speaker 1: totally understand wanting to capture that in the film, and
Speaker 1: I guess to a certain extent they do. Like I
Speaker 1: like the idea of of of the small capsule being
Speaker 1: lowered into this vast, unexplored world, like of that world
Speaker 1: as vast and as large scale as your giant monsters,
Speaker 1: though being very much an outsider in it, in this
Speaker 1: vulnerable little capsule.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, the thing to remember about the Bathisphere
Speaker 3: is that it has no propulsion of its own, so
Speaker 3: it's just dangling by this cable. So if it were
Speaker 3: to somehow that's it. You're not coming back up. Yeah. Well, anyway,
Speaker 3: so they send Joe down there and they make contact.
Speaker 3: There's a Gorgo attack. Gorgo attacks the Bathosphere and ooh,
Speaker 3: you hear these like tin can crunching sounds and you
Speaker 3: see water spraying on the inside. But there is not
Speaker 3: a catastrophic implosion. Joe is not killed. Instead, the ship
Speaker 3: successfully traps Gorgo in a net.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a lackluster finish to that though, because
Speaker 1: it's like the bathistphere. Oh, high technology, and then they
Speaker 1: just use a net just yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and then we get some news reports and
Speaker 3: I can't remember what we've said about this already, but
Speaker 3: from here on out the movie will become highly reliant
Speaker 3: on news reports for both plot exposition and for exploration
Speaker 3: of themes. Uh, we're just going to get reporters telling
Speaker 3: us what's going on and what it means, over and over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it basically goes all Santa Claus conquers the Martians
Speaker 1: for a bit here where it's yeah, a bunch of
Speaker 1: news expert interviews, and of course our all time favorite
Speaker 1: stock footage. So much stock footage, though at least this
Speaker 1: time around it's British military stock footage, which has, you know,
Speaker 1: a different texture to it compared to the like nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties US military stock footage that you see
Speaker 1: in so many films of that era.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we haven't gotten exactly to the point where stock
Speaker 3: footage becomes super prevalent yet. That'll come a little later
Speaker 3: into the second act. Right now, we're at the at
Speaker 3: the like peak newscaster stuff. So we get a newscast
Speaker 3: where this guy at a desk explains what's happening. He says,
Speaker 3: the headlines of the entire world are being monopolized by
Speaker 3: the news of the capture of a fantastic monster seemingly
Speaker 3: of prehistoric origin off the coast of Ireland. Puzzled scientists
Speaker 3: are already speculating that the monster may have been released
Speaker 3: from some vast suboceanic cavern far beneath Earth's crust by
Speaker 3: unprecedented volcanic eruptions which occurred in the last week. And
Speaker 3: then meanwhile, we also get this other guy who, like
Speaker 3: we cut to a different newscaster who says some scientific
Speaker 3: authorities are suggesting that the whole thing is merely an
Speaker 3: elaborate Irish hoax. Nevertheless, the Irish government are sending two
Speaker 3: of their top paleontologists to claim the creature for Ireland
Speaker 3: if it does exist.
Speaker 1: I also have to throw in here that, you know,
Speaker 1: I think all organisms are of prehistoric origin, if you
Speaker 1: want to be technical about it. So I don't really
Speaker 1: know what that means. What do you mean of prehistoric origin?
Speaker 1: I know, I know what they're getting at, but I'm
Speaker 1: just not sure it makes sense.
Speaker 3: You know, We've watched a lot of movies with plot
Speaker 3: exposition via like a newsdesk segment, and I feel like
Speaker 3: at some point we should go back and rank the
Speaker 3: newscaster segments. I want to say, these guys, they're no
Speaker 3: Dick Cutting. Now what was he that he was in
Speaker 3: a creature with the Adam brain right? He was, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: he's the Walter Krung kind of monster attacks. Always always
Speaker 3: Trustick Cutting. Let's see here. Oh yeah. Then we get
Speaker 3: the transport segment. So we see gorgo on the salvage ship.
Speaker 3: He's like tied up in ropes and nets. He's being
Speaker 3: taken somewhere. The scientists from Dublin who are mentioned in
Speaker 3: the news report, they arrive on the boat and they say,
Speaker 3: this animal is of enormous scientific value. You must take
Speaker 3: it to Dublin immediately, and its skin must be kept wet.
Speaker 3: But then, when the scientists are out of earshot Sam
Speaker 3: and Joe, one of them pulls out like a letter.
