Roger Dicken - special effects from THUNDERBIRDS to ALIEN



Roger Dicken in Starburst #15



Roger Dicken's skills as a sculptor, designer and fabricator of creature effects were on show in Alien, for which he built the very first Chestburster and Facehugger. They're still scuttling around our nightmares, but weren't the first monsters that he'd made for horror films...

Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind showcased visual effects that had never seen before. Specialist magazine Cinefex launched in 1979, to describe in detail breakthrough effects work in the latest movies. It devoted issue 1 to Star Trek - The Motion Picture and Alien. 

Pictured amongst the genre heavyweights working on Alien, was Roger Dicken, who I recognised from his work on children's films. Here he was, having built the first Facehugger and Chestburster, creatures that immediately lodged in our psyches and grew into long-lasting cultural icons of fantasy fiction.

I'd like to look back at some of the other highlights of his previous ten years of movie work, most of it using similar effects techniques to his work in Alien. Dicken's career is an example of the many who alternately worked on TV series and low-budget British features, as well as 'Hollywood' blockbusters that were filmed in London studios.

One of my earliest movie memories is this Martian rock snake that loomed up in the cinema and opening one huge red glowing eye before unleashing a torrent of fireballs! It appears halfway through Thunderbirds Are Go (1966), the first of two Thunderbirds feature films that presented the TV characters in widescreen and colour. I've only recently learned that Roger Dicken made these creatures, based on Derek Meddings' design. He seemed to specialise in creatures that appear to be made of rock.  

Stanley Kubrick was fully aware that some of the best model makers in the business had worked on Thunderbirds. He employed Roger's sculpting skills for about a year to help build the surface of the Moon seen through the portals of some sets, early in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Dicken also sculpted some glittery, humanoid aliens when Kubrick was still planning to show them at the climax of the film.

World of Horror #7

He also worked on practical effects in horror films, like the lightning climax in Hammer's Scars of Dracula, for which he also built a large bat (above), capable of 'biting' and licking blood. He'd previously built the moth monster for The Blood Beast Terror (1968). The same year, he worked on practical effects for Witchfinder General (1968) for the hanging and burning scenes, as well as the very effective and subsequently censored 'pricking' tortures. He later sculpted the impressive, evil-looking skeleton for The Creeping Flesh (1973).

House of Hammer #12

Making the models of a variety of dinosaurs, including a plesiosaur and a chasmosaurus, led to an Oscar-nomination on Hammer's When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth. Superbly detailed models and impressively smooth stop-motion animation by Jim Danforth (above, right) easily rivalled Ray Harryhausen's work at the time. 

Dicken's love of rocky-looking creatures can be seen in the design of the large crab monsters (above) that hunt cavemen on the beach.

I was first aware of Roger's work when he briefly became a familiar face as a dinosaur-maker for Amicus Films' The Land That Time Forgot. He was photographed with his creations for magazines and newspapers, as well as appearing on children's TV in Clapperboard (I think). While stop-motion animation was still the most convincing way to show huge prehistoric animals, the producers at Amicus couldn't afford the time and expense.

World of Horror #7

Instead, Roger suggested large, realistic puppets, operated from the inside or by simple rod and line manipulation - methods where there was very little to go wrong that could hold up filming. He didn't even trust remote-control technology. Each model was around four feet long and could be operated from the inside, or underneath. 

But once he'd made them all, including two triceratops, and a pair of tyrannosaurs, the effects team decided they would operate the models themselves, annoying Dicken so much that he turned down all work on the follow-ups The People That Time Forgot (which featured far fewer monsters) and At The Earth's Core (which overused men-in-suits). 

For The Land That Time Forgot, it was James Bond veteran John Richardson who built all of the full-scale animals, like the pterodactyl and plesiosaur (above), which had to interact with the cast. 

Roger built all the scaled-down creatures, that were then placed among matching-scale table-top jungles, looking especially realistic in the night-time scenes. Above are two styracosaurs caught in the submarine's spotlight. The ensuing mortar attack is quite upsetting, as the animals are blown to pieces.

