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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I haven’t seen this in a few months, but I love the “You’ll be hearing from from my solicitor” dig at stuffy Brits. I think there’s also an “This simply isn’t done”.
#43: That also produced my favorite moment, after the reporter’s been prattling on stream of consciousness for what seems like over a minute, then it cuts to Gorgo’s mom as Crow(?) roars in perfect synch with her mouth movements, “SHUUUUT – UUUUUUP!!!”
This isn’t one I revisit very often, but I certainly liked it at the time, maybe just because this was the rare movie I’d actually heard of long before it was MSTed, so I was just excited to finally see it. Does this count as the first movie since “I Was A Teenage Werewolf” that was widely known in monster movie circles before the Brains touched it?
#29: I knew someone else would bring up GAP-PAAAAAA (the trailer’s narrator pronounces it like he’s lighting the flaming cheese in a Greek restaurant). Seeing how much duller a Japanese rip-off of Gorgo is makes the British version seem much more entertaining by comparison, so that’s raised my opinion of #909 as well. All I remember about it is a scene where cute widdwe Gappa is wearing headphones for some experiment, and it’s just so adorable it makes you wonder what Pod People would’ve been like if Trumpy had been in that recording session. Most people seem to know it as “Monster From A Prehistoric Planet”, but the monsters don’t come from space, so that title only makes sense if you assume it means they’re leftovers from prehistoric Earth. The copy I saw was “Gappa The Triphibian Monster” (meaning he’s good on land, sea, and air, like G.I.Joe)
Eugene Lourie’s directing debut was also Ray Harryhausen’s first dino-film, “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms”, and he went on to helm it’s rip-off, “The Giant Behemoth”. Gorgo was also influenced by his first film in that his daughter cried at The Beast’s tragic death, so he tried to give the same idea a happier ending with a mother rescuing her baby. But he only directed one other besides those 3, leaving him displeased as being, “Like I was a lion tamer-but with dinosaurs!”, according to a dinosaur film history magazine produced just before Jurassic Park came out.
This same magazine claims the original plan was not to go with the tried and true man in a rubber suit, but have the monsters be Macy’s-Parade-Style balloons! Crikey, now wouldn’t that have been the greatest gift the UK could’ve ever given MST3K!
And as for all the “Dorkin” jokes…they kind of lose their punch if you’re familiar with the comic book and TV work of Evan Dorkin.
The host segments were as good as ever. If you rewatch “I Accuse My Parents”, they actually point out “the great Hank gets to work on the truck today” minutes before the end where they question whether “The Truck Farmer” actually had a truck in it, so I’d say the Women of Gorgo calendar still works, even if it does feel a little forced.
All in all, an appropriately epic…-ish end to MST3K’s most British era, as we drift west to Canada, then revisit euro-trash only to be bogged down South to set the stage for much of season 10…
Mr. B(ob) says:
March 18, 2010 at 10:16 am #19:
“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.”
This was definitely the case with me. My cable company finally added Comedy Central to the line up just as MST3K was finishing its run on Comedy Central.
I’ve tried to watch this episode twice and can only get through about half of it without feeling like I’m wasting time. The riffing just isn’t that good.
As for the comments about the GAMERA episodes in #40: I’ve never really understood why the “quality” of the movie really matters to some MSTies. This show has always and forever been about the riffing–the movie, and how tolerable it is, is really incidental. Yet so many fans continue to highly rate episodes based solely on their enjoyment of the film and not what’s coming from the little silhouettes in front of it. SPACE MUTINY is a perfect example of this. Perhaps I’m missing something, but the riffing in that episode barely exists, and what is there simply is not very funny. Yet so many MSTies continue to rate it as the best episode ever, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s based entirely on their love of the movie, not the riffing.
As for he GAMERA episodes, I tend to agree that most of them aren’t very good. But the first GAMERA is a classic, especially all things concerning the husky Kenny, and GAMER VS. GUIRON is one of my all time favorites. Because the riffing is really great.
#54: “This show has always and forever been about the riffing–the movie, and how tolerable it is, is really incidental.”
