Gorgo (1961 Film)

Gorgo is a 1961 British Giant monster movie. Directed by Eugène Lourié, it tells the story of an underwater monster's capture off the coast of Ireland. The monster is taken to London to be featured as a circus attraction. The film borrows elements from other monster movies, such as Godzilla and King Kong. It was also featured in an episode of the cult movie-mocking television show Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Plot

Captain Joe Ryan is salvaging for treasure off the coast of Ireland, when a volcano erupts, nearly sinking his ship. Ryan and his first officer, Sam Slade, take the ship to Nara Island for repairs. As they enter harbour, they discover the floating carcasses of marine animals, the first hint that something dangerous was awakened by the volcano eruption.
Ryan and Slade consult the harbour master, who also has archeological pretensions: he has been salvaging a Viking longship in the harbour. Some of his men have disappeared mysteriously; it turns out that one has died of fear. After dark, a monstrous creature surfaces, attacks a group of fishermen, then comes ashore to wreak havoc on the island. This dinosaur-like creature is described as being 65 feet tall. The people of the island finally drive it off.
Ryan and his crew manage to capture the monster and haul it aboard their ship, tying it to the deck. Soon, university scientists arrive on Nara, hoping to collect the monster for study, but Ryan has been offered a better deal by the owner of a circus in London. When the ship arrives in London, the circus owner names it "Gorgo", after the Gorgons of Classical mythology. (A dinosaur called Gorgosaurus that has a strong similarity to the Gorgo creature in this film had been previously described as well; whether or not this dinosaur is related to the naming of the film or the monster in it is uncertain). It is exhibited to the public in Battersea Park.
The scientists examine Gorgo, and conclude that he is not yet an adult, and that his mother must be nearly 200 feet tall. On that note of foreboding, we cut to Nara Island as Gorgo's mother ("Ogra") attacks. Ogra trashes the island, sinks a Royal Navy destroyer, and resists attack from other warships. Later, Ogra comes ashore in London, still looking for her son, and destroys Tower Bridge and Big Ben, despite being bombarded by tanks and infantry. Royal Air Force jets attack Ogra, but with no effect. Having demolished much of London, Ogra rescues Gorgo, and both mother and son return to the sea.

Production

The film was originally set to take place in Japan; this was then changed to France, and then finally changed to the UK. According to Bill Warren's film book Keep Watching the Skies, Australia was also considered for a locale, but the producers supposedly decided that audiences "wouldn't care" if a monster attacked Australia; Australia's alleged lack of worldwide recognizable landmarks for Gorgo to destroy was also cited as a consideration.
The location where Gorgo first appears, the fictional Nara Island, is likely a tribute to the Godzilla series; Nara being a historical period of Japan: alternatively, it may be an anagram for the Aran Islands, off Ireland's west coast. The exterior scenes set in Ireland were filmed at Bulloch Harbour and Coliemore Harbour, both near the County Dublin town of Dalkey. Other scenes were filmed at the MGM-British Studios in Borehamwood in Hertfordshire.^[1]
Scenes where Gorgo is driven through the streets of London were shot on a Sunday morning when there was no traffic. The film studio wanted Gorgo to fight the military despite director Eugène Lourié's objections. Later, Lourié would acquire a print of the film and remove the footage.
Gorgo's special effects were achieved by suitmation and miniaturization, a technique pioneered in the Godzilla films. The younger Gorgo was smaller than usual giant monsters so the sets around him were built to a larger scale leading to a greater sense of realism and believability. The creatures were also shot with then-pricey slow-motion cameras to create a sense of scale. The effects were complex and are well respected by special effects artists and fans. The film is also sometimes praised for its innovative ending, which seems to have an environmentalist moral. Unusually for such films, the monsters, which are presented as innocent victims of human interference, survive and prevail.