The Land That Time Forgot was a 'U' certificate (the equivalent of a 'G' now) but the story is quite downbeat, sticking closely to Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel, with a high body count decimating the characters. 

Despite the obviousness of the techniques used, it was fast-paced fun and hugely popular with children. The Land That Time Forgot led to three similar films, Dicken working on the last of them, Warlords of Atlantis (1978), where he designed and built mythical creatures living around the underwater city. 
 

Film Review, August 1978

Again, the puppets were manipulated by hand and, again, he wasn't allowed to do it himself. Again, actors mostly interacted with the models using back-projection techniques that were fooling nobody, not even the children.

Film Review, Sept 1978

But Roger's fine detailing made the creatures look exceptionally good in publicity photos, especially this giant octopus that engulfs a ship.

The same year, he started work on Alien, hired to build the Chestburster, Facehugger and humanoid stage of the alien. As is often the case, he was having to make three-dimensional objects from someone else's (two-dimensional) sketches, left to add his own design ideas and how they might function.

Being such a high-profile production, and with director Ridley Scott terrified that he'd get a monster that would get laughs, it was an exceptionally high pressure assignment. Dicken was being supervised by a committee, when he was used to working alone. There was a meeting with writers, producers and the director, where they all fired their ideas at him at once, about what the Facehugger should look like. He was at a loss how to proceed. Dan O'Bannon thankfully combined all the suggestions from the meeting into one drawing, something Dicken could try and work with.

Giger's idea was something much larger, but it was simplified into just hands and a tail. Giger approved O'Bannon's design and Dicken's work. Dicken had wanted to emphasise the creature's knack for self-defence, by adding sharp barbs to the tail, preventing anyone pulling it off. He also had to rig his Facehugger model (above) so that it could 'bleed' acid in this scene.

Photo of Roger Dicken on set for the Facehugger scene in the Weyland-Yutani archives 

The Chestburster had originally been envisaged by Giger as something looking like a blind, fat, featherless turkey with teeth. Dicken made something faithful to that design, with the neck wide enough to fit his hand inside, but Ridley felt it could look too comical. 

Dicken streamlined it so much that his hand no could longer fit inside, and the necessary mechanisms barely could either. The outside was finally so smooth and organic-looking that it was also very hard to hide any joins. His idea to give it little arms so that it could pull itself out of the chest was rejected. But this time he got to operate his creation for the infamous scene in the film (above).

Dicken's early chest-burster sculpts in the Weyland-Yutani Archives 

Dicken took the first attempt at building the full-size alien, working with Bolaji Badejo's body-mould to make a faithful representation of the phallic creature that Ridley liked so much in Giger's artbook, 'Necronomicon' (above). But keeping to that same scale, the head was quite enormous.

According to the Cinefex article, owing to the strain of working for a 'committee' as well as building the smaller creatures, Dicken quit his work on the final-stage, humanoid alien. An unpopular move, but he was exonerated when the project finally needed H.R. Giger to come over from Switzerland, plus a whole team working under Carlo Rambaldi, to complete the suit. Rambaldi's expertise provided the immensely complicated jaw mechanism inside the head. 

Photos of Roger Dicken's first attempts at a full-size alien on the Alien Explorations blog  



A filmography to be proud of. Dinosaurs, vampire bats, crab monsters, rock snakes and xenomorphs. I've enjoyed his work in many movies, whether I knew it at the time or not.

(I referred to contemporary magazines for research; interviews with Roger in Starburst #15, Film Review magazine (September, 1978) and a great pre-Alien career article in Photoplay Film Year Book (1979). As well as the Alien coverage in Cinefex #1, and Cinefantastique volume 9, number 1. His work is barely mentioned in the original Book of Alien!



Here's my further look at the earliest Alien merchandise and magazine coverage.

