Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: 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 me,
Speaker 3: certainly it is. And I wonder if you have the
Speaker 3: 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 2: Yeah. I'm not sure quite what it is, because you
Speaker 2: do find giant monster kaiju movies in various film cultures,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't feel inherently out of place in other
Speaker 2: film traditions. But yeah, there's something about the British setting
Speaker 2: and all the British actors. I don't know it. It
Speaker 2: makes it unique, and it does maybe make it a
Speaker 2: little 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 2: Yeah, I mean, it's the basic formula in play here.
Speaker 2: Don't go into Gorgo expecting something drastically different from any
Speaker 2: other giant monster movie that you've seen, but it is
Speaker 2: well executed. There are a lot of solid talents that
Speaker 2: were involved in making this film, and it does find
Speaker 2: some places to do things that, if not entirely unique,
Speaker 2: at least they come up with an interesting palette with
Speaker 2: 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 into the plot, but
Speaker 3: I think we should start off by exploring the question
Speaker 3: of what is Gorgo? Right? So, Godzilla is a giant
Speaker 3: bipedal reptile or lizard of some kind with atomic radiation
Speaker 3: breath who emerges from under the ocean. Gamera is a
Speaker 3: 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: toothy monster with a similar bipedal posture to Godzilla, who
Speaker 3: looks like a cross between a frilly eared lizard and
Speaker 3: a satanic rat with red glowing eyes. He comes out
Speaker 3: 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 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I would also add that he has pretty much
Speaker 2: has the body of a rock'm sockem robot, not in
Speaker 2: the sense that it's metallic, but in the basic posture
Speaker 2: and proportions. It looks like he's ready to throw some punches,
Speaker 2: and I guess ultimately does throw some punches at major
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, now, if there I had plenty of scenes later
Speaker 2: in the film to stare at this monster and try
Speaker 2: and cope with some headcanon for everything I'm seeing. And
Speaker 2: I will say the teeth. The more I looked at them,
Speaker 2: the more I started thinking, well, these are like filter
Speaker 2: feeding teeth, Like this is an aquatic organism that's had
Speaker 2: millions and millions of years to sort of evolve. Maybe
Speaker 2: it's a filter feeder. Maybe that's what those teeth are
Speaker 2: 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 brick
Speaker 3: souls or the beleen of a filter feeder. That's a
Speaker 3: good connection.
Speaker 2: Rob, thank you. But you know this is not the
Speaker 2: only the only connection between this monster and in the
Speaker 2: world of actual terrestrial biology, because the creature's name, Gorgo
Speaker 2: is allegedly based on an actual dinosaur, the Gorgosaurus.
Speaker 3: Now they don't say that in the movie. In the
Speaker 3: movie they later explained that it. Well, first, when we
Speaker 3: learned the name Gorgo, they literally say, we don't know
Speaker 3: why he's called that. But then the the scheming circus
Speaker 3: operator who is exploiting Gorgo for cash, he explains that
Speaker 3: he named the creature Gorgo after the gorgon Medusa. So
Speaker 3: there is a common connective thread that we could get into.
Speaker 3: But they don't say in the movie that it's named
Speaker 3: after this dinosaur.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this might have been something that was more
Speaker 2: of a stronger connection at some earlier phase of production.
Speaker 2: It could also be something that's been kind of added
Speaker 2: after the fact. But the truth is there is a gorgosaurus.
Speaker 2: The gorgosaurus was not named after this movie. This is
Speaker 2: the It literally means fierce lizard. This creature lived during
Speaker 2: the Late Cretaceous period eighty to seventy three million years
Speaker 2: ago in parts of what is now the United States
Speaker 2: and Canada, So you know, I guess its range wouldn't
Speaker 2: actually have extended over to the British Isles. But anyway,
Speaker 2: it was a large therapod and we have at least
Speaker 2: twelve complete or near complete skulls and various partial skeletons
Speaker 2: to go off of. It was a tyrannosaur, not as
Speaker 2: big as a t rex, but still quite impressive at
Speaker 2: eight to nine meters or twenty six to thirty feet
Speaker 2: in length. It was first described and named by Canadian
Speaker 2: paleontologist Lawrence Lamb that's not spelled like my name is
Speaker 2: Lambe in nineteen fourteen, and the Gorgo part of the
Speaker 2: name fierce is in fact related to the ancient Greek
Speaker 2: word gorgos, which means grim. Or dreadful reflected in the
Speaker 2: naming of 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 2: Yes, And you know, if this strikes a chord with
Speaker 2: anyone out there, you're like, where have I heard about
Speaker 2: gorgosaurus recently? Well, the gorgosaars actually just made the news
Speaker 2: last month. This was reported about in the New York
Speaker 2: Times under their Ancient Meat Reporting desk. This concerns a
Speaker 2: seventy five million year old Gorgosaurus fossil. It was discovered
Speaker 2: with fossilized stomach contents. This was the first, apparently for
Speaker 2: a tyrannosaur. It was a juvenile and the stomach contents
Speaker 2: were the hind limbs of two small feathered dinosaurs. According
Speaker 2: to Michael Greshkoh in his New York Times article covering
Speaker 2: a study authored by Francois Therein, the curator of Dinosaur
Speaker 2: paleo Ecology at the Royal Tyreel Museum in Alberta, they
Speaker 2: said that if it had grown to adulthood, it would
Speaker 2: have liked we moved on to much bigger prey. But
Speaker 2: as a smaller tritter, it was having to eat the
Speaker 2: legs of various bird creatures. So at any rate, gorgosar
Speaker 2: is still making the headlines at least, you know, as
Speaker 2: far as stories about ancient meat and an ancient chicken
Speaker 2: legs ghosts.
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: spindly creature 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 2: Right right, But before you gorgo fans look up this
Speaker 2: article and say this is not accurate, let me suggest
Speaker 2: that the gorgo that we see in this movie has
Speaker 2: again evolved for life in an aquatic setting over millions
Speaker 2: of years. So he has kind of like that whale
Speaker 2: body going on. Ah, So, if we're being generous, we
Speaker 2: might say, well it kind of makes sense.
Speaker 3: That's right, Yes, the gorgo's body has evolved for insulation purposes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so a little science there, but believe me, the
Speaker 2: science is not necessary for your appreciation and understanding of
Speaker 2: 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
Speaker 3: are I would say, first of all, Kaiju the destroyer.
Speaker 3: An example of this would be the original Godzilla. A
Speaker 3: giant beast arrives unexpectedly and brings ruined to humankind, and
Speaker 3: the monster must somehow be defeated or driven away. Second
Speaker 3: that category, I would call Kaiju the defender. Good examples
Speaker 3: here would be the later sequels involving almost any of
Speaker 3: the popular Kaiju monsters, monsters like Godzilla and GAMMERA. This
Speaker 3: is a variation that arises in which the giant monster
Speaker 3: that was once the destroyer must now defend us from
Speaker 3: a more horrible threat, usually either space aliens or a
Speaker 3: new giant monster that is meaner and more spiny. And
Speaker 3: I would argue that the emergence of Kaiju the Defender
Speaker 3: as a subgenre of giant monster movies is part of
Speaker 3: a broader trend that's not just in giant monster movies.
Speaker 3: But it's this trend where if you have a series
Speaker 3: of movies all about the same focal character, that character
Speaker 3: will almost always become more friendly and approachable over time,
Speaker 3: even if they began as a villain or an anti hero.
Speaker 3: So Gamera goes from being a terrifying pyro turtle on
Speaker 3: a rampage to the friend of all children. You can
Speaker 3: look 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 too 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 2: Yeah, it becomes more of like a pee wee herman
Speaker 2: kind of a character as opposed to just a nightmare
Speaker 2: monster 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 2: Yeah, and obviously there are numerous sub classifications that we
Speaker 2: could play out here, but well, one that comes to
Speaker 2: mind as well as essentially the ware Kaiju option. So
Speaker 2: not an amazing colossal situation where just a human gets
Speaker 2: big and then does big stuff, but a situation where
Speaker 2: a protagonist transforms into a giant monster that is distinct
Speaker 2: from just a giant human. The twenty sixteen film Colossal
Speaker 2: starring Anne Hathaway comes to mind that has a fun
Speaker 2: twist on this concept. And there's also nineteen sixty five's
Speaker 2: Frankenstein versus Beragon that involves something like this as well,
Speaker 2: with a small boy transforming into a giant Frankenstein's monster.
