Movie: (1960) It’s an anglo-saxon mashup of Godzilla and King Kong, as a dinosaur-like creature is caught off the Irish coast and then exhibited at a circus in London. What could go wrong?
First shown: 7/18/98
Opening: Crow’s head has become a nesting place of the Spix’s macaw
Intro: Observer & Bobo’s arm wrestling match is interrupted by a transmission from Pearl and … Leonard Maltin!
Host segment 1: “Waiting For Gorgo”
Host segment 2: The William Sylvester edition of Trivial Pursuit
Host segment 3: The Nanite’s circus encounters tragedy
End: The women of “Gorgo,” Pearl & Leonard continue to plot
Stinger: Irish fisherman says “Blow it out your…” something.
(267 votes, average: 4.04 out of 5)
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• This is as close as we ever got to a real “lost” episode. It aired once (or, rather, twice, once in the morning and once in the evening) on July 18, 1998, and then apparently somebody with a claim on the rights to the movie contacted SciFi Channel and made them pull it. It never aired again. And that’s a shame, because it’s pretty good. Not a home run, but a solid standup double of an episode, notable for the guest starring appearance of none other than Leonard Maltin. The movie is pretty watchable, clearly an “A” movie put together by professionals (shot by Oscar-winning cinematographer Freddie Young) with a big budget, which is definitely a departure for the show. The non-Maltin host segments are, as the Hitchhiker’s Guide would say, mostly harmless.
• Paul gets a break and this week it’s Kevin turn to offer observations.
• For a long time, if you owned a copy of this one, you either taped it back in 1998 or you got it from a tape trader. Then, it was recently included in the Mystery Science Theater 3000: 25th Anniversary Edition.
• Bill does a nice bit of physical comedy in the opening bit when he convincingly launches himself out of frame.
• Maltin does okay, in my book. He’s not an actor and it shows, but he delivers his lines well.
• Actually the Spix’s Macaw is a kind of parrot and not nearly as large as depicted in the sketch. Incidentally, it is believed to be extinct in the wild.
• Callback: “We’ve got to go find Robert Denby!” (“Riding with Death”)
• Segment 1 is cute and silly, but there’s not much to it.
• Segment 2 is kind reminiscent of the “City Limits” trivia game in episode 403. I wonder if they remembered that they did it.
• That’s Kevin and Paul, of course, as the voices of the nanites in segment 3. As near as I can tell, this episode features the very last appearance by the nanites.
• Some may be baffled by the “Hey! Mike Nelson!” “Hey! Tom Servo!” bit. Mike Nelson was the name of the character Lloyd Bridges played in the TV series “Sea Hunt.” The character was a scuba diver (it’s where the phrase “By this time my lungs were aching for air” came from).
• The exchange “Well, whaddaya know?” “Not much, you?” refers to Michael Feldman’s long-running radio quiz show “Whad’Ya Know?”
• In the final segment, Maltin suggests that a Mickey Rourke movie will be a painful selection, and Pearl adds that he should cross reference that with Eric Roberts. So, “The Pope of Greenwich Village”? I don’t know…
• Cast and crew roundup: Camera operator James Mills also worked on “Phase IV.” In front of the camera, William Sylvester was in “Riding with Death” and “Devil Doll.”
• CreditsWatch: Directed by Mike. Intern Dan Tanz joined the show and would continue for the rest of the season.
• Fave riff: “Am…in…Ireland. Send…real…food.” Honorable mention: “Let’s go steal the captain’s strawberries. That’s always funny.”
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Ye grrrreat Sassenachs, tis a fit proper movie to be reveiwin’ on St Patrick’s day week.
And that’s about all I have to say, I watched this one recently and tried to rewatch it and I couldn’t. Plodded my way through it this weekend and had no interest in seeing it again. it just does nothing for me. Maltin is fine, Waiting for Gorgo is good enough. If it wasn’t for the Samuel Becket jokes there’d be nothing at all memorable.
Sorry Gorg. 2 stars
( Sampo, don’t forget DAP, where I got mine ).