GRABBERS (2012) - creepy, slimy fun from Ireland

GRABBERS

(2012, UK/Ireland)

A new monster movie... that's good!

We watched this completely cold and it's already a favourite.

I prefer monster movies played for real, which this does. But its balanced with a healthy amount of humour while remaining respectful of the genre. Tremors and Lake Placid are two that got it right and Grabbers holds up in comparison, despite a lower budget.

From the beautifully subtle opening shot, which confirms that the special effects were in good hands, as well as a gentle echo of John Carpenter's The Thing, that also meant that the director knows his stuff...

A fishing trawler runs into trouble in the middle of the night. Already, we know that something inhuman and deadly is at large.

                          
There's a slow build that gives time to establish the characters and the setting of a remote Irish island. Richard Coyle (Pusher, Franklyn) plays an alcoholic policeman, who's saddled with an overly keen sidekick from the city (Ruth Bradley, recently seen in Primeval). The local islanders are all a little eccentric, but no worse than a English marine biologist twit (Russell Tovey working very hard to breathe fresh life into a sci-fi cliche).

As clues start washing up onshore, in fishing baskets and on the beaches, the two police officers know trouble is brewing, but have no idea how big a problem they're facing...

What I really love is that there's a new kind of monster and it looks fantastic. Well-realised, well-designed and disgustingly biological. Like Jaws it's not overused, and saved up for special occasions. It always gave me the creeps and would look good in a Cthulhu movie. But it's just a good old alien thingy from inner/outer space. The only way to beat it is to go down the pub and figure out what makes it tick...

In the extras, director Jon Wright admits that his homages are to 1980s monsters, rather than the pub-siege genre of the 1960s (as in Night of the Big Heat) which I feel is a missed opportunity, but there's plenty of fun 'quotes' to watch out for.

Well thought out, with likeable characters that you care about, Grabbers is rich, funny and suitably monstrous. It's out on DVD in the UK, but the blu-ray shows off the scenery, cinematography and special effects even better.

Most of the poster art I've seen only plays on the comedy angle and would have steered me away if I'd seen them beforehand. Worse still, the DVD cover (at the top) looks like a cheap, generic Asylum or Sy-Fy offering. This is more of a monster/horror film with a comedy element, so don't let it all put you off.

A hundred years of THE LOST WORLD (1925) - and the three best DVDs

THE LOST WORLD

(1925, USA)

Dinosaurs attack! The seminal story and 1925 movie

This month marks the centenary of Arthur Conan Doyle's story 'The Lost World' completing its first ever run as a serialised story in The Strand magazine. It was also published as a complete novel that same year. 1912 also marked the birth of Edgar Rice Burrough's characters Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. What an extraordinary year!

While Conan Doyle is far more famous for writing the many Sherlock Holmes stories, also published in The Strand, he wrote four further stories for The Lost World's Professor Challenger. But none of them proved as riveting as his trip into the Amazon rain forest in search of a lost explorer and living prehistoric animals...

While people and dinosaurs had been thrown together in short films, mostly for comedy effect, the 1925 adaption of The Lost World was feature-length and took Doyle's suggestion seriously. That dinosaurs could survive to meet men in modern times, on a remote Amazonian plateau cut off from its surroundings, with a similar climate to the era when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

The story starts when Professor Challenger returns from a disastrous expedition without any evidence to present to the scientific community. No one believes he has seen living dinosaurs and they therefore refuse to finance another expedition. It's only the possibility there's still a survivor stranded on the plateau that encourages a newspaper editor to put up the money. Challenger is joined by a sceptical professor acting as an expert witness, the daughter of the missing man, a young reporter representing the newspaper and an adventurer in love with the daughter. Two bickering scientists and a love triangle!

Soon we see the party arrive at the foot of the huge escarpment, and witness prehistoric birds flying high over the summit. The only access to the summit is to climb up a pinnacle of rock next to it, then fell a tree to form a primitive bridge. No sooner have the expedition crossed onto the plateau, than their only means of escape is cut off. Trapped in The Lost World, they soon discover that there are more than just pterodactyls living there...

