Gorgo (1961)

Gorgo was one of a spate of British monster movies which appeared in the late fifties and early sixties, all clearly inspired by the success of Godzilla.  While undoubtedly better than cheapskate King Kong rip off Konga, I've always felt that Gorgo was inferior to 1959's Behemoth, The Sea Monster.  Not only did the latter boast a superior cast, including TV's most recent Quatermass, Andre Morrell, but it also boasted a stop motion animated monster, created, in part, by none other than Willis O'Brien, creator of King Kong.  It also had Eugene Lourie - who had directed the influential US monster movie The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms - as its co-director.  Yet Behemoth remains the lesser known film, perhaps because it is in colour, or perhaps because its monster seems too much like a generic dinosaur.  Instead, it is Gorgo which is now remembered as the British giant monster movie.

While Behemoth was clearly inspired by Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Gorgo was more obviously a Godzilla knock off, with its obvious man-in-a-rubber-suit monster smashing its way through a miniature version of London.  To be honest, these are the best scenes in the film, but you have towait a long time to get to them.  That said, I remember as a child, on my first viewing of the film, being deeply unimpressed by the monster costume.  Not only is it too obviously  man in a lizard suit, but it was poorly designed, with unblinking eyes and a mouth that moved only stiffly.  What did impress, though, were the large scale miniatures used to represent London.  They really are very well done and the destruction of landmarks like Big Ben and Tower Bridge remain impressive. But aside from these sequences, most of the action is conveyed using the usual badly matched stock footage of military ships and planes firing guns and torpedoes.  Moreover, the film is overly talky, full of poorly written dialogue and featuring unsympathetic leading characters.  To be fair, the plot does show some originality, with the first monster to be captured turning out to be merely a juvenile, with the gigantic mother Gorgo turning up to rescue him.  Aside from that, it is pretty standard stuff, albeit the novelty of featuring London rather than Tokyo being ravaged by a giant monster.