Gorgo (1961)

directed by Eugène Lourié

Ireland, UK, USA

78 minutes

3 stars out of 5

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I wasn't sure if I wanted to review this as part of KaiJune '23, because I am a little bit of a stickler about not calling just any old giant monster who isn't from Japanese media a "kaiju" as an English-speaking writer. I don't know what the general consensus is about that, but it strikes me as a little weird - sure, Gorgo is technically a kaiju, but by the same token I could say a horse is technically an "uma", or a crab is technically a "kani". But this did get a near-simultaneous release in Japan (a poster for your delectation), and Gorgo himself very much feels like part of the canon that includes other characters who can unequivocally be called kaiju, so I think he does qualify at least in an honorary sense. The first time I reviewed this I called it a "k-Eire-ju" movie. I'm sticking with that.

As has been noted, the plot of Gappa: The Triphibian Monster is pretty similar to the plot of this movie, with some differences. A small, fictional Irish island is devastated by a sudden storm at the same time as an underwater treasure hoard is discovered, and the continued searching for more treasure eventually brings divers into contact with a strange, prehistoric-looking animal: Gorgo. Just like how they comb the sea floor for treasure to be made into a profit, the two main characters quickly realize that they could make a lot of money off of exhibiting Gorgo and charging admission. He's captured, shipped off to London where he attracts massive crowds, and everybody is making money hand over fist - but at what cost, we wonder?

Like Gappa, this is a movie where all of the main characters are kind of terrible people. Gappa is different in that some of the characters are nice about it and we're not supposed to hate them, but all of the adults in Gorgo have nothing but money in mind. I guess not all of them, really; the two main guys are warned by everybody around them, who have a very sensible mindset of "What is wrong with you? You have no idea what this creature is and you just want to stick it in a cage and charge money for people to gawk at it?" And much like Gappa, the only person with any sense is a child, in this case a little boy with no parents who helps out an archaeologist living on the island (which, by the way, is called Nara, but, you know, not that Nara). I could have been missing something but I don't think the film's tagline - something to do with "Only a child knows his secret!!!" - is entirely accurate to what's shown in the film; the boy is clearly more savvy than everybody else, but I don't think he or anyone ever gives a clear-cut explanation of Gorgo's "secret" beyond just "it isn't right to be parading around an animal like this".

I'm really fond of the Gorgo and Ogra (Gorgo's helicopter mom) suits. Mick Dillon is listed as the suit actor for both of them, but evidently there may have been other suit actors who did not get credit: Wikizilla lists them as "likely" being David Wilding, Peter Brace and Peter Perkings. The creatures do have a very classic kaiju look about them: very reptilian, dinosaurian, big hands, big teeth, you know the deal. The elephant roar is reminiscent of Titanosaurus, but that would not come about until over a decade later. The miniatures are also nothing to sneeze at, and while very obvious to modern viewers, neither is the repeated use of optical effects to edit people into any given backdrop. It's a very well-made movie for its time.

Behind-the-scenes, a lot was apparently cut from this, and it sounds like it was mostly for the good. 78 minutes is a perfect running time for this and it allows for the philosophical aspects of the story (such as they are) to be focused on after we're introduced to Gorgo and his mom. There's an awkwardly shoehorned-in news reporter at the end of the film who kind of does some Takashi Shimura-ing, telling us what folly it is to believe we're the dominant species, warning us away from our disrespect of nature, etc. I think this would have been more potent if it had been a character we'd seen already doing this monologue instead of just a random guy, but it still mostly works. The destruction that Ogra visits upon London in search of her child is truly at a devastating scale - our newsman says that it's worse than it ever was during the Blitz, and the effects are remarkably good at conveying a city being almost completely torn to shreds. Like most kaiju, Ogra isn't deliberately killing people, she's just mad and looking for her kid, and her kid happens to be in the middle of an extremely populated area. And whose fault is that? Ours.

So it's easy to look at this as kind of a goofy artifact of the '60s, and in a lot of ways it really is, but it's not without its message, even if said message feels a little tacked-on. Notably, Lourié wasn't originally going to include the city destruction scenes, which provides for an interesting thought about what could have been: Would he have gone in an even more philosophical direction, dealing with what the two monsters represent in the imaginary instead of in physical space? Or would he have replaced the destruction with something worse, possibly a goofy romance subplot like a lot of mid-20th-century monster movies have? He did self-edit a version of this film in the 1980s to conform more closely to his original plan for it, but this was never shown to the public, so we will never know what it could have been like. Fortunately, though, the movie we do have is just fine by me.