Nonsense. It’s like saying that watching (say) a tennis champion roll over a complete idiot is just as entertaining as watching him beat someone who is able to put up some kind of fight. “The talent of his opponent is really incidental,” would you say?
@ “As for he GAMERA episodes, I tend to agree that most of them aren’t very good. ”
One fan’s favorites are another’s losers. I’d love to have any and every Gamera episodes on DVD and I’d trade Final Sacrifice and Puma Man any day for any one of them. Everyone’s got their own idea of what’s a great episode. To me, just saying “Rowsdower” two-hundred times is not comedy, yet many fans think that Final Sacrifice is great in spite of what for me is a below average episode.
Anyone got an opener for Mr. B(ob)’s can of worms?
Re Mike in Po @57.
Mr B @56 is simply expessing the Sampo Rule.
I think Monkey Patrol @54 opens the bigger worm-can.
It’s either weird or a pretty big coincidence that the Sea Hunt/Mike Nelson (the character) references started soon after Mike Nelson became head writer. I seem to recall Sea Hunt being referenced in other movies between Rocketship X-M and Gorgo.
I dutifully taped this when it aired and then loaned it to a friend who accidentally taped over it. I got a new copy from the DAP in 2002 and probably have only watched it a few times since then. I watched it again over the course of this week and had problems staying awake.
This is not to say I did not enjoy the riffing or the host segments, but the movie itself is pretty slow. There also were not many real show stoppers in the riffing.
Two riffs that are probably more prescient now than when the show originally aired:
“He’s sneaking off to bomb the Falklands.”
“This is too hard, lets go put down some Arabs.”
I had no idea what Samuel Beckett looked like prior to this episode, but I enjoyed those riffs.
“We hated ‘Endgame.'”
This show has always attracted very diverse senses of humor. Very passionate posts by all. I have not had the opportunity to see this one. :'(
Probably still rate as a three star ep. Anyone recall one less than three stars? [Leonard Martin, your rating is moot.]
I think I saw this one both times it aired on T.V. But that’s it.
^^^^One of the only episodes I’ve never seen. I give it three stars. ;-)
And I love Gamera. He’s made of turtle meat, after all.
Re: I’m Evil @60. Why would the ‘Bombing the Falkland Islands’ reference be prescient either then or now ? The Falkland Islands War ended some 16 years before this episode aired.
Drat! That should’ve read Maltin, not Martin. :-S
#61: The Wild Wild World of Batwoman might have only gotten 2.5, I’d have to go back and check.
Oh and I lost my train of thought about Lourie before; I meant to add that I wonder what he’d think of his maternal love story getting this treatment. If he thought as little of his dinosaur movies as his quote seemed to imply, I can’t imagine him being as offended as some directors we’ve discussed lately.
I actually really like this episode, though I haven’t seen it in a while. Even with it’s so called “bigger production values” they sure messed up the continuity in the zoo scene. Meh, day and night are pretty much the same, eh?
#61: “Anyone recall one less than three stars?”
I bet when we get to rating KTMA and Season One, we’ll find some 1 and 2 star episodes. Though many of them are good, a few are definitely sub-par.
As I’m sort of skimming over the previous comments of this episode, I can see I’m not alone in thinking this was not the finest hour (and a half) for Mike and the Bots. That is good to see, because this one falls on my “I Love Every Episode of MST3k But These 4” list.
Some episodes grow on you, but this one just never clicks for me, because the movie is just so bloody dull! I absolutely love the episodes with the horribly, bad movies (Monster-a-Go-Go, Manos, Wild Wild World of Batwoman, Red Zone Cuba, etc) because I delight in the masochism of suffering through some of those cinematic turds… Well, this movie is definitely horrible, but it is just dullsville, baby! I watched this one about 3 weeks ago, and it is still just so bland. So, I don’t blame the riffing, I blame the source material. Too much tedium and very little ripe material for M&tBs to sink their teeth into like so many other fun giant monster movies. I think they wanted to give Mike a shot at a Giant Monster movie to riff on, because he didn’t get a shot at the Gamera or Godzilla movies as host. This was probably all they could get their hands on, but it just didn’t work.