Speaker 3: MM. I don't think I've seen either of those. I
Speaker 3: certainly haven't seen the one with Anne Hathaway. Is Anne
Speaker 3: Hathway the one who transforms into a giant monster?
Speaker 2: Yes she is, or it's a spoilers If you haven't
Speaker 2: seen this, just skip like you know, a few minutes ahead.
Speaker 2: But the basic concept, if memory serves, is that she
Speaker 2: has a spells where she becomes the monster or controls
Speaker 2: the monster with her impulses, but is not conscious of
Speaker 2: the fact. So it's not a physical transformation. Uh, it's
Speaker 2: it's it's something else, it's it's it's a very fun film.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's it's a comedy, but it has a
Speaker 2: giant monster and it has a number of wonderful actors
Speaker 2: 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 subgenres?
Speaker 3: I would say Gorgo has elements of the first Kausu
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 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, like gloating egotistical naval commanders
Speaker 3: who think that launching, you know, some more bombs at
Speaker 3: them will finally solve the problem.
Speaker 2: Right right, It's ultimately going to be a draw, and
Speaker 2: you realize, well, we can't really oppose Gorgo anymore, we
Speaker 2: must form an alliance with Gorgo. Clearly, if they'd made
Speaker 2: more Gorgo movies, it would have been Gorgo protecting the
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, these covers are definitely worth looking up. I
Speaker 2: was surprised because I think I'd run across the idea
Speaker 2: before that there was some sort of a comic book adaptation,
Speaker 2: and that alone is not surprising. I was thinking, oh,
Speaker 2: it's a one off, you know, they did a comic
Speaker 2: book adaptation of the movie. But no, it's like it's
Speaker 2: a whole run with Gorgo fighting various threats, including communism
Speaker 2: and giant squidsed it, you know, it's that sort of thing,
Speaker 2: big furry monsters with horns on their head, cyclopses, you
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, yeah, And I assume this one is basically an
Speaker 2: adaptation of the picture, or you know, an abbreviation of
Speaker 2: it anyway.
Speaker 3: Right, But then by issue number three, we see a
Speaker 3: cover that is some kind of mad scientist trying to
Speaker 3: harness Gorgo's power. Gorgo looks different now by the way.
Speaker 3: He's kind he's got a different shape, and he's kind
Speaker 3: of bubbly all over in a lighter shade of like
Speaker 3: yellow green. But he's standing there and he's sort of
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like, clearly, Gorgo is a force of nature that
Speaker 2: is going to be potentially exploited by bad actors in
Speaker 2: the human realm, and therefore that the real villains are
Speaker 2: the mad scientists.
Speaker 3: That's right. So that's three. By issue number five we've
Speaker 3: got the tide Gorgo clashes with the sea beast, where
Speaker 3: he's just it's an it's a Kaiju meet slam. Now
Speaker 3: he's just wrestling with another giant monster. This looks like
Speaker 3: some kind of octopus inspired type creature, though. I have
Speaker 3: to say the illustration is funny because it looks like
Speaker 3: they're about to kiss. Doesn't it like Gorgo's even sort
Speaker 3: of holding the back of the octopus's head like he's
Speaker 3: gonna dip him for a kiss.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It says Gorgo clashes with the Sea Beast and the
Speaker 2: Unforgettable the day Manhattan died, which raises all sorts of questions.
Speaker 2: Why is Gorgo going over to Manhattan? Is like, is
Speaker 2: there like a Gorgo sharing program or treaty between the
Speaker 2: UK and the United States At this point, I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Oh, you know, they do invoke NATO later in the
Speaker 3: uh oh it's in the movie. Yeah, And then it
Speaker 3: goes on. So, like I included issue number ten, there's
Speaker 3: more fighting that looks kind of like kissing. This is
Speaker 3: where Gorgo is fighting the Venusian Terror. It says they
Speaker 3: came from an alien world bent on destroying Earth and
Speaker 3: it's an inhabitants. Could even the mighty Gorgo stop them?
Speaker 3: Don't miss the Venusian Terror? What is the Venusian Terror? Well,
Speaker 3: you see a couple of flying saucers in the background
Speaker 3: that almost kind of look like they have eyes, like
Speaker 3: they're kind of placid, smiley faces. But then the Venusian
Speaker 3: Monster is a cyclops being with a long yellow snake tongue,
Speaker 3: one big eye, and one big horn on the top
Speaker 3: of his head.
Speaker 2: Yep, and he's licking Gorgo in the face. It really
Speaker 2: seems like maybe this is a big misunderstanding. The Venusian
Speaker 2: Tear doesn't really want to hurt anyone. He just wants
Speaker 2: 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 uh together, we will destroy all imperialistic nations. UH
Speaker 3: and Gorgo, I guess, is gonna gonna prevent that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Gorgo's politics are fully explored in this this particular issue.
Speaker 3: I'm sure, yeah, but.
Speaker 2: All of that comes later. This movie is about then
Speaker 2: this would be my my elevator pitch. It's the British
Speaker 2: Isles versus giant monster, that is exactly it. All right, well,
Speaker 2: let's go ahead and have that trailer audio so everyone
Speaker 2: can hear some of the destruction that's coming their way.
Speaker 5: Foh, a picture of our time? How's ever unleashed? Shut
Speaker 5: spectacle of such scope? But realism? How's up from the
Speaker 5: depths of prehistoric mystery? Rages gorgo? The headlines of the
Speaker 5: world plays the fabulous star, this monster from another age
Speaker 5: can pull it drops up the mass subutionan cavern by
Speaker 5: unprecedented volcanic action, and the headlines screamed the story of
Speaker 5: the reckless skin divers who capture the monster and put
Speaker 5: it on exhibition.
Speaker 4: Sam hop their nets. You're doing they take it easy.
Speaker 4: I can't do. Then go back to see way belongs?
Speaker 4: Why maybe to see they're silly skins for you? Hoorray Gorgo.
Speaker 5: But the headlines do not record the story of the
Speaker 5: little boy who had a curious sympathy and understanding for
Speaker 5: the fantastic creature. What strange secret. Does he know that
Speaker 5: scientists only suspect you're.
Speaker 1: Trying to say, there may be a fully grown one
Speaker 1: of these things around somewhere, Hobbig.
Speaker 4: Would a full grown one be an approximate guess? The infant.
Speaker 5: The adult that'll make it eighty two hundred feet tall,
Speaker 5: wreaking terrible nance against the civilization that has captured its offspring,
Speaker 5: ring over the cities of the world, has millions flee.
Speaker 5: It's awesome, terry. Nothing can summit defying the porce of
Speaker 5: the army, the might of the navy.
Speaker 4: Man of Momotari, ready to or from Father file Man, even.
Speaker 5: The fury of the jets, and rising crescendial sights never
Speaker 5: before beheld by human eyes, and adventures never before experienced
Speaker 5: by any man or woman.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, if you want to go out and
Speaker 2: watch gorgo before proceeding with this episode. It is widely
Speaker 2: available in physical and digital formats and on multiple streaming platforms.
Speaker 2: You can even grab it on Blu Ray and again.
Speaker 2: The film was also covered by Mystery Science Theater three
Speaker 2: thousand in a nineteen ninety eight episode, and I think
Speaker 2: that's available in different formats as well. All Right, let's
Speaker 2: talk about the people behind this film, starting at the
Speaker 2: top with the director, Eugene Lourie born nineteen oh three
Speaker 2: died nineteen ninety one, Russian born French art director and
Speaker 2: ultimately director. His production design work goes back to the
Speaker 2: early nineteen thirties, but his first directorial credit was nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty three's The Beast from twenty thousand fathoms. This one,
Speaker 2: of course, has a an X ray Harry Housen lizard
Speaker 2: in it, giant lizard monster the terrorizes the city and
Speaker 2: in one memorable scene, eats a cop.