Speaker 3: They got, I think, which is a better offer. It
Speaker 3: is from Dorkin's circus in London, and they say that
Speaker 3: Dorkin is offering them thirty thousand against fifty percent of
Speaker 3: the gross So are these hardened mercenaries going to turn
Speaker 3: Gorgo over to the clutches of science for a pittance
Speaker 3: of compensation? Hell no, No, they're going to go They're
Speaker 3: going to send him to the circus of Dorkin. So
Speaker 3: they set the course for London. I think the scientists
Speaker 3: from Dublin are still on the ship as the ship
Speaker 3: is like departing, like going in the other direction to
Speaker 3: take the monster to London. So I assume they're protesting
Speaker 3: the entire time. Oh. Also, Sean comes along on the
Speaker 3: ship and I don't know why, but he's on the
Speaker 3: ship now. I think he has now just become the
Speaker 3: ward of Sam and Joe. And Sean comes to Oh
Speaker 3: he comes out in the middle of the night and
Speaker 3: talks to Gorgo. He's like, I came to let you
Speaker 3: go back to the sea, and tries to release him.
Speaker 3: But then Joe comes out and gets mad at Sean
Speaker 3: and he says, you, little nuthead, I have a gutton
Speaker 3: notion to toss you over the side.
Speaker 1: But we get a little bit of the natural affinity
Speaker 1: that a young child has for a giant monster. You know,
Speaker 1: this is of course something recently see especially in the
Speaker 1: Gamera movies. Camera is a friend to children.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's never established that Gorgo is a friend to
Speaker 3: all children. But Sean is like naturally drawn to Gorgo.
Speaker 3: There are scenes later where Gorgo spoiler Gorgo's mother is
Speaker 3: destroying London and Sean while all the crowds are running away,
Speaker 3: Sean runs.
Speaker 1: Toward kids get Kaijuk. They understand that's part of the connection.
Speaker 3: So anyway, Joe and Sam they put armed guards on Gorgo.
Speaker 3: They say, if that thing moves, start shooting. But why
Speaker 3: would they do that. Isn't like this thing being alive.
Speaker 3: Their meal ticket as so Gorgo, I think kills a
Speaker 3: guard in the middle of the night. And they also
Speaker 3: mentioned that Gorgo is dripping some kind of phosphorescent ooze
Speaker 3: into the water as they travel that won't come back.
Speaker 3: Later they arrive in London and we get a bunch
Speaker 3: of shots of London and some things that are interesting.
Speaker 3: Rob I included one screenshot for you to look at here,
Speaker 3: because what we're looking at is like in the background
Speaker 3: a real of the Thames with like the Tower Bridge
Speaker 3: in the background. But then in the foreground there is
Speaker 3: a it's supposed to be a tent like a circus
Speaker 3: tent that says Gorgo over the top of it, so
Speaker 3: now we're actually seeing the name, and then there are
Speaker 3: painted cutouts of people in front of the circus tent,
Speaker 3: so they're not actors. They're like stands of people. But
Speaker 3: it cuts away pretty quickly, so if you weren't able
Speaker 3: to pause, you might think they were really standing there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it gets just a quick mat painting here.
Speaker 3: It's not in there interesting. So there's some conflict here.
Speaker 3: When they arrive in London, the scientists from Dublin are
Speaker 3: mad that Sam and Joe have decided to sell the
Speaker 3: animal to Dorkin instead of handing it over for research,
Speaker 3: and they point out that it may be carrying unknown
Speaker 3: diseases or parasites. It hasn't been studied yet, but Dorkin
Speaker 3: has got that sweet cash for them. And Dorkin also
Speaker 3: makes assurances to the scientists. He's like, don't worry, you know,
Speaker 3: we'll We'll be giving you every opportunity to study the
Speaker 3: creature while it is held in a con creep pit
Speaker 3: for the gauking crowds I'm selling tickets to. And Dorkin
Speaker 3: is a real like pencil mustache, bow tie wearing money freak.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's very clear that he is a villain
Speaker 1: in this picture. We're not giving a lot of reason
Speaker 1: to sympathize with this case.
