Waiting For Gorgo!

Gorgo is one of my favorite movies. It's a hoot of an old-fashioned monster movie that oddly enough tugs at the hearstrings amidst all the incalcuable death and mayhem. In fact one of the very first VHS movies I ever bought was a cheap version of Gorgo and it's been that muddy dark version I've known the movie from ever since. For the record I first came across the Gorgo tale in the reprint of the first issue in the awesome Fantastic Giants special.

Well a while back I picked up a new DVD of the film, which presents it in widescreen and with a much much cleaner image and lo and behold as I suspected there are lots of bits of the movie I've never been able to really enjoy up until now.

If you don't know the general story of Gorgo either as a film or as the comics story adapted by Joe Gill and Steve Ditko for Charlton Comics way back in 1961, it's a classic tale of monsterish woe. Two likeable salavage divers find themselves stranded off Nara Island and after some bother about treasure and such find that a monster called "Ogra" by the little boy who attaches himself to them might make a pretty good penny for them back in civilization. They capture the critter, bigger than several elephants and haul him back to London where he's put on display for all to see. There's some angst about what's right and all that, but before anything really can happen, Gorgo's mother who is ten times his size shows up looking for her baby and crushes Nara Island before heading off the London to get back her boy. The British military has no chance and she demolishes lots of landmarks like the Tower Bridge, Big Ben, and more. People die like crazy in this one as debris falls on crowd after crowd. Eventually she gets to her baby, frees him and they walk off into the sea and the movie is over just like that. It's a spectacle!

If you only know this story from the comic or from the muddy VHS versions, you might want to try and get this cleaner rendition. It really adds to the experience immensely. Now I need to get a copy of the paperback edtion from Monarch an arm of Charlton. I bet that's a hoot too.

Rip Off