Speaker 3: Is this one attacking New York or somewhere else?
Speaker 2: I think it's New York. This is what I've never
Speaker 2: seen in full, but I've certainly seen the monster clips.
Speaker 2: Anytime you see Harry Howsen retrospective, you're going to see
Speaker 2: clips from this film for sure. And this movie was
Speaker 2: a hit. Seems to have cemented Laurie as a giant
Speaker 2: monster director, and he followed this up with nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: eight's The Colossus of New York. This is about a
Speaker 2: giant robot body that has a dead boy's brain in it.
Speaker 2: 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, it's 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 2: Then there's also nineteen fifty nine's The Giant Behemoth. This
Speaker 2: has another giant dinosaur in it, less memorable, not a
Speaker 2: rat Harry House in Creation. And then he also did
Speaker 2: an episode of the nineteen fifty nine TV series World
Speaker 2: of Giants. This was an incredible Shrinking Man inspired show.
Speaker 2: I couldn't find details on the specific episode he did
Speaker 2: and what kind of giant aka normal sized insect or
Speaker 2: what have you might have been featured in that episode. Now,
Speaker 2: Michael Weldon and his Psychotronic Movie Guides points out that
Speaker 2: the success of nineteen fifty threes Beast was actually an
Speaker 2: inspiration on fifty four's Godzilla, and I've read elsewhere that
Speaker 2: Godzilla was also inspired by the commercial success of a
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty two re release of nineteen thirty three's King Kong.
Speaker 2: So you can think of those two films as two
Speaker 2: primary predecessors to Godzilla, and therefore the vast world of
Speaker 2: Kaiju that we have before us. So that's the director.
Speaker 2: A couple of writers attached to this. There's Robert L.
Speaker 2: Richards who of nineteen oh nine through nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: American writer of mostly westerns. Another one of these individuals
Speaker 2: who lost their Hollywood career due to the blacklist during
Speaker 2: this time period. Daniel James as the other writer of
Speaker 2: nineteen eleven through nineteen eighty eight, also blacklisted from Hollywood
Speaker 2: for his political views. He worked as an uncredited writer
Speaker 2: on the Beast from twenty thousand Fathoms as well as
Speaker 2: The Giant Behemoth served as Early in his career, he
Speaker 2: had served as assistant director on the nineteen forty Charlie
Speaker 2: Chaplin movie The Great Dictator. All right, let's get into
Speaker 2: the cast. The towering lead man in this is Bill
Speaker 2: Travers playing the character Joe Ryan.
Speaker 3: There's really there are really sort of two leads in
Speaker 3: this movie. There's Sam and Joe the characters. And you know,
Speaker 3: one is Bill Travers and the other is William Sylvester.
Speaker 3: And I was thinking them as Bill trav and Bill sill.
Speaker 2: Well obviously for the lead. And I mean in terms
Speaker 2: of billing and in terms of height and maybe that's
Speaker 2: all they decided on it. Big Bill Travers is your
Speaker 2: lead here. He lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety four. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I looked it up. I was like, how tall was
Speaker 2: this guy? Apparently six six, so that's that's that's a
Speaker 2: big guy by most standards, and it's clear in the film,
Speaker 2: you know, this is this guy's he's almost as tall
Speaker 2: as Gorgo basically. But anyway, British leading man and animal
Speaker 2: rights activists who mostly worked in mainstream dramas, with this
Speaker 2: being I believe his only sci fi or horror film.
Speaker 2: Everything else is more, you know, traditional real world sort
Speaker 2: of stuff. His most famous and ultimately most influential film
Speaker 2: was nineteen sixty six Is Born Free. This was an
Speaker 2: adaptation of George and Joy Adamson's book about their experiences
Speaker 2: raising a lion cub in Kenya, and it led to
Speaker 2: a kind of spiritual follow up with the same stars
Speaker 2: called Ring of Bright Water in nineteen sixty nine. Bill
Speaker 2: Travers's wife, Virginia mckinnab born nineteen thirty one, was was
Speaker 2: his co star in both of those pictures, and their
Speaker 2: experience with the with the films, especially the first one,
Speaker 2: Born Free this open apparently opened up their eyes to
Speaker 2: various challenges concerning captive wild animals in the world, and
Speaker 2: they created the Born Free Foundation in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: which is still very active. It works to quote ensure
Speaker 2: that all wild animals, whether living in captivity or in
Speaker 2: the wild, are treated with compassion and respect and are
Speaker 2: able to live their lives according to their needs. And
Speaker 2: you can learn more about that organization at Bornfree dot
Speaker 2: 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 cited inspiration for this activism, But Gorgo
Speaker 3: also has themes of animal rights and captivity.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe it was there in the background, and
Speaker 2: maybe Gorgo is what pushed it over the edge, but no,
Speaker 2: they never mentioned Gorgo with It's not the Gorgo Foundation,
Speaker 2: it's the Born Free Foundation.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: I say this not to tarnish his acting or his
Speaker 3: activism by soiation, but there's kind of an elephant in
Speaker 3: the room with this guy, which I know of being
Speaker 3: brought up multiple times independently when talking about this movie
Speaker 3: with people, which is that in some shots he kind
Speaker 3: of looks like Steven Sagall here it helps that he's tall.
Speaker 3: Sometimes at like certain angles, he makes a kind of
Speaker 3: Stephen Sagall face. And there's also a kind of energy
Speaker 3: that I don't know if this exactly makes sense, rob
Speaker 3: but like the fact that he doesn't take off his
Speaker 3: captain's hat even when they come on board land that
Speaker 3: kind of has a sigall thing too.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, fair enough, fair enough. Now you mentioned
Speaker 2: that William Sylvester plays the other main character in the
Speaker 2: character Sam Slade, And this is a guy that I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people will recognize he was. He
Speaker 2: lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety five. His most
Speaker 2: recognizable role is that of doctor Haywood R. Floyd in
Speaker 2: Stanley Cooper It's nineteen sixty eight masterpiece two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: a 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 2: Yeah? Yeah, So it's you see him early in the film,
Speaker 2: and he is I mean not too early, because early
Speaker 2: enough you're only seeing hominids and tapers and so forth.
Speaker 2: But yeah, one of the first modern humans you encounter.
Speaker 2: And I don't know about anyone else, but like watching
Speaker 2: this film and recognizing him from two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: it kind of added a little extra class to this picture,
Speaker 2: you know, like like two thousand and one can't help
Speaker 2: but where it we could rub off on any other picture.
Speaker 2: You see some of the various actors from that film.
Speaker 3: Yet though, of course Gorgo did come first, so you
Speaker 3: could look at it as Bill silll bringing that class
Speaker 3: of Gorgo into the production of two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: Certainly, you certainly could, but you know, it wasn't all
Speaker 2: like generational, all time best sci fi films for William Sylvester.
Speaker 2: Other folks might recognize him from the TV series Gemini
Speaker 2: Man and the TV movie from seventy six as well
Speaker 2: writing with Death. This was pieced together from I think
Speaker 2: like a couple of episodes of Gemini Man and was
Speaker 2: featured on Mystery Science Theater three thousand.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I have vague memories of that one.
Speaker 2: His other credits include nineteen sixty four's Devil Doll, sixty
Speaker 2: five's Devils of Darkness, and he also pops up in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eights Heaven Can Wait.
Speaker 3: You know, there's only so much that is demanded of
Speaker 3: the actors in Gorgo, But I think I would say
Speaker 3: William Sylvester stands out in this movie as doing maybe
Speaker 3: the most with his role of anyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he gets the smoke a lot. Let just
Speaker 2: smoke 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.
Speaker 2: All right. A couple other characters of note. We have
Speaker 2: Professor Hendrix, played by Joseph o'connorteen ten through two thousand
Speaker 2: and one, Irish actor and playwright with extensive Shakespearean stage credits.