“in the chicken suit?” “that i don’t see.”
a personal fave as i had a vhs copy when i was a kid. I do not consider this one of the funniest episodes, but the nostalgia factor keeps it strong. This movie is partially responsible for my hatred of children in movies, as the kid in Gorgo is a total idiot.
“the rare isosceles eared underwater dragon”
This was one of those episodes that was really fun the first time i saw it. I more times i seen seen i think it is just average. I think the reason they wanted to do this was because the godzilla movie came out that year.
Man, I just don’t remember this one being that memorable. It’s one of the handful of eps I’ve only seen once, which was for the RPM project, but that’s it. So I’m going to join the above posts and say I can pass on this one. I’ll just sit here and wait for Devilfish…
#2
Well, unlike the kids in “Invasion of the Neptune Men,” he didn’t have the support of a Borg-like group-mind…
The line “What do you know?” was also in “The Thing That Couldn’t Die”; there the answer riff was “Nothin’.”
Per Bill Warren’s incredibly comprehensive “Keep Watching the Skies” (great book on science fiction movies, but be warned, he does not like MST3K), an earlier concept of “Gorgo” had it set in Australia, but producers decided no one would “care” if a monster attacked Australia; plus Australia was deemed to have no world-famous landmarks that Gorgo could destroy.
I remember catching this one on tv when it aired. It was pretty decent. Looks like I need to drop by Youtube….
The opening segment is just so pleasantly weird and the way Mike concedes to Crow’s defense of not knowing what is occurring atop his head at all times is fantastic. The follow up to the whole egg thing is one of those great MST3K moments where things happen so fast and so bizarrely that it makes it funnier. In this case it’s the idea that in the time it took to cut from the SOL to the castle and then back to the SOL, people (from EPS) came up to the SOL, took the eggs, and left. This is made even more ridiculous by the idea that people came up to the SOL and just left them there. I really, really love stuff like this.
Something about the way Maltin describes the movie putting his assistants into intensive care always makes me smile. I love the Waiting for Gorgo sketch. It’s a perfect combination of high brow and ridiculous that I will always associate with MST3K. Plus, “We’ll be back after this message for whiskey and cigarettes,” is a perfect wrap to it. William Sylvester Trivial Pursuit is relatively dull. Paul’s Nate the Clown laugh is bone chilling. And the Women of Gorgo thing would’ve been entirely dull if not for Mike walking passed clearly on his way to play golf, lord knows where though. Just another subtle moment of Mike’s insanity.
Not only is the movie fairly dull, but it’s pretentious which makes for a bad combination. Every time I watch the episode and that Irish brat says the incredibly inappropriate line of, “Why should anybody have to see it to know it’s there?” I want to punch the person who wrote it. So what, I should know that there’s a bear that lives in the clouds even though no one’s seen such a thing?
Favorite Riffs, not including any and all Dorkin jokes:
Tom: Hey, Mike Nelson.
Mike: Hey, Tom Servo.
(Yes I knew it was a Sea Hunt ref)
Crow: Driving Miss Dummy.
Mike: That really doesn’t work at all.
Crow: Really?
Mike: In fact it fails on a whole lot of levels.
Crow: Ooo, I didn’t know elephants exploded on impact.
I had not seen this episode for a few years when I watched it last week. I tend to agree there is very little memorable about the movie. The riffing is good as always, but the movie is slow and kind of boring. I did like Leonard Maltin a lot though. I gave this on three stars.
I taped this on Jul. 18, 1998* and I’ve never actually watched it. I suppose I’ll watch it when I get around to transferring it to DVD, but until then it remains the only non-KTMA episode I’ve never seen.
*I normally would have watched while I taped, but I was attending Wizard World Chicago.
I’ve seen this one several times, and I recall the host segments pretty well… but memories of the actual movie riffs elude me (except for “dorkin”). My copy is horribly grainy and hard to watch, which is part of it, but this is probably my least favorite episode. If I remember correctly, the entire last half is just Gorgo rampaging around town and making that pseudo-elephantine noise….