Speaker 3: Oh, and then we get the Gorgo in chains parade
Speaker 3: through London. I think this scene was amazing. So there
Speaker 3: is like this parade of trucks or lorries I guess
Speaker 3: that say Dorkins Circus and say Gorgo on them. And
Speaker 3: one of them is like a flatbed truck that has
Speaker 3: Gorgo on the trailer and he's like wrapped in a
Speaker 3: big tarp that says Gorgo, covered in chains, and it
Speaker 3: feels like it's like tied to Saint Dronicus, like marching
Speaker 3: into Rome with the Queen of the Goths in a cage.
Speaker 3: But it's all for Dorkin and and I guess it
Speaker 3: was Dorkin's idea to call the creature Gorgo because it's
Speaker 3: written on all of his circus stuff.
Speaker 1: Well he knows you got to brand it, so that
Speaker 1: makes sense. And yeah, this this whole sequence is pretty
Speaker 1: great because it's it's weird, and also you get lots
Speaker 1: of period shots of London. I really enjoy just seeing
Speaker 1: all of like the neon and the signage and so forth,
Speaker 1: So this is a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and these are real location shots, so they actually
Speaker 3: must have like driven a truck with a thing that
Speaker 3: said Gorgo on it in front of Buckingham Palace and
Speaker 3: stuff like that, and we get another newscast that's saying
Speaker 3: we bring you the in our most unusual telecast today,
Speaker 3: we bring you the arrival of Gorgo. This creature, which
Speaker 3: should have been extinct ten million years ago, is truly
Speaker 3: an awesome sight as it is transported through the streets
Speaker 3: of modern London on its way to Battersea Park and
Speaker 3: there's a big sign for Gordon's Gin in the background,
Speaker 3: so it's just ads all over the place and the
Speaker 3: newscast goes on. Of course, Londoners are notoriously skeptical, and
Speaker 3: a good many we've spoken to still seem to think
Speaker 3: it's some kind of circus stunt. The animal is real,
Speaker 3: take my word for it. And they go on to
Speaker 3: it to say, well, the streets have been cleared, but
Speaker 3: you know, rest assured there is no danger. The animal
Speaker 3: has been given a large dose of tranquilizer and actually
Speaker 3: being so close to this thing, I could do with
Speaker 3: a large dose of tranquilizer myself. But jokes aside, the
Speaker 3: animal has killed a number of persons already. Oh and finally,
Speaker 3: this is also the newscast where when the guy is saying, oh,
Speaker 3: we've arrived at Battersea Park where Gorgo as he is
Speaker 3: called we don't know why, will be exhibited to the public.
Speaker 3: And Gorgo is like you can just straight up see
Speaker 3: Gorgo on the back of the truck, like his eyes
Speaker 3: are open and they're glowing red, but he's all tied down,
Speaker 3: and Gorgo in captivity like this does look very pitiable,
Speaker 3: like they achieve in tugging on the heart strings, Like
Speaker 3: I'm already feeling bad for Gorgo and they haven't even
Speaker 3: really gotten to the part where you're supposed to feel
Speaker 3: super bad for him yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I can't help but feel as cool
Speaker 1: as these scenes are, Dorkin's kind of giving it away here,
Speaker 1: like everyone gets a free peak at Gorgo, and then
Speaker 1: he's gonna sell tickets to have Gorgo do more than
Speaker 1: just be present.
Speaker 3: I don't know that's a good point, yeah, Dorkin, you
Speaker 3: would think he'd be keeping more of a lid on it,
Speaker 3: or maybe just trying to give people the tiniest tease
Speaker 3: so that they will have to come pay for a ticket.
Speaker 3: But no, like you can see you can see Gorgo's
Speaker 3: face on the truck because.
Speaker 1: We know from King Kong that like a ticketed King
Speaker 1: Kong presentation consists of King Kong chained on stage and
Speaker 1: there's not much to it. I remember The Simpsons Treehouse
Speaker 1: of Horror has some jokes kind of alluding to this
Speaker 1: fact that, like, like, what was the rest of the
Speaker 1: show going to consist of? You just sit there looking
Speaker 1: at King Kong? But you know, what's the Gorgo show
Speaker 1: going to consist of? Is there an opening act? Is
Speaker 1: there some sort of a finale you're working towards. Is
Speaker 1: he going to do any trick or is he just
Speaker 1: going to be tied up more or less like he
Speaker 1: is in this whole sequence.