Speaker 2: His films include nineteen sixty four's The Gorgon, so it's
Speaker 2: in both Gorgo and The Gorgon. This is the Terence
Speaker 2: Fisher Hammer film, starring both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
Speaker 2: He was in nineteen sixty nine's And of the Thousand Days,
Speaker 2: ninety eight's Elizabeth, nineteen ninety nine's The Messenger And This
Speaker 2: is pretty cool too. He served as the narrator in
Speaker 2: the voice of the ERSKKX in nineteen eighty two's The
Speaker 2: Dark Crystal. Oh wow, yeah, So that voice you hear
Speaker 2: at the end, that's Joseph O'Connor.
Speaker 3: I had no idea.
Speaker 2: All right, So that's Professor Hendrix. And then there's this
Speaker 2: character Dorkin.
Speaker 3: Oh what a skiz?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Dorkan is played by Martin Benson, who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: eighteen through twenty ten. English character actor whose credits include
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty six Is the King and I sixty three's Cleopatra,
Speaker 2: sixty four is a Shot in the Dark, sixty nine's Goldfinger.
Speaker 2: He plays one of the mobsters that the villain in
Speaker 2: that is involved in his to 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.
Speaker 2: Classic. All right, then you got seventy six is the Omen,
Speaker 2: seventy sevens Jesus of Nazareth in nineteen ninety nine's Angela's Ashes.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I don't think he was ever. He was
Speaker 2: a very much a character actor, often like a little
Speaker 2: further down in the listings, but had major roles in
Speaker 2: a number 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
Speaker 3: Carnival barking about how you know, oh, we the Irish
Speaker 3: government may soon put a stop to what we're doing
Speaker 3: to Gorgo, so come and get your tickets now while
Speaker 3: there's still a chance.
Speaker 2: There's a window for Gorgo exploitation. Yeah, all right. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to go into a lot of d tail here,
Speaker 2: but it is worth noting that in small uncredited roles
Speaker 2: we also have future UFO lead Ed Bishop who lived
Speaker 2: thirty two through two thousand and five. And then we
Speaker 2: also have Nigel Green, John Wood, Fred Wood. All three
Speaker 2: would later go would go on to be bigger name
Speaker 2: actors there and there. I wasn't able to spot most
Speaker 2: of them. I think I spotted one or both of
Speaker 2: the Woods. And then as far as the monsters go,
Speaker 2: there's a stunt man by the name of Dave Wilding
Speaker 2: inside the monster suit. I couldn't find out much about him,
Speaker 2: but I do like to acknowledge the person wearing the
Speaker 2: monster suit whenever possible. All right, now, behind the scenes,
Speaker 2: you actually have a number of notable names here. We'll
Speaker 2: try not to spend too much time on him here.
Speaker 2: But the cinematographer for this was Freddie Young, who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen oh two through nineteen ninety eight, British cinematographer best
Speaker 2: known for his Oscar winning work on David Lean's films
Speaker 2: Lawrence of Arabia from sixty two, Doctor Shivago from sixty five,
Speaker 2: and Ryan's Daughter from nineteen seventy. This is right before
Speaker 2: Lawrence of Arabia.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: He also worked on sixty seven's You Only Lived Twice,
Speaker 2: seventy one's Nicholas and Alexandra, and nineteen seventy two's The
Speaker 2: Asphcs Wow.
Speaker 3: Freddy got around. Yeah, big name, big name. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Another one, Elliott Scott was the art director on this
Speaker 2: so of nineteen fifteen through nineteen ninety three. He'd worked
Speaker 2: previously on nineteen fifty eight's Tom Thumb, which was a
Speaker 2: kind of a big special effects feature of the time period.
Speaker 2: I believe he went on to work as art director
Speaker 2: on such films as sixty four's Children of the Damned,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies No Blade of Grass, and he served as
Speaker 2: production designer on a ton of big films nineteen eighties
Speaker 2: The Water in the Woods, eighty one's Dragon Slayer, eighty
Speaker 2: three's The Pirates of Penzance, eighty four's Indiana Jones, and
Speaker 2: The Temple of Doom eighty six is Labyrinth eighty eights,
Speaker 2: who framed Roger Rabbit and nineteen eighty nine's Indiana Jones
Speaker 2: in the Last Crusade, Oh Jam.
Speaker 3: A lot of high profile work. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Then we have Tom Howard Special Photographic Effects, lived
Speaker 2: nineteen ten through nineteen eighty five. It was a visual
Speaker 2: effects expert who worked on a number of award winning
Speaker 2: and legendary special effects film including Tom Thumb, nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: three's The Haunting and nineteen sixty eight two thousand and
Speaker 2: one A Space Odyssey. As we'll discuss, there are a
Speaker 2: lot of monster suit effects in this, a lot of
Speaker 2: like miniature set effects, but there's also a fair amount
Speaker 2: of chroma key replacement stuff, you know, like blue green
Speaker 2: screen type of effects. I'm thinking especially early on in
Speaker 2: the film when you know, however, two main characters out
Speaker 2: on the water about to go scuba diving, Like clearly
Speaker 2: they did some combination of on location and sat with
Speaker 2: the ocean thrown in the background. And then finally the
Speaker 2: score is by and I may not be pronouncing this correctly.
Speaker 2: Angelo Francisco Lavagnino, who lived nineteen oh nine through nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty seven, an Italian composer whose other scores include nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty five Lost Continent and a whole slew of Spaghetti
Speaker 2: Westerns and Sword and Sandal epic. His score for Lost
Speaker 2: Continent was a winner at the Cannes Film Festival. So
Speaker 2: you know, it's a it's a fine, sweeping orchestral score here.
Speaker 2: It fits the grandeur that is Gorgo. But that's about
Speaker 2: 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 that combines like
Speaker 3: the you know, the the dramatic monster music with the
Speaker 3: Irish sounding folk melody, and that is playing while we
Speaker 3: see the titles and the type is there are such
Speaker 3: like block letters in the title here. I love the
Speaker 3: heaviness of it, like you can imagine the teams that
Speaker 3: built the Pyramids putting together the Gorgo title.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, when they drop the title Gorgo here,
Speaker 2: it is like a thousand feet tall. It's like a
Speaker 2: biblical epic font. It looks like it should be comically
Speaker 2: Monty Python style crushing something.
Speaker 3: And then.
Speaker 2: This alone was amazing. But then they kept using it
Speaker 2: like smaller of course, but they kept using it for
Speaker 2: the rest of the credits, and I loved.
Speaker 3: It strong choice. So the action begins with a steamship
Speaker 3: out on the sea and we see the men of
Speaker 3: the crew all looking out over the sea with concern.
Speaker 3: Something is troubling them. And then we see what they're
Speaker 3: looking at. Far out in the distance, there is a
Speaker 3: patch of ocean that appears to be at a rolling boil.
Speaker 3: It is this giant, white, frothy mass swirling around ominously,
Speaker 3: and soon a diver in scuba gear comes up to
Speaker 3: the ladder on the side of the ship. From the
Speaker 3: water and from the diver, we learn that these are
Speaker 3: salvage operators, and while they're certainly worried about the boiling ocean,
Speaker 3: there is money to be made. A shipwreck worth a
Speaker 3: fortune 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 volcanic mountain
Speaker 3: top 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. Its 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. We sort of get to know them.
Speaker 3: So there is Captain Joe Ryan played by Bill Trevers,
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 but on rewatch
Speaker 3: I could see more of the differences between their characters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this film doesn't set them up as being like
Speaker 2: an antagonistic to each other. Like they clearly have a
Speaker 2: great working relationship, and therefore they line up on a
Speaker 2: lot of things. You know, another film might have gone
Speaker 2: in a different direction, where you know, one of them's good,
Speaker 2: one of them's bad. You know, one of them wants
Speaker 2: to cut corners and the other one is buy the book,
Speaker 2: and it's not really what we have.