I’ll revisit it somewhere down the road, but I fear this one will remain on my list of 4 least favorite MST3k episodes for some time.
I just rewatched “Waiting for Gorgo” on YouTube and nearly CRIED I was laughing so hard. As with the first time I saw it, when Mike picks up Servo and throws him offscreen I just LOST it.
RE: #64: I’m not a medium, I’m a petite asked:
Why would the ‘Bombing the Falkland Islands’ reference be prescient either then or now ?
Last month the UK started drilling for oil of the coast of the Falklands (or Malvinas for any Argentines out there). The Argentine government has gotten involved and there has been quite a diplomatic kerfuffle recently. No one is going to war the the talks have been heated. The UN may get involved (cue scary music). No bombing of the Falklands but just that the tiny island with more sheep than people has made it back to the news as a dispute between UK and Argentina.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8533860.stm
Sorta surprised you have not heard, but then again I’m an international affairs wonk.
The riff stuck out to me since hearing all the news lately was the first reference I’ve heard to the Falklands in forever, and then I watch a 12 year old MST ep where they make what could amount to a topical reference.
I saw this one through internet distribution only a year or two ago, and I admit I found it boring at first. But the more I watched it, I found it very funny. It’s a strictly middle-of-the-road episode, which is a good thing in my book. I especially love the last 20-30 minutes with the giant “Gorgo” rampaging through London. The riffs are all over the place. Making fun of Brits, Elton John references, toiler humor, adding dialogue to the Gorgo’s mouth movements, it’s great…!
Hmmm,
I want to like this one, but after a few viewings it’s still kinda bland & sleep inducing. Neither the riffing or the badness of the film really click. Leonard Maltin is funny with Pearl, but that’s about it. Watchable but not a favorite.
Favorite riff (I love the absurdity of this)
“This new Cool Ranch flavored scuba air isn’t very good.”
@55:
I guess my assertion that the “quality” of the film is incidental is based on the fact that there are a number of movies which are without question some of the most boring, incompetent pieces of crap I’ve ever seen which also give us some of the better MST3K episodes: MONSTER A GO-GO, MANOS, THE SKYDIVERS, for example. There are also a number of films that I find to be “watchable”–THE TOUCH OF SATAN, MERLIN’S SHOP OF MYSTICAL WONDERS, JACK FROST, etc.–that could be enjoyed on their own for their campy qualities. But what makes them good episodes of MST3K is that the riffing is good. The show, the comedy, is what makes MST3K for me, not the movie alone.
Let me put it this way: I could watch SPACE MUTINY on its own and laugh my head off; it’s utterly hilarious. But the riffing in the episode of MST3K in which it is featured is not hilarious–therefore, the episode fails.
That’s why I say the “quality” (in quotes because they’re all varying degrees of bad) of the movie is incidental. Because:
SPACE MUTINY = funny
SPACE MUTINY + MST3K = not funny
MONSTER A GO-GO = painfully, painfully not funny
MONSTER A GO-GO + MST3K = funny
JACK FROST = funny
JACK FROST + MST3K = funny
This one surprised me as I thought a “big budget” movie would make fine fodder. The problem was that is was a bad movie on every level.
The British make good sci-fi, just not this time.
Mike & the bots did the best they could, but the movie was not lame enough to be funny and not good enough to support itself.
I have it on tape (after Catalina Caper I learned my lesson about waiting ’till “next time.”) but seldom watch it. Others (Viking Women, Jack Frost, Sinbad) I can watch over and over again.
To explain why I think the movie is the fatal flaw in this episode: it’s not that I’m more interested in the movie than the riffing. But for me to understand more jokes and to bask in the insanity of many of these films, I at least have to have an idea of what the #$%!! is going on in the film. Also, I like it when the film has some sort of unique quality that is unseen in other MST3K films.