Speaker 3: He was supposed to read Gorgo then puppet show. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but so oh and we see so like for some reason,
Speaker 3: Sam and Joe are still involved, and they don't just
Speaker 3: like hand Gorgo off to Dorkin at the port and
Speaker 3: then take their money and go. They're like they seem
Speaker 3: to be Gorgo's full time caretakers.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, despite having no qualifications, no qualifications for this
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 3: Right, they're they're salvage divers. What what do they what
Speaker 3: do they know about Gorgo? But Joe, Joe Ryan still
Speaker 3: has his captain's hat on by the way, But there's
Speaker 3: like a Dorkin press conference, and this is the part
Speaker 3: where one of the reporters is like, you know, is
Speaker 3: it true that you stole this from the Irish government?
Speaker 3: And Dorkin is like, yeah, they may take it back soon.
Speaker 3: So you've got to get your tickets to see Gorgo
Speaker 3: today while it's still here. So yeah, like we said,
Speaker 3: Joe and Sam they're still in handling Gorgo and during
Speaker 3: transport they're trying to put it in its enclosure, and
Speaker 3: Gorko is awakened from his tranquilizer slumber by camera flashes
Speaker 3: of irresponsible reporters. That seems familiar. Was that in King Kong?
Speaker 3: I think maybe it was? And there is a brief
Speaker 3: Gorgo rampage at the circus where he is eventually driven back.
Speaker 3: He's driven into his concrete pit by men with flame throwers.
Speaker 3: There seems to be a theme that fires Gorgo's weakness,
Speaker 3: but Gorgo kills some people with his tail on the
Speaker 3: way back to his concrete pit, including a friend of
Speaker 3: Joe and Sam's named Mike, and Sam seems more disturbed
Speaker 3: by this than Joe does, but eventually they get Gorgo
Speaker 3: locked away and then we're just treated to some shots
Speaker 3: of like London having Gorgo fever. So there are double
Speaker 3: decker buses that all say Gorgo on the side of them.
Speaker 3: We see the I guess it's Piccadilly Circus maybe, or
Speaker 3: you know, some like streets of London where there are
Speaker 3: just Gorgo signs all over the place, next to big
Speaker 3: posters for Schwepes and Gordon's Gin and stuff. We see
Speaker 3: fireworks for Gorgo. There's cotton candy and rides at the circus,
Speaker 3: and Dorkin is out like barking in front of the
Speaker 3: circus entrance saying everyone in the world is talking about Gorgo,
Speaker 3: but only you can see him. Only five shillings ladies
Speaker 3: and gentlemen.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And they're you know, they're selling ice cream and stuff.
Speaker 3: And we see all of the British circus goers standing
Speaker 3: at the edge of this concrete pit where Gorgo is
Speaker 3: in chain, standing in like a puddle of water. They're
Speaker 3: all eating cotton candy and bananas and gaulking at this
Speaker 3: creature and just poor Gorgo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we you feel a lot of sympathy for
Speaker 1: the monster at this point, because yeah, he's just he's
Speaker 1: in this pit and people are gawking at him, and
Speaker 1: he does not belong here. Gorgo was born.
Speaker 3: Free exactly, and he's also he's supposed to be in
Speaker 3: the sea. This is a point that Sean makes multiple times.
Speaker 3: It's not just that he's in captivity, that's bad enough,
Speaker 3: but he's being kept on land and like hosed down
Speaker 3: with water. Gorgo is a sea creature. And we get
Speaker 3: a scene where we see how Sam and Joe are
Speaker 3: dealing with their success. Differently, Joe is like living it up.
Speaker 3: We see he's got like a nice new suit on
Speaker 3: and he seems to be flashing his wealth. And Sam, meanwhile,
Speaker 3: is shown apparently just like hiding in a trailer at
Speaker 3: the circus where perhaps Sean is living. Like Sean, the
Speaker 3: kid is seen sleeping there. Again, it's not exactly clear,
Speaker 3: but it almost suggests that like Sam and Joe have
Speaker 3: adopted Sean. Maybe I don't like they are taking care
Speaker 3: of him now. And Sam is seen drinking heavily and
Speaker 3: he says and like Joe comes in and says, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, how about coming out and having a few drinks,
Speaker 3: And Sam's like, I'm having a few drinks right now.