Meh. Just … meh.
Never pull this one out for a viewing, it just sits in the collection because it’s an MST and, well, you never know.
“Waiting For Gorgo” is just a wonderful little host segment. Yes, there’s not much to it, and once you hear the title you know what’s going to happen, but it’s such a cheerful and silly “Bambi Meets Godzilla” type bit who can resist it?
>>>“Why should anybody have to see it to know it’s there?”
Isn’t that pretty much the basis for every religion ever?
I thought it was odd that the creature’s local name was the perfectly acceptable “Ograh” but it got switched to “Gorgo.” Why not stick with “Ograh” (which as a derivative of “ogre” makes a lot more sense in context than “Gorgo” as a derivative of “gorgon”)? Or, in the exact opposite vein, why not just call him “Gorgo” right from the start? Oh well.
I can’t make any comments on this one, since when it aired that one day I was busy and thought to myself, “I’ll just tape it when it re-airs in two months or so.” So much for that! :roll: Sounds like I’m not missing much, though.
I didn’t know the history of this episode(we didn’t get SciFi until after MST3K had ceased production), so I feel lucky to have it my collection. Mike, Kevin and Bill got a lot of mileage out of the ‘Mike Nelson/Sea Hunt’ bit. It even shows up in the Film Crew’s release(escape is more like it)of “Hollywood After Dark.”
I watched & taped it the only time it aired. While the original tape is long gone, I transferred it to DVD. Actually, I thought that the movie it self wasn’t too bad and the episode is funny enough.
Favorite riff: (during the diving bell scene) If they don’t get me out of here quick, this will be a yellow submarine.
Runner-up: (the “Gorgo” title appears on-screen) The Vice-President’s unimaginative campaign slogan.
Gorgo is another film I’d seen dozens of times as a child back when UHF channels showed old SF movies all the time for weekend programming. It was fun seeing it again on MST3K and as always, monster movies made good fare for the show. It’s a shame this one may never be available for DVD. The movie is better than the average movie shown on MST3K, but it still worked well for the show.
I didn’t know it was “lost,” because I had taped it immediately, and having watched it again recently, it’s not as if it’s a major loss. It’s quite dull. The cinematography and sound are muddy, the jokes to be had at Ireland and England’s expense aren’t all that great, and the few good riffs are spread far and few between. Once the rampage starts in earnest at the end I just fall asleep altogether.
The few good riffs include the “happy” take on “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “Army tanks are brought in to run over the doll.”
The “William Sylvester Trivial Pursuit” game cracks me up, actually: Mike’s exaggerated enthusiasm contrasts so well with the bots’ complete bored indifference. And poor Willie: Did he ever think that this is how he’d be memorialized?
@ #15: I didn’t know the history of this episode(we didn’t get SciFi until after MST3K had ceased production), so I feel lucky to have it my collection. Mike, Kevin and Bill got a lot of mileage out of the ‘Mike Nelson/Sea Hunt’ bit. It even shows up in the Film Crew’s release(escape is more like it)of “Hollywood After Dark.”
If you think the Sci-Fi Channel was hard to get in its early days, sadly, a lot more people never had Comedy Central till after MST3K was done or nearly done on that channel, hence there are a lot of MST3K fans who are only familiar with the original style of the show and its creator/host through video. Sometimes it seems MST3K got more exposure during its brief run on Sci-Fi than it did during all of its best years on Comedy Central. As for the Sea Hunt bit in Gorgo, if you think they got a lot of mileage out of that in Gorgo, that was basically a call-back to massive references to Sea Hunt and Lloyd Bridges in episode 201 Rocketship X-M. Lloyd Bridges was the leading man in that film and they were all over Sea Hunt with the jokes in that one. “By this time my lungs…” still makes me laugh and Rocketship X-M to this day is my favorite episode.