The plot structure roughly resembles the later King Kong (1933) with its series of deadly foes, climaxing with a gigantic animal being brought back to meet civilisation... In the book it's a pterodactyl, but the movie upgrades that to a far more spectacular brontosaurus. The ensuing chaos also makes this silent movie, via King Kong, the early forerunner of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Godzilla and every other giant monster on the loose...

King Kong also recycles scenes such as the log bridge, and the 'reeling in' of a rope ladder, as well as the 'monster stand-off' fight scenes. Crucially, the dinosaurs of The Lost World were also brought to life by Willis O'Brien's elaborate stop motion animation, without which King Kong wouldn't have been possible. Even during the making of The Lost World, the producers filmed enough subplots to make an entirely live-action movie, if the dinosaur special effects didn't work out.

More recently the story, and indeed the title, echoed throughout the Jurassic Park movie series. Pixar's Up (2009) also has this wonderful, visual quote from The Lost World and its spirit of adventure.

The possibilities of this story now seem far-fetched. But in 1912 and 1925 the Amazonian rain forests were largely unexplored. Now viewed as a fantasy, the fun is in seeing what creatures our heroes encounter and if the special effects stand up. Like King Kong, the matte paintings and composite work (that combines the images of people and modelwork) remain impressive. But the stop-motion animation is quite varied in quality. Willis O'Brien couldn't possibly do ALL the animation, and other less-experienced animators had to help with the huge number of ambitious trick shots. Another time-saving (cost-saving) method appears to be the use of two-frame animation, resulting in jerkier movement. The allosaurs move far less smoothly than the brontosaurus.

The long-necked brontosaurus model is all the more impressive because of its ability to 'breathe'. I particularly love the scenes of it moving around in mud. How do you animate mud? Incredible. Note also the nasty, tiny, gory details. Like the pteranodon picking apart a pig that's still alive...

With the creatures also interacting with water and fire, O'Brien is pushing the possibilities of his animation techniques to their limits, as well as some jaw-dropping 'crowd' scenes. This was all great practise for the even more elaborate set-pieces in King Kong.

Oh yes, there are humans too. After Professor Challenger, Wallace Beery remained a familiar face in twenty years of talkies. Here he's less recognisable under a beard. A tall brawny figure, he's certainly more fearsome than the diminutive Claude Rains (of the 1960 remake).

Lewis Stone plays the amorous adventurer Sir John Roxton. He has a similarly strident role in a pith helmet, opposite Boris Karloff in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932).

Romantic interest Bessie Love, here acting her heart out, eventually moved from America to London, but never stopped acting. You can also see her in Children of the Damned (1964), Vampyres (1975) and Tony Scott's The Hunger (1983)!



Which to watch?

Because of expired copyright, this is now a 'public domain' movie, and almost anyone with a print or a mastertape of The Lost World can release their own DVD. So what are the best versions out there?

The Lost World (1925) has survived the decades despite much abuse. It was cut down in 1929 for re-releases, the subplots cut out to maximise the action. It was also completely filleted for just the dinosaur footage for educational use. I first saw a very short version (ten or fifteen minutes) at London's Natural History Museum around 1970. For a moment, it looked like an old newsreel of an actual expedition!

For decades, the only existing prints were of the 1929 one-hour cutdown version, which I first saw on a VHS release. I then upgraded to the laserdisc version from Lumivision which was the best available quality print restored by the George Eastman House. I upgraded again with one of the first DVDs I ever bought, also of the Lumivision version. Although 63 minutes long, it shows what was originally left of the film, with what looks like original colour tinting and film faults. This version also includes several even earlier experimental dinosaur short films animated by Willis O'Brien.