Speaker 3: Sam is clearly not happy with how things are going,
Speaker 3: and Joe is like, stop having feelings. Let's just take
Speaker 3: the money and you know, be happy. But Sam has
Speaker 3: a Sam has a bad premonition about everything. He's like,
Speaker 3: something bad's gonna happen. I can just feel it suddenly,
Speaker 3: And what do you know, it's it's prescient because they
Speaker 3: get a phone call and it's an urgent meeting with
Speaker 3: the scientists from Dublin and they're like, hey, we figured
Speaker 3: something out. The creature you captured is not an adult specimen. Yeah, whoops,
Speaker 3: not an adult specimen. And then Sam says, you mean
Speaker 3: it isn't fully grown. They say no, in fact, it's
Speaker 3: very early in infancy. And they're like, okay, well what
Speaker 3: would an adult look like? And then they open up
Speaker 3: this page where they just like put a finger down
Speaker 3: on this illustration of two gorgo skeletons that are exactly
Speaker 3: the same, but one is like ten times bigger than.
Speaker 1: The other, and it's you know, it's not quite an
Speaker 1: actual Gorgosaurus skeleton that they have illustrated here, but it
Speaker 1: is more in keeping with a realistic This may be
Speaker 1: another dinosaur species that they're just using the skeleton illustration from,
Speaker 1: but it is very hard to imagine the monster that
Speaker 1: we've seen having this skeleton at at the center of it.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of meat on those bones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're upset. They're like, wow, that would make
Speaker 3: the adult nearly two hundred feet tall. And the scientists
Speaker 3: are like, yep, so obviously we got to notify the authorities.
Speaker 3: And Joe responds by saying, what are you trying to
Speaker 3: do stir up a whole hornet's nest because of a
Speaker 3: few calculations on a piece of paper. Nuts to that,
Speaker 3: Nuts to that, I say. Then next we see Gorgo
Speaker 3: back in his enclosing. So he's in this concrete pit
Speaker 3: and it's surrounded by electric fencing, but we see Gorgo
Speaker 3: testing the fences for weaknesses systematically. He remembers Clever Girl exactly. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: back on Nara Island, remember Macarton, the corrupt archaeologist and
Speaker 3: harbor master. While we see him in his harbor master shack,
Speaker 3: just examining his precious Viking gold with a magnifying glass.
Speaker 3: I guess this is all he does in his free time.
Speaker 3: And he's sitting there and then suddenly a Gorgo like
Speaker 3: creature rises up out of the sea and attacks Nara
Speaker 3: and McMartin or mccarton is crushed, and so oh you
Speaker 3: know what's next. This is Gorgo's mom and the Gorgo
Speaker 3: matriarch is on the way to London.
Speaker 1: Oh man, he messed up.
Speaker 3: Now humans, So we see all the British radio operators,
Speaker 3: naval authorities, they're trying to make contact with Nara Island,
Speaker 3: but not a word from them. And then so the
Speaker 3: next thing is, let's see if we can use our
Speaker 3: precious national stock footage reserves to figure out what's going on.
Speaker 3: So we see lots of naval engagements, so stock footage
Speaker 3: of like battleships moving their guns around and firing into
Speaker 3: the water and chugging along, and then close ups of
Speaker 3: just admirals with binoculars looking out over the water. There
Speaker 3: is a naval engagement between a battleship and Gorgo's mother.
Speaker 3: Who do you think is going to prevail here?
Speaker 1: It's going to be the monster.
Speaker 3: But of course we see the authorities back in London
Speaker 3: making these gloating statements about how the creature was undoubtedly destroyed,
Speaker 3: you know, it could not possibly be a match for
Speaker 3: our navy. But then they get a phone call and
Speaker 3: we see this guy on the phone. He's like, oh
Speaker 3: really capsized. Oh't know. So they're getting the bad news
Speaker 3: and they figure out that the creature is Gorgo's mother,
Speaker 3: and it is on the way to London, following a
Speaker 3: trail left in the sea, the ooze that had been
Speaker 3: dripping off of Gorgo when they traveled by boat.
Speaker 1: M she's coming after him.
Speaker 3: So what are you going to do. We've got a bigger,
Speaker 3: you know, ten times bigger monster on the way. Sam
Speaker 3: has an idea, as Sam says, well, we got to
Speaker 3: turn Gorgo loose. We got to let him loose and
Speaker 3: send him back to the sea while we've still got
Speaker 3: a chance. But Dorkin and Joe do not want to
Speaker 3: lose out on their profits. Joe says, what's the matter
Speaker 3: with you? This is the twentieth century. There must be
Speaker 3: some way of handling an overgrown animal. And the admirals
Speaker 3: give assurances that there will be no problem stopping this creature.