Luckily for me we got the Comedy Channel during Season Two of MST3K and so were introduced to the show early on enough to see every episode but two Season One shows via actual broadcasts. We had the Sci-Fi Channel from its first day on the air so when MST3K moved there we were able to follow it without missing anything.
I actually snuck out of my (then future) brother-in-law’s bacherlor party to watch this when it first aired!! Laughing my ass off… I ran back into the basement bar area to get another drink every commercial break…then ran back to the TV…..then back to grab another drink…..and so on. I can honestly say it was the most exercise I’ve gotten during an episode….(and *almost* the most sloshed while watching an episode too).
As usual for the sci-fi years I recorded this (not taped) in broadcast quality off the sat and transferred it onto DVD — nice to know that it was a good move to get the only day it was showing (and likely to have shown).
I really like this film — I suspect the reason many don’t share as much affection is the narrow distribution. The first viewing seems dark and plodding, but repeated viewings yield a lot of treasures (looking for all the “women” of Gorgo is a riot — you could do this for a whole lot of films and be surprised by the fact they have all male casts).
Perhaps I like this so much because I like the original — like Maltin, I rank “Gorgo” up there will a lot of quality monster films. Yes, it definitely steals a lot from “Kong” (with a much happier ending) and “Godzilla” (but then, don’t ALL men in rubber suits do?) but I love the Irish villagers (or are they Scottish? Hard to know and that’s fun as well).
I would suggest all that think this episode is ho-hum give it at least one more shot — I’d give it a solid 4 stars (out of five).
Oh, forgot to add that since one of the scenes from “Gorgo” is used in the opening credits of MST3K (during I think nearly all of the sci-fi years) it’s pretty much a must-have episode.
I have never seen this episode, although I think I did see the movie itself many years ago.
Off the the Youtube, I guess…
My favorite riff — as Gorgo is attacking: “McRoar! O’Growl!”
Looking at the 8 eps leading up to this one, it does seem that Gorgo’s rep may be suffering from comparison. We will disagree on which ones are which, but everyone seems to have several eps in the first 8 of Season 9 that are high ranked favorites, and there are some undeniably strong, popular and /or high energy episodes…. Pumaman, Werewolf, Hobgoblins, Touch of Satan, Phantom Planet to name a plausible top 5… Poor Gorgo doesn’t stand a chance.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think it is a weak episode, but perhaps if it were somewhere else in the line-up maybe it might SEEM better.
For me the movie was a little to slow and stodgy to work like a Japanese monster movie. Those have that extra element of silliness that just makes them completely hilarious (and the bad dubbing helps). “Gorgo” just kind of plods along. And so even the riffing doesn’t really pick up steam until Dorkin shows up. And then if you don’t like running jokes, then the episode takes a downturn – because they run that Dorkin riff into the ground.
All in all the last 20 minutes or so of the movie were the highlight for me, with the best riffing and goofy action on the screen. Add in Mr. Maltin as the bookends for the host segments and it helps a little.
All told, I give it two and a half Dorkins out of five.
Check out my full review by clicking on my name.
3 stars. Solid, middle-of-the-road episode for me. Riffing is fine, maybe a little too understated. I do like the numerous slams on the British, and the pro-Irish angle adds a new flavor.
Crow – Meanwhile bits of the Empire are falling away. So long India, goodbye Rhodesia!
Host Segments I Liked:
• the Spix’s Macaw (an actual, critically endangered species)
• Waiting For Gorgo (apparently someone has made a real short film using this title)
• ‘William Sylvester Trivial Pursuit’ (just because I, like Mike, get excited about William Sylvester)
Disliked:
• I usually love the Nanites, but this one’s a bust for me. They already did the “Mike accidentally destroys a world” thing to death last season.
• Women of Gorgo – reminiscent of Joel-era sketches and makes a good point, but kinda fails for me when I re-watch the movie and see Mr. Dorkin speak to two lady reporters around the 45 minute mark.
• Pearl and Leonard Maltin – while I applaud the Brains for getting Maltin to appear on the show, the novelty of the pairing was beat out by my annoyance at actually watching them interact.
