"It’s a bad thing you’ll be doing. A terrible bad thing."
Treasure salvagers are diving in the area of a sunken ship. Something is off the coast of Ireland. It’s a volcano rising up from the ocean floor. The salvage ship is damaged so they pull into the Port of Nara Island to make repairs. Carcasses of dead creatures are floating on the water. The harbor master is not very friendly. He is a part time archeologist who has divers in the water. He has them diving for gold. One of them comes up dead and one doesn’t come up at all.
That night a monster comes out of the water and rampages through the village. It is supposedly 65 feet tall. The villagers manage to chase it back into the water with fire. Now the harbor master has a problem. The salvagers, Joe Ryan (Bill Travers) and Sam Slade (William Sylvester), offer to get rid of the beast for a price. The harbor master agrees.
Joe and Sam capture the beast and chain it to their ship. They bring it back to England. On the way it manages to kill one of the sailors. Scientists want to study it but the salvagers have a better offer from a circus. They parade it through the streets of London and install it in Battersea Park. The circus people name it Gorgo after the Gorgon creature from mythology. The creature temporarily gets loose and kills another person. They catch it and chain it up for tourists to stare at.
The scientists that examine Gorgo determine that it is a baby. Estimates of Mom’s height would bring it to at least 200 feet tall. Mom rises up out of the water and attacks the island looking for her baby. She destroys the island. Now she is on her way to England.
"Gorgo" was released in 1960. Normally giant lizard type monsters rampaging are Japanese creatures. Specifically TOHO. This time the Irish get involved. “Gorgo” is a British-American film. The film was directed by Eugene Lourie who also directed “Beast from 20,000 Fathoms” and “Giant Behemoth”. This time the monster is a guy in a rubber suit. I’m OK with that.
The original script had no military action indicated. Director Eugène Lourie argued that gunfire would kill a beast, no matter how big. The King Brothers wanted guns and they got them. Later Lourie acquired a 35mm print of the movie for private use and cut out all the stock footage military shots.
The film was originally set in Japan. Later, the King Brothers and Lourie thought of setting it in Paris, but that would have meant the monster would have had to wade about 100 miles up the Seine to get to the city. Finally, the location was changed to Ireland and England. Aside from Japan, Paris and finally the UK, the producers were considering using Australia as a location; however, they decided that nobody would care if he attacked Australia and settled on the UK.
The chase scenes in London are wonderful. I’ve always said that the extras for British films are great at running rampant. Just as if there is a real monster chasing them. It’s a fun movie. Put it in your monster movie collection. You’ll be glad you did.