Then, in the early 1990's a major haul of extra footage was discovered, including an almost complete print from Czechoslovakia. This was all compiled and restored by David Shepard and Serge Bromberg and released on DVD by Image Entertainment. This adds in as much new footage as possible, and importantly corrects the frame rate, (it would have been filmed around 18 to 20 frames per second). This slows the action down to look normal and realistic, the resulting running time is 92 mins. There's also 13 minutes of dinosaur animation footage, thought to be unused out-takes.

With a debate raging over how much of the footage should have been reinserted (there's no way for certain knowing how the first version was actually assembled), George Eastman House also made a rival restored version. This can be found on the 20th Century Fox release of the 1960 colour widescreen Irwin Allen remake of The Lost World (cover art above) included as a bonus feature! It's actually on a separate DVD.

But here the frame rate runs fast, as if the print was projected at 24 frames per second, resulting in people running around too fast, and making the dinosaurs look more like models. Roughly the same assembly of scenes, but it's sped up to a running time of 76 mins. Some of the film elements used are in better shape and more restoration has been done on them. But the colour tinting is very heavy and some scenes play too dark, obscuring the detail. This version also elects to keep the language of the blacked-up manservant in the original, insulting 'who dat dere' spellings. This DVD also includes the 13 minutes of out-takes.

Image Entertainment DVD (Shepard restoration) - note the position of the background: the camera is stationary 

The Fox DVD (Eastman House restoration) exactly the same moment

These two restorations present some scenes in slightly different orders, not that it hurts the story. But what I didn't realise, when viewing them side by side, was that sometimes two different angles had been shot, but only those involving actors. Why they'd use two cameras on the actors, but apparently not on the special effects, is confusing. Alternate takes have also been used by the two versions in some scenes, noticeably those with wildlife.

I'd definitely recommend the Image Entertainment disc, though slightly rougher looking in places, for the smoother running speed and less heavy-handed tinting.

The full story on the Bromberg/Shepard restoration is in Video Watchdog #75 - it includes a complete rundown of the recently reinstated scenes and what's still thought to be missing. Plus an extensive interview with David Shepard.

My favourite version of the book is 'The Annotated Lost World', heavily illustrated and full of insight into the origins of Conan Doyle's story.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (1959) - now on Blu

Twilight Time only started releasing DVDs and Blu-rays last year, aiming for classic older movies that the big studios have neglected. Their remit has stretched to titles as recent as As Good As It Gets (1997) and the original Fright Night. It's surprising that the studios don't think Ray Harryhausen films still sell, for instance.

Twilight Time are particularly interested in the widest of widescreen movies getting the best presentation possible, on Blu-ray. In the 1950s and 1960s, hugely expensive epics were filmed in the new process of Cinerama and other aspect ratios of around 2.35:1, to make movie-going more immersive with bigger-than-ever screens (to combat the rivalry from television). The spectacle wasn't just used on westerns and Roman historical epics, but action (like Grand Prix) and comedy (Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines, It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World). Viewed on a big screen, DVDs struggle to offer enough detail for these aspect ratios, and for some movies these Blu-rays offer their widescreen debuts on home video.

Obviously I've pounced on their monster movies. Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) can't compete with Jurassic Park, but was the equivalent family adventure of the time. Some, not all, of the special effects still work. The spectacular production design offers imaginative large-scale sets, expanded by imaginative matte paintings. For two hours you can almost believe it's possible to hike to the Earth's core!

This science-fantasy is a fairly faithful adaption of Jules Verne's novel. But pandering to fans of the book means a fairly slow slog before the journey downwards begins and the small-scale melodrama turns into a unique cinematic adventure. Bizarrely, there's even a song to clog up the early proceedings, reflecting perhaps what was then expected of family entertainment.

Disney had previously made 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954), epitomising the approach to family adventure stories for years to come. Another Verne adaption, it starred James Mason as Captain Nemo, no doubt making him a must for the leading role of Lindenbrook.

