Gorgo [1961]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Have you ever thought to yourself that there really aren't enough "Godzilla" rip-offs in the world even with Japan making a new one pretty much every year since the 50s? Well, I've got a film for you then! It's a British production but trust me when I say that this does not make it any better than the numerous American faliures to adapt this same monster movie format. Can we, as a people, just stop? I mean, let Japan keep doing it over and over because they invented it but there is no reason to have this many prehistoric-dinosaurish-animal-attacks-city movies. The movie this week was selected by Paul, our special guest, and Keith had already seen it but he had been a child at the time and couldn't really remember it. We ended our evening by showing each other the weirdest music videos we know of which were more exciting than this film.

While fishing off the coast of Ireland, a bunch of dudes in a ship stumble upon a mysterious being in the water. They go to a tiny island nearby where they encounter a very questionable "scientist" and his orphened child slave who aggressively doesn't think they should try to catch the monster. They do and sell it into the circus in London where they name it Gorgo (I guess they didn't really consider that there's an "n" at the end of the Greek mythical being), parade it around the streets, and put it in a pit in the ground at Battersea Park so they can sell tickets to see it. The orphaned Irish child stowed away on the fishermen's ship and constantly looks sadly at Gorgo in confinement but doesn't ever actually mess things up even though we really thought he was going to. Everything is going okayish aside from the moral questions, until a scientist discovers that Gorgo is actually a small child and not a fully grown adult and that mommy is coming to collect. The end result is the destruction of London landmarks like Tower Bridge, Big Ben, and the entire West End because we built these models and Goddammit we're going to use them. People die. Beasts go home. Irish child still curiously homeless.

This movie was pretty generic overall. We had a couple laughs and actually found the special effects to be pretty good compared to a lot of the films we watch, but it wasn't strange or interesting enough to warrant much attention.

Quote:

"All hands on net!"

Spoon Rating: 3

Paul's Review:

"My emotions:

"