For tonight’s movie, we turn to the greatest costume drama/horror studio there ever was - the mighty Hammer Studios. Never has one movie company turned out so many consistently classy, atmospheric, and just plain cool horror flicks as Hammer. I would also put forth that no other studio has ever had such a killer stable of actors working for them, pushing the unquestionable quality of their movies even higher. When you have Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Patrick Troughton all together in the same scene, they could be playing fucking whist and it would be cooler than every action scene Hollywood has ever filmed put together.
The Gorgon is one of Hammer’s lesser-known flicks, being understandably overshadowed by their Dracula and Frankenstein series. It’s not one of their best efforts, but even the limpest Hammer flick is, in this not-terribly-humble reviewer’s opinion, better than 90% of the best genre material anyone else has ever turned out. This may seem a strong statement until you consider that most people’s “best” genre work these days consists of rehashing the genius of others in a desperate, sad, and ultimately futile attempt to capture a little of the old magic, or perhaps just to be considered cool and talented by association. I’m looking at you, every single horror remake in the last five years (excusing the inexplicably good Dawn of the Dead).
The first (and far superior) half of the movie begins with Bruno (really, he looks like more of a Nigel, but then again, he’s British) Heitz and his girlfriend arguing over when they should marry. Bruno determines to talk to the girl’s father, who apparently hates him quite a lot. She tries to convince him otherwise, and they both run off into the night woods. The path takes them near Castle Borski, where they both see something horrible. The girl is brought to a hospital the next day, frozen into stone, and a search party finds Bruno hanging from a tree, presumably having killed himself before fossilizing.
Despite the fact that no human man could possibly have murdered his girlfriend by turning her into a statue, the dead boy is put on trial to slander the family name. His father, Professor Heitz, arrives to defend his son’s honor, but the townspeople won’t have it. Heitz sets out on his own to Castle Borski, where he meets the same fate as his son. Stumbling back to his home, he scrawls a final note for his friend Professor Meitzer before slowly and painfully fossilizing.
The second (and unnecessarily complicated) half of the movie begins with both Professor Meitzer and Bruno’s brother Paul come to investigate the strange goings-on. With the help of Professor Namaroff (is every single old guy in Germany a professor?) and the local constable, they uncover the legend of the Gorgons. Two of them were slain thousands of years ago, but the third, Mogera (and no, not the giant penguin-shaped robot that fought Space Godzilla), managed to flee to mainland Europe and hide somewhere in Germany.
Paul falls in love with Carla, Namaroff’s nurse, who is prone to fits of amnesia around the time of the full moon, and follows her all the way to Castle Borski before he discovers…well, you know. And then Meitzer chops her head off with a big-ass sword. Yes, I realize that doesn’t really sound all that complicated, but trust me, there are about six more characters in there that I left out because they don’t need to be there, and simplified it a whole lot.
As I said, the first half of the movie is fantastic. It’s dripping with that wonderfully Hammeresuqe (for lack of a better, somewhat less gay word) atmosphere. The costumes and sets are no less than you’d expect from such a production. You never see Mogera except as a warped reflection in a fountain. It’s extremely effective, and keeps the tension high.
My personal favorite touch is the fact that when Mogera fixes a victim with her fossilizing stare, the effect isn’t immediate. It’s more like the killing tactic of a komodo dragon, where the victim is bitten and allowed to escape, slowly dying from blood poisoning as it goes. The scene of Professor Heitz crawling back into his study and scribbling a warning note to his friend and surviving son as his heart is slowly constricted in a chest turning to stone and his handwriting becomes more and more erratic as his joints fuse together is as chilling as anything found in any of Hammer’s best movies, and is one of the best death scenes I’ve seen in any movie.
Oddly enough, the introduction of Christopher Lee’s character is when the movie starts to get bogged down in an overly complicated secret identity/whodunnit plot. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not Lee’s fault, he’s as great as ever. It’s just that the abandoning of the simple and eerie horror story of the first part for the half-assed Sherlock Holmes story of the second is both jarring, and seriously disappointing.
Both parts of the movie consist of more talking than action, and as I said in the opening paragraph, I could sit and listen to a group of Hammer’s contract players talk for an entire movie and be perfectly happy. That is, as long as what they were talking about makes sense. Which is where part 2 of The Gorgon whizzes the magic down its leg.
Never mind that the Carla thing comes totally out of nowhere, but they don’t even explain it properly. She first arrived to work for Professor Namaroff in 1903, then she had a fit of amnesia and disappeared for a while. It happened again in 1905, and so on. And she only turns into Mogera during the full moon? I had no idea that I was reading the abridged version of Greek mythology all my life, and that not only do Gorgons turn you to stone and all that, but that even a girl who is pretty and British, and says her prayers at night, may grow snakes from her head when the plot device bane blooms and the moon is full and bright. And then, of course, they go and show the monster at the end. Let me tell you, it’s not one of the Hammer FX crew’s prouder moments.
Still, there are considerably worse ways to spend an hour and a half than with The Gorgon. Like watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. Actually, I can’t think of ANY worse way to spend an hour and a half than by watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. Fuck me, but that movie was AWFUL. Sorry, I’m getting off track here. The Gorgon good, TCM remake bad. Really bad. Really really really fucking terribly awfully sucktastically fucking BAD.
The Moral of the Story: Badgers badgers badgers badgers badgers badgers badgers badgers badgers badgers badgers are fine. It’s the SNAKES! SNAKES! that’ll get you. Particularly if they’re sticking out of a Gorgon’s head.
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