Speaker 3: So like the authorities are like, no, no, no, don't
Speaker 3: release Gorgo. You keep making money at the circus. We
Speaker 3: will defeat the monster. And then later that night we
Speaker 3: see Sam. Sam gets drunk and tries to release Gorgo,
Speaker 3: and this leads to a fight with Joe, in which
Speaker 3: Sam is knocked unconscious and Gorgo is not released. Sean
Speaker 3: is just here like watching these adults fight. And then
Speaker 3: Gorgo's mother arrives, and from here until the end of
Speaker 3: the movie, it is just a long series of Mother
Speaker 3: Gorgo attacks Mother Gorgo versus more of the British Navy.
Speaker 3: They launch torpedoes, they bombard her with heavy guns, they
Speaker 3: drop depth charges, all to no effect. She penetrates the defense,
Speaker 3: swims up the estuary, up the river, and she's coming
Speaker 3: for Battersea Park. There's a scene where she's like coming
Speaker 3: up into the harbor. I guess this is on the
Speaker 3: river in London, and the military tries to stop her
Speaker 3: by dumping petrol in the river and setting it on fire,
Speaker 3: and she clearly doesn't like that, but she is not deterred,
Speaker 3: and Robbi caught a picture. There's one scene where it
Speaker 3: just cuts to these random onlookers who are like watching
Speaker 3: Mother Gorgo gets set on fire with these faces like wow,
Speaker 3: so cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we also get a burning man stunt in
Speaker 1: all of this, which was also quite terrifying.
Speaker 3: Oh is that wait, what do you have in mind?
Speaker 3: Somebody in the Gorgo suit or a human.
Speaker 1: Human at some point in all of this, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a some of the chaos kind of melts together
Speaker 1: in my mind. But I distinctly remember at least one
Speaker 1: shot of a man on fire.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, I don't recall that, but I believe you.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of effects back to back here,
Speaker 3: so they kind of like they wash over you. At
Speaker 3: some point, but we see the army and civil defense
Speaker 3: authorities making emergency announcements. They start clearing out the streets.
Speaker 3: They're running around on bullhorns saying don't panic, will be
Speaker 3: notified when the emergency is over. These shots of people
Speaker 3: running around, there are tanks in the streets. We see
Speaker 3: officials discuss the possibility of using atomic weapons, but they
Speaker 3: decide against it wisely.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And then we see Gorgo's mother just smashing landmarks, so
Speaker 3: she comes up on the tower bridge smashes it. At
Speaker 3: some point we get close ups on these British soldiers
Speaker 3: and I'm like, why do they look like they're they're
Speaker 3: outfitted to go fight in World War One?
Speaker 1: I assume this was the standard uniform of the day.
Speaker 1: Gorgo would get it, right.
Speaker 3: I believe it. Yeah, they it is surprisingly antiquated looking
Speaker 3: like uniforms and helmets. But maybe that that was the
Speaker 3: outfit in sixty one. Yeah, but you know, nothing stop
Speaker 3: in Mother Gorgo. So uh, as we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 3: the city smashing does go on for a long time
Speaker 3: and it gets somewhat tedious. I would say, Uh, this
Speaker 3: is I would say, kind of a low point for
Speaker 3: a lot of giant monster movies. And it's a tough
Speaker 3: balance because in way, the city smashing is what you're
Speaker 3: there for. That's a part of the part of the
Speaker 3: appeal of the movie. On the other hand, in a
Speaker 3: lot of these movies, there's just more of it than
Speaker 3: you actually need.
Speaker 1: Eyes are always bigger than your stomach. Yeah. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: looks great and they're like, oh wow, it's still it's
Speaker 1: still happenings, still going, but you know the really memorable
Speaker 1: moments of course, when the monster keys in on a
Speaker 1: particular landmark and we do get some of that action here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So this one has the same issue a
Speaker 3: lot of these movies do. The smashing I think goes
Speaker 3: on a little too long. There's a surplus of it.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, as we said earlier, it's
Speaker 3: superb model work. I love the way a lot of
Speaker 3: this looks. It's very tactle and pleasurable smashing to observe.
Speaker 3: At one point, I think, actually the army like accidentally
Speaker 3: shoots Big Ben or the clock tower. They like launch
Speaker 3: a missile through it, trying to hit mother Gorgo. So,
Speaker 3: you know, how do you think this is going to end? Well,
Speaker 3: power of tanks and guns and bombs stop Gorgo's mother,
Speaker 3: what do you think? No, So we see, you know,
Speaker 3: our characters running around trying to get out of Harm's way.