Amongst the colourful stalactites and giant mushrooms, there are dinosaurs and a rival expedition to compete with. I was surprised to see a couple of story details pre-empting Raiders of the Lost Ark. A configuration of the Sun's rays leading the way, and a large rolling boulder chasing our heroes.
As the unlikely band of explorers descend into the Earth, I'm pleased to say there are no children or teenagers in the ranks. But bizarrely there's a duck. Called Gertrude. Somewhat of a trendsetter, later pioneers took pets with them - the visitors to The Lost World (1960) a poodle, and The City Under The Sea (1965) a chicken...

Like The Lost World adaption the following year, the dinosaurs are portrayed by live lizards, but here a little more convincingly. The dimetrodon attack still looks pretty frightening. Am I going soft!

To contrast with the family-friendly wholesomeness, the amount of beefcake is a little surprising. As the expedition gets closer to the Earth's core, it gets pretty warm, so both Pat Boone and Peter Ronson get half-naked, revealing a smouldering amount of tanned manflesh, and get racily drawn towards the maternal figure of Arlene Dahl.

 
The experience is that much more impressive due to an awesome soundtrack from Bernard Herrmann, only a year after he scored Vertigo. The drama is certainly lightweight, but mounted on such an impressive scale that it remains epic fun!

 

Stranger still, this Ray Harryhausen spectacular, Mysterious Island (1961) should also be released by an independent. It features a wide range of iconic Harryhausen creations - the giant crab, giant bees, a prehistoric chicken (a phororhacos) and more! Like many unknown island stories, the plot is skimpy, building up with episodic encounters. The lengthy set-up of the explorers escaping from a military prison during the American Civil War has no real bearing on the rest of the story. But there's an enjoyable twist, a tremendous Bernard Herrmann soundtrack and many examples of Harryhausen's unique special effects sequences.

This release improves on the cramped aspect ratio of the previous (2002) DVD release, with fuller colour and more picture visible at the top and bottom of frame, closer to the 1.66 aspect ratio. And of course it's now high-definition. Sorry to tell you that both Mysterious Island and Journey to the Center of the Earth are now sold out.
A longer review of Mysterious Island on Blu-ray over at Black Gate.

Can't wait to see what else Twilight Time release...

GORGO (1961) - happy 50th birthday!

GORGO

(1961, UK)

Every country should have its own Godzilla...

UPDATE: March 2013 - GORGO has been released on blu-ray

Released in the UK fifty years ago today, Gorgo remains Britain's closest thing to a kaiju eiga, a giant suitmation monster movie. If vintage dinosaur movies are your thing, or if you love seeing London in even more chaos than usual, this is absolutely for you. It was fantastic to see a clip from the film recently appear in Joe Dante's 3D teen-chiller The Hole (2009). Gorgo lives!

In 1961, Godzilla had yet to appear in colour (in King Kong vs Godzilla the following year). Director Eugene Lourié recycled the plot of his The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and the London setting of Behemoth the Sea Monster (1959), but this time used a man in a monster suit rather than stop-motion animation.

Photo-montage with a shadowy demonic monster. Like the Japanese Godzilla, Gorgo doesn't walk around buildings...

In fact it was Lourié's The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, together with a re-release of King Kong (1933), that inspired Toho Studios to make the very first Godzilla movie. So I'm reluctant to label Gorgo as a rip-off of Godzilla. Lourié got there earlier, along with Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animation and Ray Bradbury's story, of course.

Two salvage experts limp into harbour on a remote Irish island after a volcanic eruption damages their freighter. Before they can make repairs, a dinosaur emerges from the sea terrifying the local fisherman. They decide to capture the creature, load it onboard and sail it to London to make their fortune. After a few fatal accidents, Gorgo is installed as an attraction in Battersea Funfair (just next to the famous power station).

Hand-tinted lobby card - Tower Bridge is falling down...

But just as it's making a huge splash with London's thrillseekers, a gigantic and angry mother Gorgo emerges from the sea looking for her baby. She heads for London and nothing's going to get in her way, though the army, navy and air force are going to try...