Speaker 3: Here, certainly not in the beginning. They do have more
Speaker 3: differences later on in the film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you throw a giant monster into a relationship,
Speaker 2: even a working, reallytionship, 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 floating. 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 2: Yeah, big rubber monster fish everywhere, like weird enough looking
Speaker 2: that you would have it seems like it would have
Speaker 2: been more alarming, but I guess yeah, they're just like, well,
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, they pick one up, look at it, throw it
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, a cryptozoology hadn't been invented yet, so you couldn't
Speaker 2: like take a picture of it and claim that it's
Speaker 2: a you know, some sort of fantastic creature. They're just like, well,
Speaker 2: that's expected. Really, it's a chupacapra. It's got to be so.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: They determined that the whole ocean floor must have been
Speaker 3: torn up by what appeared to be a volcanic corruption,
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 shown in these gigantic clothes, like he's wearing
Speaker 3: this huge sweater tucked into huge pants.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, he does become important. He's an
Speaker 2: important character, not just a one off. And as we
Speaker 2: kind of alluded to earlier, Yeah, this whole first act
Speaker 2: has kind of a full car vibe to it. A
Speaker 2: solid mysterious atmosphere is rolled out, and i'd say they
Speaker 2: also venture into sort of like soft lovecrafty and othering
Speaker 2: of the Irish here with this whole like, oh, they
Speaker 2: can't understand them. There's something creepy going on here in
Speaker 2: this this Irish village, which I mean, as we'll find out,
Speaker 2: nothing really that creepy is going on, but they kind
Speaker 2: 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 no, Like, they're just as baffled
Speaker 3: and terrified by Gorgo as anybody else, it seems.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But anyway, so Sean invites our heroes into the harbor
Speaker 3: Master's cabin and he informs them that Macarton is not
Speaker 3: that the harbor Master mccarton is not actually a local
Speaker 3: Sean says, instead a city man, he is a government man,
Speaker 3: calls himself an archaeologist. So I was a little confused
Speaker 3: by this. Macarton is simultaneously the harbor master and a
Speaker 3: working archaeologist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like a lot of roles were combined
Speaker 2: into this was originally just going to be the whole
Speaker 2: movie is 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 mccarton, quote, cleaning up the things he finds,
Speaker 3: and Sean asks if they want to see these things
Speaker 3: that he cleans up for mccarton. It turns out McCartin
Speaker 3: is he's got like a back room where he is
Speaker 3: piling up a secret stash of priceless Viking artifacts left
Speaker 3: over from a great sea battle a thousand years ago
Speaker 3: when 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 Ogre, 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 of Ogra.
Speaker 2: It's a nice shock. I mean, in a way, it
Speaker 2: kind of reminds me of the early scenes in The
Speaker 2: Exorcist where we haven't seen anything demonic yet we see
Speaker 2: that statue of Bazoo Zoo and it's you know, it's
Speaker 2: ominous and really one of the creepier moments of a
Speaker 2: film that you know, in its later stages is less
Speaker 2: concerned with being subtly creepy and more in your face.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the dogs are fighting in the rubbish heep well
Speaker 3: while he's looking at the statue. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And in a similar way, this is a movie
Speaker 2: that is going to be very in your face later on,
Speaker 2: But at this point we haven't I've seen the monster,
Speaker 2: and we just have this nice subtle idea, you know,
Speaker 2: the 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. Mccarton 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 plead 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 cuss 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, so they pull
Speaker 3: him on board the and Sam looks at the dead
Speaker 3: diver and concludes that he died of fright. And I
Speaker 3: always wonder how you can tell that in movies just
Speaker 3: by looking at people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, without like a Star Trek medical scanner device.
Speaker 2: Usually sometimes there's a vision that they make it abundantly clear,
Speaker 2: like suddenly the hair is turned white, or they're like
Speaker 2: severe distortions allah the ring. But for the most part,
Speaker 2: in films like this, it's like I touch him on
Speaker 2: 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 2: And they also are just suspicious. They they're suspicious of
Speaker 2: this archaeologists. They're like, something is up, and we want
Speaker 2: to find out what is up and what he's up to,
Speaker 2: and that's why they're going freelance here.
Speaker 3: 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 swim 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, and then he
Speaker 3: also says that the permit is a heathen lie. I
Speaker 3: didn't know exactly what this meant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but Sean is ready to sell out his village
Speaker 2: to any outsider salvage crew that is just halfway nice
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's nothing so far to establish that Joe and
Speaker 3: Sam are nice people like they.
Speaker 2: They're like everybody's in the business of finding stuff lost
Speaker 2: on the seafloor and stealing it for your own purposes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but it's implied that these eyes are okay, whereas the
Speaker 2: 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 2: I guess they're they're they're semen.
Speaker 3: They're navy men, right, Okay, Yeah, there are men of
Speaker 3: the salt. Yeah, of the salt in the wind. Okay.
Speaker 3: So the next thing that happens is the atmosphere gets
Speaker 3: pretty cool, like the locals appear to be preparing for
Speaker 3: something weird. I would say this scene is like a
Speaker 3: cross between Jaws and The Wicker Man. We see locals
Speaker 3: loading into boats rowboats with flaming torches and harpoons and
Speaker 3: one harpooneer spies something in the water and then lets
Speaker 3: his dart fly, and then we see Gorgo. We see
Speaker 3: this head, this like rat lizard type head pop up
Speaker 3: out of the water with red eyes, with a with
Speaker 3: a harpoon I think stuck in his eye, and Sean
Speaker 3: informs us that this is Ogre, this is the sea spirit.
Speaker 3: So then we get kind of a battle scene that
Speaker 3: is Ogre versus the boat Posse. And then after this,
Speaker 3: Ogre comes on shore and attacks the harbor. He's like
Speaker 3: stomping around smashing things, and mccarton seems to be in
Speaker 3: command of the locals. He's like he's like commanding a
Speaker 3: group of men with rifles who get into formation and
Speaker 3: shoot at Ogra. But does it do anything, of course not.
Speaker 2: How did they control the monster in ancient times? I
Speaker 2: feel like like ultimately, the the the alluded to backstory
Speaker 2: is far more fascinating than anything we get into later
Speaker 2: on in the film, Like what was that encounter like
Speaker 2: between the Irish and their monster and the Viking invaders?
Speaker 2: Like I want to see that prequel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we never really learned any more about that, do we?
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe they controlled the monster with religion. That's that
Speaker 2: would that would make sense, That would be interesting.
Speaker 3: But I do like a lot of the way this
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. Is a It's actually a surprisingly
Speaker 3: dark and cool looking scene. Yeah, I agree, But of
Speaker 3: 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 Gorgo 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 2: 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 so?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, we know the viewer knows that
Speaker 2: this probably has something to do with the volcanic activity, yeah,
Speaker 2: and that they're thinking, oh, it's because he's still in
Speaker 2: all that Viking gold, but that, I mean, did it
Speaker 2: unless you're going to make some sort of crazy hypothesis
Speaker 2: in which the theft of Viking gold from the seafloor
Speaker 2: caused some sort of volcanic reaction.
Speaker 3: There's no indication of that in the film or and also,
Speaker 3: from what I can tell, no indication that Gorgo cares
Speaker 3: about the Viking artifacts or the gold anyway. So the
Speaker 3: locals are mad at mccarton. They start saying, hey, we
Speaker 3: want to leave with Sam and Joe on their salvage
Speaker 3: ship when it's repaired, but mccarton tries to talk them
Speaker 3: out of that, and eventually Sam and Joe retreat with
Speaker 3: mccarton into his harbor master's shack to discuss a deal.
Speaker 3: They know that mcarton is secretly trying to protect the
Speaker 3: Viking treasure which I guess he plans to keep for himself.
Speaker 3: That he has a safe full of what looked like
Speaker 3: Holy Grails.
Speaker 2: 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 mccarton 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 2: But I love the setup here, Like we're really cooking
Speaker 2: with gas now. The idea is that these guys are
Speaker 2: going to catch the monster in order to make that
Speaker 2: sweet Viking gold, and so this is the challenge ahead
Speaker 2: of them. There's no indication that they actually have the
Speaker 2: ability to do this, but they're going to set out
Speaker 2: 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 we move on to the Bathisphere scene.