If my copy of this episode looked better I might like it more. Happily there is a great-looking ‘Widescreen Destruction Edition’ DVD of Gorgo that really shows off the man-in-suit/scale model mayhem, and is vastly superior to the washed-out print MST used. It was photographed by Oscar-award winning cinematographer Freddie Young, and director Eugène Lourié had a long, distinguished career as an Art Director & Production Designer.
This is another one of those stories in which if everyone had listened to advice given early on, the entire disaster could have been averted. First, on the boat, Sean the kid tells them to set Baby Gorgo free. Then later after Mama Gorgo destroys the battleship, Sam suggests they free the creature from the circus and “take it back to the sea, while we’ve still got a chance”. It’s not till almost the very end that his partner Joe admits he was wrong. Then Sam gives him a tap on the arm with a grin that says “No biggie,” as London burns around them, due entirely to their greed. Cue reporter/voice-over guy’s speech about man’s hubris in the face of nature, etc.
The latter half of the movie gets dragged down by tedious scenes of military action which instead of building tension, becomes numbing (Invasion of the Neptune Men had this same problem). Apparently the director was forced to include all this stock footage by his producers.
Favorite riff: But you missed my point, despite our new familiarity with names. – Mike as Sean
“Oh, Gorgo Boy, the gor, the gor is going…from gor to gor…”
I think this is an incredibly underrated episode, due in large part to the fact that so few people have probably seen it. A nice goofy rubber monster movie is always good for the Brains, regardless of what country it comes from. So many great riffs here, from beginning to end. Bill really seems to shine here in particular (“Someone’s got to get on the other side of the boat, or we’re in trouble!”). I can’t explain why, but when that one guy compares the young and old versions of the monster and says “The infant…” and Crow responds with “The outfant”, I laugh like a loon every time. I know it’s a stupid riff, but dammit, it’s funny!
“This new Cool Ranch flavored scuba air isn’t very good…”
I love how this movie totally goes off the rails near the end where Gorgo’s momma is trashing London. Like that bit where the religious nut gets trampled by the crowd, or the military firing a missile at the monster but shooting the face off Big Ben by mistake (“You think anyone’ll notice?”), or that brief inexplicable shot of people falling down the stairs, or the electrical transformer that sounds like bowling pins when it collapses. It’s a trip!
“I didn’t know elephants exploded on impact.”
There’s a running gag in the riffing that I absolutely love, where the guys fill Gorgo’s randomly roaring mouth with pop music and show tunes. There’s a quick shot where the monster’s mouth opens twice, and I think Crow sings “Downtown!” a la Petula Clark – that had me in stitches. All in all, a great episode, and one of my favorites of the SciFi era.
“McRoar! O’Growl!”
This was the UKs version of Godzilla and this same story appeared in Gappa (Monster from a Prehistoric Planet )
Gorgo to me isnt a bad movie, in fact its better than a lot of experiments shown. the effects werent all that bad and it’s pretty credible actually. its not going to win any academy awards but for 1960 this is really good and a highly respected film. I have the VCI DVD of it :)
To me its not a weak episode so much as there are a lot worse giant monster movies than Gorgo like the Giant Claw, Konga, Reptilicus
Just my opinion for what its worth :mrgreen:
I remember this one It was kinda Brit Godzilla Rip off. Nice see on YouTube. Hopeful Shout will put in Box set soon.
Not a bad episode and it was a hoot to see Leonard Maltin guesting on the show (proving he’s a good sport considering they’d ragged him a couple of times for ranking some cheesy movies like “Laserblast” higher than they should’ve in his annual movie guide), but this is another of those rare episodes where the movie actually wasn’t bad and therefore tough to riff effectively. Not that the Brains did a bad job, and yes, this was a British ripoff of “Godzilla”, but it was a pretty good one, lacking the goofy charm which makes those Godzilla movies so much fun to riff on. Three stars out of five for this one.
