Mark Remington (Anthony Eisley) owns and operates Remington International circus. Unfortunately it isn’t doing too well since its star attraction was stolen by his competition, Consolidated Circus Attractions. Consolidated has also been buying up all the smaller circuses and now they have their eye on Remington’s operation. The attorney for Consolidated, Arnold Shye (Gary Kent) just bought Remington’s bank note and now is holding it over him. Remington refuses to sell and sends Shye packing.
Desperate Mark decides to find himself a new attraction for the circus. Basing everything on a rumor Mark leaves his brother Dan (Greydon Clark) in charge of the circus and heads to Africa to find Tonga Jack Adams (Kent Taylor). Jack told Mark that he knows of a giant gorilla in the Congo. He wanted Mark to finance an expedition to find it. Now that Mark is in dier straights he plans on exploring the possibility.
When Mark gets to Jack’s compound he finds out that Jack headed out into the jungle months before and no one has seen him since. Jack went to find both the gorilla and a reported treasure from a lost city. Jack’s daughter April (Megan Timothy) has been trying to keep the business going since he left. April has her own problems with an overdue note her father owes to a slimeball named Dan Morgan (Scott Brady). April has a copy of a map her father had that showed the way into the jungle to the area where the giant gorilla is supposed to be. Jack and April decide to try to find the gorilla, the treasure and April’s father, themselves.
In the meantime, Gorga (David L. Hewitt) terrorizes the local tribe and absconds with virgin sacrifices.
“The Mighty Gorga” was released in 1969 and was written, directed and produced by David L. Hewitt. It is a bottom of the barrel budget monster movie.
Take the basics of “King Kong” 1933 and a touch of “Androcles and the Lion” 1952, one plastic puppet dinosaur, one stop motion dragon and some forced prospective that makes Bert I Gordon look like a master, blend them all together and you have “The Mighty Gorga”. The movie has, what are probably, the worst special effects I’ve ever seen. Including a dragon that appears to be stock footage from the sword and sandal film “Goliath and the Dragon” 1960. Experts say the movie is either the worst ever or the best so bad it’s good ever.
Don’t expect to see a lot of the gorilla. Rumor has it that they only had the top half of a gorilla suit and that may be true since the bottom half is never seen in the movie. The man in the suit is director Hewitt himself. Bruce Kimball, who plays a clown for the circus also plays a witchdoctor, in brownface. As the witchdoctor he is responsible to making sure Gorga has a steady supply of virgins. His acting is bad and the dialogue he is forced to say is just a lame. Both together make his performance as an African witchdoctor hysterical.
Also, when they left civilization April and Mark had only two bearers with them. The bearers took off as soon as they all got to the voodoo place with the skulls hanging around on pikes warning people to stay away. How Mark and April were going to get a giant gorilla back to civilization with only their bare hands and two rifles was a mystery to me, especially since they had to climb a cliff to get to the plateau where the giant gorilla lives.