Speaker 3: Though this bathisphere 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 2: Weldon points out that this section of the film is
Speaker 2: pretty much a direct remake of a scene in the
Speaker 2: Beast from twenty thousand fathoms, and so I had to
Speaker 2: look it up because again I've only really seen the
Speaker 2: monster sequences from that movie. And indeed there's another Bathisphere
Speaker 2: segment that you can watch. So they basically were like,
Speaker 2: well that worked last time. Let's do it again. But yeah,
Speaker 2: to your point, I think it works better in the
Speaker 2: mind that it does on screen, at least by modern standards.
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe this was a lot more impressive
Speaker 2: 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 than
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 2: Yeah, especially because that's how big this actor is. Again, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he has he has so much room. And if you're
Speaker 2: curious about all this, we did some episodes of stuff
Speaker 2: to blow your mind back in the day about the
Speaker 2: Bathistphere and about the construction of it and the size
Speaker 2: of it and some of the amazing observations that were
Speaker 2: made with it. It's an amazing story and I can
Speaker 2: totally understand wanting to capture that in the film, and
Speaker 2: I guess to a certain extent they do. Like I
Speaker 2: like the idea of the small capsule being lowered into
Speaker 2: this vast, unexplored world, like a that world is vast
Speaker 2: and as large scale as your giant monsters, though being
Speaker 2: very much an outsider in it. In this 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 drop that, that's it. You're not coming back up.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, anyway, so they send Joe down there, and they
Speaker 3: make contact. There's a Gorgo attack. Gorgo attacks the Bathisphere
Speaker 3: and oh you hear these like tin cam crunching sounds
Speaker 3: and you see water spraying on the inside, but there
Speaker 3: is not a catastrophic implosion. Joe is not killed. Instead,
Speaker 3: the ship successfully traps Gorgo in a net.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a lackluster finished to that though, because
Speaker 2: it's like the bathysphere, oh, high technology, and then they
Speaker 2: just use a net. Just yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And then we get some news reports and I can't
Speaker 3: remember what we've said about this already, but from here
Speaker 3: on out the movie will become highly reliant on news
Speaker 3: reports for both plot exposition and for exploration of themes.
Speaker 3: We're just going to get reporters telling us what's going
Speaker 3: on and what it means, over and over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it basically goes all Santa Claus conquers the Martians
Speaker 2: for a bit here where it's yeah, a bunch of newscasts,
Speaker 2: expert interviews, and of course our all time favorite stock footage.
Speaker 2: So much stock footage, though at least this time around
Speaker 2: it's British military stock footage, which has, you know, a
Speaker 2: different texture to it compared to the like nineteen fifties
Speaker 2: and sixties US military stock footage that you see in
Speaker 2: 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: And it's into the second act. Right now, we're at
Speaker 3: the at the like peak newscast stuff. So we get
Speaker 3: a newscast where this guy at a desk explains what's happening.
Speaker 3: He says, the headlines of the entire world are being
Speaker 3: monopolized by the news of the capture of a fantastic monster,
Speaker 3: seemingly of prehistoric origin off the coast of Ireland. Puzzled
Speaker 3: scientists are already speculating that the monster may have been
Speaker 3: released from some vast suboceanic cavern far beneath Earth's crust
Speaker 3: by unprecedented volcanic eruptions which occurred in the area last
Speaker 3: week and then meanwhile, we also get this other guy who,
Speaker 3: like we cut to a different newscaster who says some
Speaker 3: scientific authorities are suggesting that the whole thing is merely
Speaker 3: an elaborate Irish hoax. Nevertheless, the Irish government are sending
Speaker 3: two of their top paleontologists to claim the creature for
Speaker 3: Ireland if it does exist.
Speaker 2: I also have to throw in here that, you know,
Speaker 2: I think all organisms are of prehistoric origin, if you
Speaker 2: want to be technical about it. So I don't really
Speaker 2: know what that means. What do you mean of prehistoric origin?
Speaker 2: I know what they're getting at, but I'm just not
Speaker 2: 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'm want to say, these guys, they're no
Speaker 3: Dick Cutting.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: What was he that he was in a creature with
Speaker 3: the atom brain?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: He was? Yes, yeah, he's the Walter cronkind of monster attacks.
Speaker 3: Always always trust Dick Cutting. Let's see here. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Then we get the transport segments, so we see gorgo
Speaker 3: on the salvage ship, he's like tied up in ropes
Speaker 3: and nets. He's being taken somewhere. The scientists from Dublin
Speaker 3: who were mentioned in the news report, they arrive on
Speaker 3: the boat and they say, this animal is of enormous
Speaker 3: scientific value. You must take it to Dublin immediately, and
Speaker 3: its skin must be kept wet. But then, when the
Speaker 3: scientists are out of earshot Sam and Joe, one of
Speaker 3: them pulls out like a letter they got, I think,
Speaker 3: which is a better offer. It is from Dorkin's circus
Speaker 3: in London, and they say that Dorkin is offering them
Speaker 3: thirty thousand against fifty percent of the gross. So are
Speaker 3: these hardened mercenaries going to turn gorgo over to the
Speaker 3: clutches of science for a pittance of compensation. Hell no, no,
Speaker 3: they're gonna go. They're going to send him to the
Speaker 3: circus of Dorkin. So they set the course for London.
Speaker 3: I think the scientists from Dublin are still on the
Speaker 3: ship as the ship is like departing, like going in
Speaker 3: the other direction to take the monster to London. So
Speaker 3: I assume they're protesting the entire time. Oh also, Sean
Speaker 3: comes along on the ship and I don't know why,
Speaker 3: but he's on the ship now. I think he has
Speaker 3: now just become the ward of Sam and Joe and
Speaker 3: Sean comes to Oh. He comes out in the middle
Speaker 3: of the night and talks to Gorgo. He's like, I
Speaker 3: came to let you go back to the sea, and
Speaker 3: tries to release him. But then Joe comes out and
Speaker 3: gets mad at Sean and he says, you little nuthead,
Speaker 3: I have a gutton notion to toss you over the side.
Speaker 2: But we get a little bit of the natural affinity
Speaker 2: that a young child has for a giant monster. You know.
Speaker 2: This is of course something recently see especially in the
Speaker 2: Gamera and movies. Gamera is a friend to children.
Speaker 3: It's never established that Gorgo is a friend to all children,
Speaker 3: but Sean is like naturally drawn to Gorgo. There are
Speaker 3: scenes later where Gorgo spoiler Gorgo's mother is destroying London
Speaker 3: and Sean while all the crowds are running away, Sean
Speaker 3: runs toward.
Speaker 2: 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 a
Speaker 3: lot their meal ticket as so Gorgo I think kills
Speaker 3: a guard in the middle of the night. And they
Speaker 3: also mentioned that Gorgo is dripping some kind of phosphorescent
Speaker 3: ooze into the water as they travel that won't come
Speaker 3: back Later. They arrive in London and we get a
Speaker 3: bunch 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 shot of the Thames with like the Tower
Speaker 3: Bridge in the background. But then in the foreground there
Speaker 3: is a it's supposed to be a tent, like a
Speaker 3: circus tent that says Gorgo over the top of it,
Speaker 3: so now we're actually seeing the name. And then there
Speaker 3: are 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. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's just a quick mat painting here. It's not in
Speaker 3: there interesting. So there's some conflict here. When they arrive
Speaker 3: in London, the scientists from Dublin are mad that Sam
Speaker 3: and Joe have decided to sell the animal to Dorkin
Speaker 3: instead of handing it over for research, and they point
Speaker 3: out that it may be carrying unknown diseases or parasites.
Speaker 3: It hasn't been studied yet, but Dorkin has got that
Speaker 3: sweet cash for them. And Dorkin also makes assurances to
Speaker 3: the scientists. He's like, don't worry, you know, we'll we'll
Speaker 3: be giving you every opportunity to study the creature while
Speaker 3: it is held in a concrete pit for the gaulking
Speaker 3: crowds I'm selling tickets to. And Dorkin is a real
Speaker 3: like pencil mustache, bow tie wearing money freak.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very clear that he is a villain in
Speaker 2: this picture. We're not giving a lot of reason to
Speaker 2: 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 lories I guess
Speaker 3: that say dork In circus and say Gorgo on them.