Novel and comic

A novelization of the film was released in paperback at the time of its original release (Gorgo by Carson Bingham (Monarch, 1960)).
From 1961 to 1965 Charlton Comics published 23 issues of the comic Gorgo^[2]. It included work by Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko. The series was renamed Fantastic Giants with issue #24^[3] which turned out to be the last issue of the series.
Gorgo also appeared in a three issue mini-series that started off as Gorgo's Revenge^[4], before it was renamed The Return of Gorgo with issue #2^[5]. The series ran from 1962-1964.
Some of these issues were reprinted (in black and white) in a trade paperback in 2011 called Angry Apes n' Leapin Lizards.^[6]

Popular Culture

In 1998 the film was featured on the television series Mystery Science Theater 3000, but the rights quickly expired and the episode only had two airings.
Gorgo was used by rock band Ash (band) for the promo video for Ichiban. It was the seventh release of their A to Z singles series, a year long twenty six single subscription. Using a copy of the DVD and free movie editing software allegedly the video only cost eight dollars to produce.
A snippet from the movie can also be seen in the Robin Williams movie, Flubber. The same scene also shows snippets from the original versions of The Blob and The Fly, along with episodes of Bill Nye The Science Guy and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
In 2010, a short comedy film, Waiting for Gorgo, was produced by Cinemagine. The film was directed by Benjamin Craig and written by M. J. Simpson. The plot focusses on the D.M.O.A, fictitious British government agency charged with preventing the return of the monster, Gorgo.
A clip from the movie can be seen in one episode of the t.v series Everybody Hates Chris.
The movie is also referenced in Season one - Episode 6 of the SyFy channel's reality TV show 'Monster Man'. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Man_(TV_series)


Extracts Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgo_(film)

More Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054938/


The (Awesome) Trailer From YouTube:

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms

Info About Another (Great) Movie With FX By Ray Harryhausen:

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a 1953 science fiction film directed by Eugène Lourié and starring Paul Christian, Paula Raymond and Cecil Kellaway, with visual effects by Ray Harryhausen. The film is about an atomic bomb test in the Arctic Circle that unfreezes a hibernating dinosaur, the fictional Rhedosaurus, which begins to wreak havoc in New York City. It was one of the first monster movies that helped inspire the following generation of creature features, coining it with the atomic age.^[1][2]

Plot

Far north of the Arctic Circle, a nuclear bomb test, dubbed Operation Experiment, is conducted. Prophetically, right after the blast, physicist Thomas Nesbitt muses, "What the cumulative effects of all these atomic explosions and tests will be, only time will tell." Sure enough, the explosion awakens a 10 meter tall, 30 meter long carnivorous diapsid known as the Rhedosaurus, thawing it out of the ice where it had been hibernating for 100 million years.
The Beast starts making its way down the east coast of North America, sinking a fishing ketch off the Grand Banks, destroying another near Marquette, Canada, wrecking a lighthouse in Maine, and crushing buildings in Massachusetts. The Beast eventually comes ashore in Manhattan, and, after tearing through power-lines, attacks the city. The Beast's rampage causes the death of 180 people, injures 1,500 and does $300 million worth of damage.
Arriving on the scene, the military troops of Col. Jack Evans blast a bazooka hole in the Beast's throat and drive it back into the sea. Unfortunately, it bleeds all over the streets, unleashing a "horrible, virulent" prehistoric germ, which begins to contaminate the populace, causing even more fatalities. The germ precludes blowing the Beast up or burning it, lest the contagion spread. Thus it is decided to shoot a radioactive isotope into the Beast's neck wound with hopes of burning the Rhedosaurus up from the inside, killing it.
When the Beast comes ashore and attacks the Coney Island amusement park, military sharpshooter Corporal Stone takes the potent radioactive isotope launcher, (the only one of its kind outside of Oak Ridge, so his pressure is on not to miss), and climbs on board a rollercoaster. Riding the coaster to the top of the tracks so he can get to eye-level with the Rhedosaurus, he fires the isotope into the Beast's wound. The Beast lets out a horrible scream and crashes to the ground dead, with the surrounding park ablaze.

The Beast

The film's titular Beast, the "Rhedosaurus", is the main antagonist of the film. Though often called a dinosaur, the fictional Rhedosaurus has several differences from any true dinosaur species. For one, it has semi-sprawling limbs, a feature no dinosaur possessed; second, it was portrayed as a quadrupedal predator, also unlike any true theropods. It also features an undinosaurian skull, lizard-like spines, a forked tongue and dragging tail. It has been suggested that the "Rh" in the creature's name are Ray Harryhausen's initials.
A dinosaur whose appearance was based on that of the "Rhedosaurus" appeared in the 1978 film Planet of Dinosaurs, where it was killed by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Before this, another dinosaur similar in appearance was featured in the 1970 film When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth.