An okay episode in my book. Good riffing but the plodding script and poor camers work tends to drag this one down a bit. I have to give it to the ‘L’ man for his guest spot and being a good sport about the whole thing. It was nice to see he has not gone Hollywood and easily laughed at himself. I thought a ‘Guest Star’ who fits into the MST3K reality was a great shot in the arm to the show. I tink this is one area MST3K should have done a lot more of.
I like this episode and had no idea it only aired one day. Good thing I always taped the shows the first time they aired (although, in Projected Man’s case I should’ve re-taped that one when they broadcast the corrected version).
Interesting that to shoot the Maltin scenes Mary Jo had to be out of town for the writing/filming of “The Touch of Satan”- the first time a regular cast member had been absent from an episode since the KTMA days, and resulting in “The Touch of Satan” to have the fewest number of credited writers of any episode of the series (I think). Wonder if Mary Jo still got paid for that one? Also, since another production company (Imagecraft?) shot the Pearl/Maltin scenes for “Gorgo” the camera quality and Pearl’s make-up are strikingly different.
I wonder why the Brains went through the trouble of introducing the nanites only to completely forget about them (I guess they all died when the SOL crashed into Earth?)
I love that Gypsy is playing Diana Rigg in the “Waiting for Gorgo” sketch and love Mike’s random elaborate golfing outfit at the end of the ep.
Wow, now I feel kinda good about getting this puppy on tape the first time around.
I genuinely like Leonard Maltin, if only for his ability to have fun at his own expense. I thought the bits with him and Pearl being all bitchy at each other were fun. I also flash back to his appearance in Gremlins 2 where -in a very weird bit of fourth-wall-breakery- he pans the first Gremlins movie before he’s attacked by the titular critters (and suddenly gives the film a “10” in a desperate attempt to save himself).
“Waiting for Gorgo” is one of those skits that works on a sheer ridiculousness level, and mostly for the fake audience’s amazingly over-the-top reactions. Particularly the Arsenio-Hall-esque whoop-whoop-whoop. “Whiskey and cigarettes” is a great capper for the bit.
Which leads me to completely agree with #7 Colossus Prime… I love how insane the universe the SOL inhabits is. Their gag timing and general obliviousness is great, and combined with their bizarre turns of phrase (“Thank you, won’t we?”), it makes for some wonderful absurdist humor.
The movie. Movie movie movie. Such a boiled little loaf of organ meat you are, movie. Without the goofiness found in the Japanese monster movies that made them somewhat bearable (sorry kids, but the Godzillas and Gameras in general don’t do a whole lot for me… possibly because I don’t really think that era had the strongest riffing, but the interminable Japanese pacing plays into it heavy), it’s basically very dry and stiff, and it manages to make the complete devastation of a major metropolis boring. Doesn’t help that our principle characters aren’t very likable. Or memorable.
I can’t remember; were there any “Born Free” riffs in this one? I figure since Bill Travers starred in both movies, it might seem possible.
Oh, by the way, I just checked Travers’ entry on IMDB. Apparently, he passed away in 1994 in an English town called…Dorking.
Shout should release it on DVD, Ive never seen it.
thats right, I expect Shout to put out episodes based on what I dont own and havent seen. dont judge me.
(unrelated sort of, people should stop complaining about season 1, with out season 1 the collection will never be complete)
“oh, excuse me.. Mr. Coffee”
Wow, even Turkey Day Blood Beast got more play than this one. This is a good one, not great but good. Guys in rubber suits are almost always good for a few laughs. It was nice that Leonard Maltin was a good sport, even after all the ripping on his movie guide ratings. Like I said, I like it but it’s not in heavy rotation.
Since the nanites csan repair themselves, I don’t think they died in the crash. One MSTie long ago speculated, they repaired the SOL, and they sent it back into space.
Dull stuff. The chief point of interest for me is that this movie, rather than Gamera which came a few years later, seems to be the first to give us the character of an annoying child who has an inexplicable bond with the creature. Mind you, it was Gamera‘s innovation to make the child a delusional psychopath, so it’s not a total ripoff of other movies’ ideas.