Speaker 3: And one of them is like a flatbed truck that
Speaker 3: has Gorgo on the trailer and he's like wrapped in
Speaker 3: a big tarp that says Gorgo covered in chains, and
Speaker 3: it feels like it's like tied to Saint Dronicus, like
Speaker 3: marching into Rome with the Queen of the Goths in
Speaker 3: a cage. But it's all for Dorkin. And and I
Speaker 3: guess it was Dorkin's idea to call the creature Gorgo
Speaker 3: because it's written on all of his circus stuff.
Speaker 2: Well he knows you got to brand it, so that
Speaker 2: makes sense. And yeah, this this whole sequence is pretty
Speaker 2: great because it's it's it's weird h And also you
Speaker 2: get lots of period shots of London. I really enjoy
Speaker 2: just seeing all of like the neon and the signage
Speaker 2: and so forth. So this 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 the we get another news cast
Speaker 3: that's saying we bring you the u and our most
Speaker 3: unusual telecast today, we bring you the arrival of Gorgo.
Speaker 3: This creature, which should have been extinct ten million years ago,
Speaker 3: is truly an awesome sight as it is transported through
Speaker 3: the streets of modern London on its way to Battersea
Speaker 3: Park and there's a big sign for Gordon's Gin in
Speaker 3: the background, so it's just ads all over the place
Speaker 3: and the newscast goes on. Of course, Londoners are notoriously skeptical,
Speaker 3: and a good many we've spoken to still seem to
Speaker 3: think it's some kind of circus stunt. But the animal
Speaker 3: is real, take my word for it. And they go
Speaker 3: on to it to say, well, the streets have been cleared,
Speaker 3: but you know, rest assured there is no danger. The
Speaker 3: animal has been given a large dose of tranquilizer and
Speaker 3: actually being so close to this thing, I could do
Speaker 3: with a large dose of tranquilizer myself. But jokes aside,
Speaker 3: the animal has killed a number of persons already. Oh
Speaker 3: and finally, this is also the newscast where when the
Speaker 3: guy is saying, oh, we've arrived at Battersea Park where
Speaker 3: Gorgo as he called we don't know why, will be
Speaker 3: exhibited to the public, and Gorgo is like, you can
Speaker 3: just straight up see Gorgo on the back of the truck,
Speaker 3: like his eyes are open and they're glowing red, but
Speaker 3: he's all tied down, and Gorgo in captivity like this
Speaker 3: does look very pitiable, like they they achieve in tugging
Speaker 3: on the heart strings, Like I'm already feeling bad for
Speaker 3: Gorgo and they haven't even really gotten to the part
Speaker 3: where you're supposed to feel super bad for him.
Speaker 2: Yet you know, I can't help but feel as cool
Speaker 2: as these scenes are, Dorkin's kind of given it away here,
Speaker 2: like everyone gets a free peak at Gorgo and then
Speaker 2: he's gonna sell tickets to have Gorgo do more than
Speaker 2: 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 2: We know from King Kong that like a ticketed King
Speaker 2: Kong presentation consists of King Kong chained on stage and
Speaker 2: there's not much to it. I remember The Simpsons Tree
Speaker 2: House of Horror has some jokes kind of alluding to
Speaker 2: this fact that, like, like, what was the rest of
Speaker 2: the show going to consist of? You just sit there
Speaker 2: looking at King Kong? But you know, what's the Gorgo show?
Speaker 2: Going to consist of is there an opening act, is
Speaker 2: there some sort of a finale you're working towards. Is
Speaker 2: he going to do any tricks or is he just
Speaker 2: going to be tied up more or less like he
Speaker 2: 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 2: Now, yeah, despite having no qualifications, no call professions for
Speaker 2: this at all.
Speaker 3: Right, they're salvage divers. What they what do they know
Speaker 3: about Gorgo? But Joe Ryan still has his captain's hat on,
Speaker 3: by the way. But there's like a Dorkin press conference
Speaker 3: and this is the part where one of the reporters
Speaker 3: is like, you know, is it true that you stole
Speaker 3: this from the Irish government and Dorkin is like, yeah,
Speaker 3: they may take it back soon. So you've got to
Speaker 3: get your tickets to see Gorgo today while it's still here.
Speaker 3: So yeah, like we said, Joe and Sam, they're still
Speaker 3: involved in handling Gorgo, and during transport they're trying to
Speaker 3: put it in its enclosure, and Gorko is awakened from
Speaker 3: his tranquilizer slumber by camera flashes of irresponsible reporters. That
Speaker 3: seems familiar. Was that in King Kong? I think maybe
Speaker 3: it was? And there is a brief Gorgo rampage at
Speaker 3: the circus where he is eventually driven back. He's driven
Speaker 3: into his concrete pit by men with flame throwers. There
Speaker 3: seems to be a theme that fires Gorgo's weakness, but
Speaker 3: Gorgo kills some people with this tail on the way
Speaker 3: back to his concrete pit, including a friend of Joe
Speaker 3: and Sam's named Mike, and Sam seems more disturbed by
Speaker 3: this than Joe does. But eventually they get Gorgo locked away,
Speaker 3: and then we're just treated to some shots of like
Speaker 3: London having Gorgo fever. So there are double decker buses
Speaker 3: that all say Gorgo on the side of them. We
Speaker 3: see the I guess it's Piccadilly Circus maybe, or you know,
Speaker 3: some like streets of London where there are just Gorgo
Speaker 3: signs all over the place, next to big posters for
Speaker 3: schweps and Gordon's gin and stuff. We see fireworks for Gorgo.
Speaker 3: There's cotton candy and rides at the circus and Dorkin
Speaker 3: is out like barking in front of the circus entrance, saying,
Speaker 3: everyone in the world is talking about Gorgo, but only
Speaker 3: you can see him. Only five shillings ladies and gentlemen,
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 2: Yeah, yeah, you feel a lot of sympathy for the
Speaker 2: monster at this point, because yeah, he's just he's in
Speaker 2: this pit and people are gawking at him, and he
Speaker 2: 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 like they are taking care of him now.
Speaker 3: And Sam is seen drinking heavily and he says and
Speaker 3: like Joe comes in and says, hey, you know, how
Speaker 3: about coming out and having a few drinks, And Sam's like,
Speaker 3: I'm having a few drinks right now. Sam is clearly
Speaker 3: not happy with how things are going. And Joe is like,
Speaker 3: stop having feelings. Let's just take the money and you know,
Speaker 3: be happy. But Sam has a Sam has a bad
Speaker 3: premonition about everything. He's like, something bad's gonna happen. I
Speaker 3: can just feel it. And suddenly, and what do you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's prescient. Because they get a phone call and
Speaker 3: it's an urgent meeting with the scientists from Dublin and
Speaker 3: they're like, hey, we figured something out. The creature you
Speaker 3: captured is not an adult specimen. Yeah, whoops, not an
Speaker 3: adult specimen. And then Sam says, you mean it isn't
Speaker 3: fully grown. They say no, in fact, it's it's very
Speaker 3: early in infancy. They're like, okay, well, what would an
Speaker 3: adult look like? And then they open up this page
Speaker 3: where they just like put a finger down on this
Speaker 3: illustration of two gorgo skeletons that are exactly the same,
Speaker 3: but one is like ten times bigger than the other.
Speaker 2: And it's you know, it's not quite an actual Gorgosaurus
Speaker 2: skeleton that they have illustrated here, but it is more
Speaker 2: in keeping with a realistic This may be another dinosaur
Speaker 2: species that they're just using the skeleton illustration from, but
Speaker 2: it is very hard to imagine the monster that we've
Speaker 2: seen having this skeleton at the center of it. There's
Speaker 2: 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 do?
Speaker 3: Stir up a whole hornet's nest because of a few
Speaker 3: calculations on a piece of paper. Nuts to that, Nuts
Speaker 3: to that, I say. Then next we see Gorgo back
Speaker 3: in his enclosure. So he's 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 2: 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 2: Yeah, 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. O don't know. So they're getting the bad
Speaker 3: news and they figure out that the creature is Gorgo's
Speaker 3: mother and it is on the way to London following
Speaker 3: a trail left in the sea, the ooze that had
Speaker 3: been dripping off of Gorgo. They traveled by boat.