Gorgo attacks a rollercoaster in Battersea Funfair, just like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms at Coney Island

Gorgo is made very like an early Godzilla movie, (a man in a suit amongst detailed miniatures) making it a peculiarly unique British monster film. The modelwork and special effects are from some of the finest technicians of the time, some of whom went onto work on 2001: A Space Odyssey, but obviously with a much bigger budget. Gorgo's special effects are hit and miss, but easily on a par with the Japanese monsters of the time. The almost excessive use of Technicolor borders on the surreal, especially when the night sky is lit up with red smoke as London burns. I particularly love this great optical composite of Gorgo stomping through Soho towards (and through) Piccadilly Circus.

Screengrab: Gorgo enjoys a night on the town

The monster suit looks fantastic on film, the creature's actions are suitably 'undercranked' to make it look huge (a technique often underused in the Japanese films), and the modelwork is just as detailed, laid out as a huge cityscape of central London. They even use a fullscale Gorgo to transport around London on a flatbed lorry,  (to publicise the new attraction) with a full-size prop of its claw to smash unwary fishermen in their boats.

The head is quite animated, with a convincing jaw movement, glowing red eyes and wiggling ears! The feet and claws are huge and look lethal. The only weak point of the suit is the belly which looks and acts like wrinkled material. However, unlike the heavy latex Godzilla suits, this allows the stuntman inside to twist dramatically, to pose and move more dynamically. The suit also had to move in the water and not catch fire too easily - pity the poor guys inside, including jockeys-turned-stuntmen Dave Wilding and Mick Dillon.

The story has humans too. The stars are William Sylvester (2001: A Space Odyssey, The Hand of Night) and Bill Travers (Born Free, Ring of Bright Water, The Smallest Show on Earth) as the two greedy bastards who cause all the trouble in the first place. They sort of a adopt a boy from the island, which is rather progressive for the time. He's played by Vincent Winter, an Oscar-winning child star who went on to work as production manager on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Color Purple and Superman II.

Gorgo certainly isn't low-budget, with some impressive sets (like the war room and the flooded London Underground) and with extensive crowd work to show London's citizens fleeing in panic. Indeed, cinematographer Freddie Young's next picture would be Lawrence of Arabia. He certainly knew how to make flamethrowers look good.

But it's not high budget either, relying too heavily on a mish-mash of stock footage of destroyers and jets before Gorgo hits London. While the modelwork holds up well during the night-time, the early daytime scenes of the boat in a tidal wave are unconvincing. There was certainly enough to fuel a particularly funny Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K season 10, 1998).

I enthused about Gorgo in an extensive article for G-Fan magazine (issue 49, January 2001). I still think it's entertaining as an action-packed monster movie, or as a far-fetched tale with nutty logic and oldschool special effects. It's also an evocative trip around London in 1960. So I'm annoyed that Gorgo still isn't on DVD in the country where it was made.

The sexed-up Monarch novelisation

So far, the DVD and laserdisc releases have been disappointing because of the quality of their source materials - a lot of visible film damage and washed-out colours. The DVD compression has also struggled with the grain, darkness, sea spray and smoke. I've seen it look far better, with vivid technicolor on British TV, transferred from a clean print with a sharp image. That's the version that I'd like to see represent Gorgo worldwide.

The more recent Japanese DVD (pictured) appears to be a close duplicate of the American VCI DVD and has the same extras. The quality of the film transfer is again slightly soft and the edges of block colours are blurry. It's accurately presented in 1.66 aspect, non-anamorphic.

Director Eugene Lourié later provided the extensive special effects for Crack In The World which recently warranted a Blu-ray release. Gorgo is jealous!

Here's a faded trailer for Gorgo...

Happily, a short sequel was made recently, Waiting For Gorgo. Here's the trailer...

(This is a hugely expanded rewrite of my earlier review from 2009.)

Some interesting thoughts on Gorgo's production from WTF Film.

A review and screengrabs of a German DVD release from a WTF review.