Speaker 3: At one point, Sean is like drawn to Gorgo's mother.
Speaker 3: He's like approaching her when everybody else is fleeing, and
Speaker 3: we see Joe have kind of a hero turn. Joe
Speaker 3: has been the selfish, the more selfish, greedy one in
Speaker 3: this act so far, but when Shawn is in Harm's way,
Speaker 3: Joe goes to rescue him and bring him out of
Speaker 3: harms way, and we see Joe and Sean they're chased
Speaker 3: into the underground and then the tunnels are collapsing and flooding,
Speaker 3: but they make it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this segment with in the tunnels I thought was
Speaker 1: very effective. Like in general, all of the monster destruction
Speaker 1: going on you know, even though, like you said, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of it, but we do cut to all
Speaker 1: of these scenes of the crowds in full panic mode
Speaker 1: and like the street level understanding of the destruction and
Speaker 1: then our character level understanding of the destruction, and that
Speaker 1: does make it feel a lot more real. And there's
Speaker 1: one segment in particular where Joe and Sean are just
Speaker 1: in there in the crowd crush. Everyone's just going down
Speaker 1: into the tunnels, into the subway tunnels there, and there's
Speaker 1: this terrifying scene where like they make it into the
Speaker 1: tunnels proper and behind them again crowds of people and
Speaker 1: then the steveln collapses like Gorgo just destroys all of
Speaker 1: them and like hundreds of people die. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it would seem to be the case anyway, and only
Speaker 1: Joe and Sean make it out. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that that was effective, Like that made me feel the
Speaker 1: chaos and the destruction of these sequences. So it's not
Speaker 1: just man in rubber suit fall on bridge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would emphasize that, like nothing this year does
Speaker 3: not look funny, Like this is a the way it's
Speaker 3: visually realized. These scenes are very like dark and grim.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So of course as the chaos is going on, we
Speaker 3: get a lot more radio reports, you know, like the
Speaker 3: radio reporter says, like Piccadilly the heart of London. Words
Speaker 3: can't describe it. There's been nothing like it, not even
Speaker 3: in the worst of the blitz. This section is a
Speaker 3: complete shambles, people running mad with fear, and we see
Speaker 3: on the street level there's like a there's an End
Speaker 3: Times profit who's wearing a sign that says repent the
Speaker 3: end is nigh. And we see the admirals and the
Speaker 3: Dublin scientists trying to come up with a plan to
Speaker 3: like electrocute Mother Gorgo. The admirals like how much voltage, well,
Speaker 3: we need and the Dublin scientist is like, h two
Speaker 3: to three million volts but that's only a guess. Yeah,
Speaker 3: then why do you even say it?
Speaker 2: It?
Speaker 1: Really they do a great job of making it feel
Speaker 1: rather hopeless because at this point there's just no real
Speaker 1: plan and it seems like nothing is going to stop
Speaker 1: the absolute destruction of the city unless they were maybe
Speaker 1: to do something like release Little Gorgo, which nobody is
Speaker 1: actually doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Sam suggested before this all started. Sam was right.
Speaker 3: Sam was right. Uh, so they've got this plan. You know,
Speaker 3: we get a lot of moralizing from the radio reporters
Speaker 3: talking about, you know, the whire all the electricity of
Speaker 3: London has been redirected to the wires, to this animal
Speaker 3: small enclosure. Will it be enough? Will it be enough
Speaker 3: to stop this huge beast? Where will the miracle be
Speaker 3: granted or will it be yet another of man's puny
Speaker 3: efforts to oppose this irresistible force of ancient nature.
Speaker 1: The miracle, the miracle of keeping this mother monster from
Speaker 1: her young And like in a way, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess it's it's a rather effective part of the film here,
Speaker 1: because it's like just do the the the like, like
Speaker 1: the answer is right there in front of you, Like
Speaker 1: why don't you do that? Release the monster? Why like
Speaker 1: this this desperate, uh you know, egotistical uh desire to
Speaker 1: defeat nature instead of like bending it least a little
Speaker 1: bit to it here and instead they're just going to
Speaker 1: invite absolute destruction.
Speaker 3: Rob you're not understanding. Dorkin would lose some money.
Speaker 1: I mean that's right because on top of the tickets,
Speaker 1: the concessions alone, like he was banking on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, all right, So in the end, Mother Gorgo.