Speaker 2: M She's coming after him.
Speaker 3: So what are you gonna 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: don't release Gorgo. You keep making money at the circus.
Speaker 3: We will defeat the monster. And then later that night
Speaker 3: we see Sam. Sam like gets drunk and tries to
Speaker 3: release Gorgo and this leads to a fight with Joe
Speaker 3: in which Sam is knocked unconscious and Gorgo is not released.
Speaker 3: Sean is just here like watching these adults fight. And
Speaker 3: then Gorgo's mother arrives, and from here until the end
Speaker 3: of the movie, it is just a long series of
Speaker 3: Mother Gorgo attacks Mother Gorgo versus more of the British Navy.
Speaker 3: They launched 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 2: Yeah, And we also get a burning man stunt in
Speaker 2: 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 2: Human at some point in all of this. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's a some of the chaos kind of melts together
Speaker 2: in my mind, but I distinctly remember at least one
Speaker 2: 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 bullhorn saying don't panic, you will
Speaker 3: be notified when the emergency is over. These shots of
Speaker 3: people running around, there are tanks in the streets. We
Speaker 3: see officials discuss the possibility of using atomic weapons, but
Speaker 3: they decide against it wisely. And then we see Gorgo's
Speaker 3: mother just smashing landmarks. So she comes up on the
Speaker 3: tower bridge smashes it. At some point we get close
Speaker 3: ups on these British soldiers and I'm like, why do
Speaker 3: they look like they're outfitted to go fight in World
Speaker 3: War One?
Speaker 2: I assume this was the standard uniform of the day.
Speaker 2: 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 nothing
Speaker 3: stopping mother Gorgo. So, 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 this is
Speaker 3: I would say, kind of a low point for a
Speaker 3: lot of giant monster movies, and it's a tough balance,
Speaker 3: because in a 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 2: His eyes are always bigger than your stomach. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: this looks great, and they're like, oh wow, it's still
Speaker 2: it's still happenings, still going. But you know that the
Speaker 2: really memorable moments are, of course, when the monster keys
Speaker 2: in on a particular landmark and we do get some
Speaker 2: 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: the 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 Sean is in Harm's way,
Speaker 3: Joe goes to rescue him and bring him out of
Speaker 3: Harm's 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 2: Yeah, this segment with in the tunnels I thought was
Speaker 2: very effective, like in general, all of the monster destruction
Speaker 2: going on, even though, like you said, there is a
Speaker 2: lot of it, but we do cut to all of
Speaker 2: these scenes of the crowds in full panic mode and
Speaker 2: like the street level understanding of the destruction and then
Speaker 2: our character level understanding of the destruction, and that does
Speaker 2: make it feel a lot more real. And there's one
Speaker 2: segment in particular where Joe and Sean are just in
Speaker 2: there in the crowd crush. Everyone's just going down into
Speaker 2: the tunnels, into the subway tunnels there, and there's this
Speaker 2: terrifying scene where like they make it into the tunnels
Speaker 2: proper and behind them again crowds of people and then
Speaker 2: the ceiling collapses like gorgo just destroys all of them
Speaker 2: and like hundreds of people die. It's you know, the
Speaker 2: it would seem to be the case anyway, and only
Speaker 2: Joe and Sean make it out, And I was like,
Speaker 2: well that that was effective, Like that made me feel
Speaker 2: the chaos and the destruction of these sequences. So it's
Speaker 2: not 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. 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
Speaker 3: will we need and the Dublin scientist is like, uh,
Speaker 3: two to three million volts but that's only a guess. Yeah,
Speaker 3: then why do you even say it?
Speaker 2: And it really they do a great job of making
Speaker 2: it feel rather hopeless because at this point there's just
Speaker 2: no real plan. Uh, and it seems like nothing is
Speaker 2: going to stop the absolute destruction of the city unless
Speaker 2: they were maybe to do something like release little Gorgo,
Speaker 2: which nobody is actually doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like 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 wire 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 2: Probably the male, the miracle of keeping this mother monster
Speaker 2: from her young Yeah, and like in a way, I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess it's it's a rather effective part of the
Speaker 2: film here, because it's like just do the the the
Speaker 2: answer is right there in front of you, Like, why
Speaker 2: don't you do that? Release the monster? Why like this
Speaker 2: this desperate, uh you know, egotistical desire to defeat nature
Speaker 2: instead of like bending at least a little bit to
Speaker 2: it here, and instead they're just going to invite absolute destruction.
Speaker 3: Rob You're you're not understanding. Dorkin would lose some money.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's right, because on top of the tickets,
Speaker 2: 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 we get the more of the like crazy commentary
Speaker 3: from the radio reporter saying we've prayed for a miracle.
Speaker 3: Maybe our prayers have been answered. It's this speech that
Speaker 3: goes on for a long time. He's saying in the
Speaker 3: end she turns with her young, leaving the prostrate city,
Speaker 3: leaving the haunts of Man, and leaving Man himself to
Speaker 3: ponder the proud boast that he alone is lord of
Speaker 3: all creation. It is a very he tampered in God's
Speaker 3: domain kind of ending.
Speaker 4: Yea.
Speaker 3: And then we see in the end, actually they give
Speaker 3: the last word to Sean, the child who who's watching
Speaker 3: the creatures leave, and Sean says, you're going back now,
Speaker 3: back to the sea. And I do have to say
Speaker 3: in the final shot where they're showing Gorgo and mother
Speaker 3: Gorgo going back into the water, they make little Gorgo
Speaker 3: look really tiny in comparison.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of drives home the obscenity of the
Speaker 2: whole act of keeping this creature hostage.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So that's the end of Gorgo Pity the Monster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, it's reflecting back on it more here.
Speaker 2: I feel like it. It does have a strong message
Speaker 2: that it's trying to drive home. And yeah, you can't
Speaker 2: help but wonder if this too might have had an
Speaker 2: impact on the Star. You know, this might have like
Speaker 2: laid some of the groundwork for Bill Traver's later involvement
Speaker 2: in Animal rights activism. I mean, not officially, but but
Speaker 2: maybe a 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 Cannon. 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: it's one of the better ones. I think.
Speaker 2: Do you think they could come back and do a
Speaker 2: Shin Gorgo Gorgo movie inspired by Shin Godzilla.
Speaker 3: That where half of it is like the British Navy
Speaker 3: having meetings and then having meetings about other meetings that
Speaker 3: should be organized.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we didn't get enough meetings in this film about
Speaker 2: relations with Ireland, about about Gorgo rights, who has the
Speaker 2: rights to the monster, and the exporting of the monster
Speaker 2: and 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 2: Yeah, same, same. So it's a reminder that even though
Speaker 2: the giant monster movie, you know, we think of it
Speaker 2: as being just very formulaic, and if you've seen one,
Speaker 2: you've seen them all, and that everything that could be
Speaker 2: done has been done and the only upgrade you're going
Speaker 2: to get are going to be effects based, right, But
Speaker 2: it's not the case. Like clearly, there are still interesting
Speaker 2: stories to tell with giant monsters, and they keep coming,
Speaker 2: and I say that's wonderful. I'm all for it.
Speaker 3: Here here all.
Speaker 2: Right, we're going to go ahead and close the book
Speaker 2: on Gorgo here, but we'd love to hear from you
Speaker 2: if you have thoughts on Gorgo, on other Kaiju movies
Speaker 2: that we mentioned in this episode, or once we didn't mention,
Speaker 2: just what your favorites are. We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 2: We'll share the email address in just a moment here
Speaker 2: and you can write into us. Just a reminder to
Speaker 2: everyone that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 2: science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but
Speaker 2: on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just
Speaker 2: talk about a weird film on weird House Cinema. If
Speaker 2: you want a list of all the movies we've covered
Speaker 2: so far, the best place to go is to head
Speaker 2: on over to letterboxed dot com. That's l E T
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Speaker 2: House and we have a list of all the films
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