Worst. Episode. Ever.
Well, not really. But all the Gamera movies bore me and I don’t understand what my fellow MSTies enjoy about man-in-a-rubber-suit monster movies. There’s nothing goofy, bizarre, or “the hell?” in this movie that we haven’t seen before in those equally boring Gamera movies. Insufferable little kid? Check. Miniature models being destroyed? Check. Crowds of hysterical people? Check. Basically, the choice of movie was fatal to this episode and the riffing could never make this worth watching more than once. (We already had five Gamera episodes. Why did we need “Gorgo,” too?)
I agree with the majority opinion on the thread that the host segments easily outshine the movie and riffing. (On the other hand, outperforming a turd isn’t hard.) “Waiting for Gorgo” is nice and Maltin’s appearance is pretty nice (although I wish they had referenced “Laserblast”). But those host segments aren’t good enough to make this episode worth watching.
This is probably the least good episode of the SciFi years (and I love the SciFi years, so I’m not busting them). Mostly because the movie is just tedious and uninteresting and gives them very little to work with. And I always thought it was lame that they had Leonard Maltin on and allowed him to plug his book after they made fun of him so much. Just not necessary in my opinion.
Never been a big favorite. At least part of that has to be because the main running joke didn’t make much sense to me when I first saw it. Either because of my age or where I grew up, I *never* heard anyone use “dork” in a sexual context. It was *always* used as a semi-synonym for “nerd” and “geek.”
Mike and the Bots were right in ragging on the radio reporter. Gorgo was tearing down electrical lines throughout Longon, so who was this joker talking to?
A REALLY lost episode for me: Never seen it, missed it completely.
Apparently I wasn’t missing much, based on the comments here.
Still, it would be good to see just ONCE in my lifetime. I guess I could check out YouTube.
(My computer’s too friggin’ SLOW, though!)
GORGO! “The Vice President’s unimaginative campaign slogan!”
I don’t love this episode, but I don’t hate it either. It’s somewhere in the middle with genuinely good riffing in places that just gets totally bogged down by the dull tedium of the actual movie. In tribute to Leonard Maltin: Two and a half stars.
Counting plankton is hard.
Definitely an underrated episode. Not phenomenal, mind you, but having watched it multiple times, I can claim that it grows on you. I thought it was dull the first couple times through, but there’s a lot of good material if you appreciate subtley and understandment, which I do. Or if you appreciate Britain jokes, which are good too.
In general, I find that the first couple viewings of any episode involve too much of paying attention to the movie to recognize all the details and plot points. Sometimes that’s a problem, but once you get past it, you can more easily focus on the riffing as the movie slides by more smoothly. And in this case, the payoff was certainly worth it.
So I disagree that the host segments are superior to the riffing; the riffing is at least as good, and probably better overall IMO.
“It’s a coelacanth death cult!”
“Why does that octopus have a hacksaw?”
“GORGO will kill your whole family! COME get KILLED by GORGO!”
“Good-bye England – you’ve been crushed by giANT LIZards!”
Good stuff.
I’m especially fond of how Crow ruthlessly disposes of menacing weasels to protect the precious eggs. Badass.
If you like British food, or English weather, then you’ll love British Monster Movies…..
Gorgo. What a fun episode. It even has Leonard Maltin!
I have this one on tape. I never knew they only showed it that one day. So-so episode but I remember watching this movie as a kid on some late night movie host’s show.
Nah, come on kids…this ep is great. Yes, the Irish/Beckett jokes are a standout but the riffing is consistent. There are not just Beckett jokes in this, lots of Irish cultural and literary references that are hilarious…if you get them.
But the women! Watching this film makes you realize why so many monster movies have a romantic subplot. Looking at a bunch of narly men chewing the scenery for nearly two hours is a might bit tedious. Where is a Lori Nelson or Faith Domereque, or Barbra Gel Geddes when you need her?
I urge everyone to run over to metube and watch this, if you haven’t, and judge this for thyself.
A-