Cast

• Paul Hubschmid as Professor Tom Nesbitt
• Paula Raymond as Lee Hunter
• Cecil Kellaway as Dr. Thurgood Elson
• Kenneth Tobey as Colonel Jack Evans
• Donald Woods as Captain Phil Jackson
• Ross Elliott as George Ritchie
• Jack Pennick as Jacob Bowman
• Lee Van Cleef as Corporal Stone
• James Best as Charlie - Radar Man

Production

This movie had a production budget of $210,000.^[3] It grossed over $5 million dollars at the Box Office.^[4] Original prints of Beast were sepia toned.
When the short story The Fog Horn by Ray Bradbury was published in The Saturday Evening Post, Dietz and Chester were negotiating with Bradbury to write the screenplay when he reminded them that both works shared a similar theme of a prehistoric sea monster, and a lighthouse being destroyed. The producers who wished to share Bradbury's reputation and popularity, bought the rights to his story and changed the film's title. The film was promoted as being "suggested" by a Ray Bradbury story and Bradbury credited as a writer.
The original music score was composed by Michel Michelet, but when Warner Brothers purchased the film they had a new score written by David Buttolph. Ray Harryhausen had been hoping that his film music hero Max Steiner would be able to write the music for the picture, as Steiner had written the landmark score for King Kong, and Steiner was under contract with Warner Brothers at the time. Unfortunately for Ray, Steiner had too many commitments to allow him to do the film, but fortunately for film music fans, Buttolph composed one of his most memorable and powerful scores, setting much of the tone for giant monster music of the 1950s.
Some early pre-production conceptual sketches of the Beast showed that at one point it was to have a shelled head and at another point was to have a beak.^[5] Creature effects were assigned to Ray Harryhausen, who had been working with Willis O'Brien, the man who created King Kong, for years. The monster of the film looks nothing like the Brontosaurus-type creature of the short story. The creature in the film is instead some kind of prehistoric predator. A drawing of the creature was published along with the story in The Saturday Evening Post.^[6] At one point there were plans to have the Beast snort flames, but this idea was dropped before production began due to budget restrictions. However, the concept was still used in the films movie poster artwork.
In a scene attempting to identify the Rhedosaurus, character Professor Tom Nesbitt riffles through dinosaur drawings of Charles R. Knight, a man whom Harryhausen claims as an inspiration. Incidentally, Knight died in 1953, the year Beast was released.
The dinosaur skeleton in the museum sequence is artificial; it was obtained from storage at RKO Pictures where it had been constructed for Bringing up Baby (1938).
The climactic roller coaster live action scenes were filmed on location at The Pike in Long Beach, California and featured The Cyclone Racer entrance ramp, ticket booth, loading platform and views of the structure from the beach. Split-matte in-camera special effects by Harryhausen effectively combined the live action of the actors and coaster background footage from The Pike parking lot with the stop-motion of the Beast destroying a model of the coaster.

Legacy

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms was the first live action film to feature a giant monster awakened or brought about by an atomic bomb detonation to attack a major city. Due to its financial success, it helped spawn the genre of giant monster films of the 1950s. Producers Jack Dietz and Hal E. Chester got the idea to combine the growing paranoia about nuclear weapons with the concept of a giant monster after a successful theatrical re-release of King Kong. In turn, this craze included Them! the following year about giant ants, the Godzilla series from Japan that has spawned movies from 1954 into the present day,^[1][2] Behemoth, the Sea Monster (UK 1959, US release entitled The Giant Behemoth) and Gorgo (UK 1961).
The film is mentioned in a conversation between Para-Medic and Naked Snake in the popular stealth action game, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
In the 2008 monster movie Cloverfield, which also involves a monster terrorizing New York City, takes a frame from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms along with other frames from King Kong and Them!, also classic monster movies hidden during technical interferences with the hand held camera used throughout the film.^[7]
The film was nominated for AFI's Top 10 Science Fiction Films list.^[8]


Extracts Taken From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_from_20,000_Fathoms

More Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045546/