Speaker 3: She makes it through. She rescues her baby, and Gorgo
Speaker 3: and Mother Gorgo they trek back out to the ocean.
Speaker 3: They get in the water and they start swimming away
Speaker 3: and get the more of the like crazy commentary from
Speaker 3: the radio reporter saying, we've prayed for a miracle. Maybe
Speaker 3: our prayers have been answered. It's this speech that goes
Speaker 3: on for a long time. He's saying. In the end,
Speaker 3: she turns with her young, leaving the prostrate city, leaving
Speaker 3: the haunts of man, and leaving Man himself to ponder
Speaker 3: the proud boast that he alone is lord of all creation.
Speaker 3: It is a very he tampered in God's domain kind
Speaker 3: of ending. Yeah, and then we in the end, actually
Speaker 3: they give the last word to Shan, the child who
Speaker 3: who's watching the creatures leave, and Sean says, you're going
Speaker 3: back now, back to the sea. And I do have
Speaker 3: to say in the final shot where they're showing Gorgo
Speaker 3: and Mother Gorgo going back into the water, they make
Speaker 3: little Gorgo look really tiny in comparison.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it kind of drives home the obscenity of
Speaker 1: the whole act of keeping this creature hostage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's the end of Gorgo, Pity the Monster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know it's reflecting back on it more here.
Speaker 1: I feel like it does have a strong message that
Speaker 1: it's trying to drive home and yeah you can't help.
Speaker 1: But wonder if this too might have had an impact
Speaker 1: on the Star. You know, this might have like laid
Speaker 1: some of the groundwork for Bill Traver's later involvement in
Speaker 1: animal rights activism. I mean, not officially, but maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit in addition to Born Free.
Speaker 3: So that's a final verdict. I think Gorgo is a
Speaker 3: tremendously enjoyable movie. It's, of course, as I said in
Speaker 3: the beginning, funny and very concept funny in some elements
Speaker 3: of execution, quite strong in other elements of execution. So
Speaker 3: I think it's a fairly good entry in the giant
Speaker 3: monster movie canon. You know, it's not quite your on
Speaker 3: the level of like your original Godzilla and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: but of the sort of mid level big monsters. It's
Speaker 3: one of the better ones. I think.
Speaker 1: Do you think they could come back and do a
Speaker 1: Shin Gorgo Gorgo movie inspired by Shin Godzilla.
Speaker 3: Where half of it is like the British Navy having
Speaker 3: meetings and then having meetings about other meetings that should
Speaker 3: be organized.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't get enough meetings in this film about
Speaker 1: relations with Ireland, about Gorgo rights, who has the rights
Speaker 1: to the monster, and the exporting of the monster and
Speaker 1: so forth. A lot that could be done there.
Speaker 3: For listeners who don't recall and the pat We're big
Speaker 3: fans of shin Godzilla. I haven't seen the more recent one,
Speaker 3: Godzilla Minus one, but I've been hearing very good things
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, same, same. So it's a reminder that even though
Speaker 1: the giant monster movie, you know, we think of it
Speaker 1: as being just very formulaic and if you've seen one,
Speaker 1: you've seen them all, and that everything that could be
Speaker 1: done has been done and the only upgrade you're going
Speaker 1: to get are going to be effects based, right, But
Speaker 1: it's not the case. Like clearly, there are still interesting
Speaker 1: stories to tell with giant monsters, and they keep coming,
Speaker 1: and I say that's wonderful. I'm all for it.
Speaker 3: Here here all right.
Speaker 1: We're going to go ahead and close the book on
Speaker 1: Gorgo here, but we'd love to hear from you if
Speaker 1: you have thoughts on Gorgo on other Kaiju movies that
Speaker 1: we mentioned in this episode, or once we didn't mention
Speaker 1: just what your favorites are. We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: We'll share the email address in just a moment here
Speaker 1: and you can write into us. Just a reminder to
Speaker 1: everyone that Stuff will Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 1: podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on
Speaker 1: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
Speaker 1: about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you
Speaker 1: want a list of all the movies we've covered so far,
Speaker 1: the best place to go is to head on over
Speaker 1: to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T E
Speaker 1: r bosd dot com. Our username is weird House, and
Speaker 1: we have a list of all the films we've covered,
Speaker 1: and sometimes there's a peek ahead at what's coming up next. Also,
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