The Mighty Gorga (1969)

I have to admit that David L Hewitt's The Mighty Gorga (1969) is nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be.  There, I've said it, something I thought I'd never say.  I've seem several of Hewlitt's other films, which vary between the tedious (The Lucifer Complex, which, to be fair, he never actually finished - the footage was bought by another producer who pieced it together using a framing story of newly shot (not mention dull) footage) and the simply cheap and derivative (Wizard of Mars).  While The Mighty Gorga might be derivative, it is never entirely dull.  Which, of course, isn't to say that Heweit's micro-budgeted King Kong knock off is actually good, but by the standards of Z-grade movies it is surprisingly decently made - shots are competently framed, scenes mostly edited reasonably effectively, sound quality is good and some of the cast give passable performances.  As with all of Hewitt's project's, its ambition is far in excess of his available resources.  From the outset, it makes claims above its station, with the titles boldly proclaiming that it was shot on location in the 'USA, Africa and Jingleland'.  Well, if there is an 'Africa, Illinois', then perhaps it was partly shot in Africa, but it certainly wasn't shot in Africa, Africa.  (Also, 'Jungleland' turns out to be the California theme park where many jungle-set movies and TV shows were shot - The Mighty Gorga being one of the last - rather than some wonderful fantasy land).  The reality is far less glamourous, with many of the scenes involving Gorga himself shot in parking lot near Hewlitt's studios and the airport and zoological gardens which are supposedly in the Congo actually being San Diego airport and Zoo, respectively.  (The scenes on the airliner and of Anthony Eisley coming down the steps after it lands were filmed without permission, after the main footage had been shot, when it was found that the film was running short).

The lack of resources also dictated the fact that the titular giant gorilla is only ever seen from the waist up and neither his mouth nor eyes ever move, (let alone blink in the case of the latter) - he consisted of a life-sized novelty gorilla head hollowed out to form a crude mask and a car coat covered in fake fur.  Apparently the budget didn't run to covering a pair of trousers with fake fur.  To be fair, Hewlitt makes a virtue out of this situation, frequently shooting Gorga with the camera at waist level, but angled up, to give the impression that the ape is towering above the scene.  If Gorga seems ropey, then the dinosaur he fights is decidedly dodgy.  Like Gorga, he exists only from the waist up, but while the ape has two arms, the dinosaur has only one.  A papier mache one man puppet, one of the dinosaur puppeteer's arms operated the arm, the other the mouth.  Consequently, the fight between the two monsters is more than mildly hilarious, made more so by the fact that the actor playing the victorious Gorga, (Hewlitt himself), is audibly gasping for breath at its conclusion, to the extent that you expect him to whip out an asthma inhaler.  An earlier scene, where the dinosaur menaces the hero and heroine when it catches them in its nest, is, if anything even more hilarious, as Anthony Eisley throws giant polystyrene eggs vaguely in the direction of the poorly green-screened dinosaur puppet, which is flapping its mouth wildly while never getting anywhere near him.  

Having characterised The Mighty Gorga as a King Kong knock off, in plot terms it also borrows heavily from Irwin Allen's 1960 remake of The Lost World.  It starts off in true King Kong fashion, with Anthony Eisley deciding that the way to save his ailing circus is to follow up his regular animal trapper's reports of a giant ape and to fly to the Congo in order to secure the beast as a new attraction.  Once in the Congo, (or rather San Diego), he finds that the trapper has vanished while trying to find the lost city the ape guards, (which is also the location of King Solomon's treasure), leaving his daughter in charge of the business.  She is busy trying to stop her father's former business partner from a hostile takeover of the business.  Naturally, she and Eisley become allies and decide to try and find her father, the ape, the lost city and the treasure as a solution to both their financial woes, with the rival trapper in pursuit.  Once they locate the lost city - situated atop an isolated plateau - the film settle down to pretty much follow the plot of the 1960 Lost World, complete with the convenient secret tunnel that leads to ground level, the treasure (substituting for the diamonds of the 1960 film) guarded by another dinosaur, (this one is stop motion and actually stock footage from an Italian Hercules film), and the catastrophic volcanic eruption that destroys the plateau.  The lost animal trapper is the equivalent to the earlier film's 'Burton White' character (a survivor of an earlier expedition who knows the way out), while, in a bizarre homage to Irwin Allen's film, the tribe inhabiting the plateau (and worshipping Gorga) appear to be South American Indians, (portrayed by white actors mildly blacked up with tan boot polish).

All of which, doubtless, gives the impression that The Mighty Gorga is an entirely inept piece of low budget film making with no redeeming features, (other than the fact that it is unintentionally hilarious).  Yet, while its special effects sequences and monsters are quite woeful, (the process work combining monsters and actors is amongst the worst I've ever seen), the bits in between are surprisingly solid.  The featuring of competent actors like Anthony Eisley and Scott Brady, (granted, they were B-movie actors, but decent B-movie actors), means that much of the dialogue (bad though it might be) is at least delivered properly and helps mitigate the occaisional stumbling delivery of other cast members.  Many of the sets look cheap and the 'jungle' often looks more like scrubland or even someone's garden, but Hewlitt is an competent and experienced enough director to distract attention from them for a lot of the time, helped immeasurably by Gary Graver's cinematography.  Although it seems to take an age for the film to get to any jungle action, Hewlitt at least gives a brief view of Gorgo in a scene-setting prologue and keeps inserting scenes of him and the natives on the plateau at regular intervals in order to maintain audience interest.  While ramshackle and tatty looking, The Mighty Gorga, unlike many other ultra low budget films, at least feels like a professionally made production.  Of course, the film ultimately belongs to Gorga himself - a truly magnificent piece of low budget audacity, a giant gorilla in a film so cheap that it couldn't even afford a proper gorilla suit.  Fittingly, the last we see of him is at the end of the film as he strides off into the jungle (from the waist up only), eyes unblinking and hair wildly sticking up in all directions, as if he'd just stuck his finger in an electricity socket, proud and undefeated.