IMO, “Gorgo” has two main problems: First, we have previously seen EVERYTHING that this movie shows us. It doesn’t help that we’ve seen it all five times before in the “Gamera” movies, none of which I’m fond of. This is a drawback for me, because when nothing stands out, I don’t feel like I’m getting my money/time’s worth. (This is the same reason I don’t watch “American Idol.” After the first season, everything was the same, just with a new batch of hopefuls.)
Gorgo’s second problem is that the print is that all the characters all seem to blend together into a shapeless mass of British accents and turtlenecks. I can’t tell ANY of the characters’ names, except Dorkin (and only because of the riffs on his name). And I watched the movie just last Monday! When you don’t know who anyone is, it’s REALLY hard to sit there for 90 minutes without getting bored, despite the best efforts of the riffers.
Monkey Patrol:
Wow, in two paragraph-length posts (#54 & 74) you managed to say a lot, yet prove nothing. Plenty of people find MST’s take on Space Mutiny to be funny, and it’s not out of any love for the source film. You said it yourself, “Perhaps I’m missing something…” Thanks for contributing to this discussion about Gorgo.
@#77:
I’m not trying to prove anything, though. My original post was a response to someone saying they don’t understand why people like an episode that features what he finds to be a nothing-special movie (GORGO). My response to that was that I don’t really understand why the movie matters–I personally judge the goodness or funniness of an episode based on whether or not the riffing was any good. It really doesn’t have anything to do with SPACE MUTINY or MONSTER A GO-GO, or any of the other movies I mentioned in particular–those were just good examples of what I was talking about.
I’m sure a lot of other people have similar examples that fit the above “equation”. I was basically trying to say that the quality of the movie independent of the riffing is incidental to the success of the show because the riffing IS the show. There are plenty of MST3K’d movies that are horrible on their own that are transmuted into gold by the comedic skill of the writers and performers–which is essentailly the comedic basis of the show. There are a handful that are entertaining on their own to which MST3K fails to add funny riffing.
Again, not meant to be a kick against SPACE MUTINY.
@#76:
I completely understand, and I believe that the best episodes of MST3K have the exact quality you’re talking about. There’s a harmony that happens with the right type of movie and the writing/riffing. I’m sure that was the main factor with the selection of the shows, and of course they didn’t always find that harmony.
I’m fairly sure I have this on tape on somewhere, I’ll have to look. This one is sort of dull at first but it doesn’t put me to sleep. I’ll have to watch this again because it’s probably been years since the last time. ‘Paid for by exorbitant taxes on Rod Stewart and Pete Townshend’ Few shows reference Oliver Cromwell, but this one did!
Re: I’m Evil @71. Fair enough friend, I will have to grant the current prescience re Las Malvinas, but I still maintain that prescience back then is a bit of stretch :)
It’s a painful episode where I need to get psyched up to watch. The host segments are fair and the only two items I recall off-hand is William Sylvester’s smirk during the ‘Gorgo’ parade, and the toy boat battle. The riffing is forgettable.
I see alot of people say they can’t find certain episodes like Gorgo for example. I’ve bought alot of my collection at cheesyflix.com.
http://www.cupandblade.com/store/catalog/index.php?cPath=21
Man, no one (even me in my first post) has mentioned them randomly making “Rowr” sounds to make it seem like Gorgo is interacting with the cast. Like when someone answers a phone and Mike gives a “Rowr?” And I think at one point they do one, wait for a lign and then do the second one despondantly.
Great stuff.
>>>day and night are pretty much the same, eh?
Well, remember, a morning without orange juice (or maybe it’s apples or something, I dunno) is like a day without sunshine, and a day without sunshine is like, you know, NIGHT. :-)
Anyone here able to translate (or transcribe) the Gaelic dialogue from the rowboat scene? “Hum kydle ik un kydle em de sydle ik!” Or something like that. “Doesn’t sound like “welcome” in any language.”
BTW, anyone else get the (surely unintentional) vibe that Joe and Sam were a gay couple?
This movie reviewer got the same vibe about the two guys in “Godzilla Vs. Megalon.”
http://teleport-city.com/wordpress/?p=558
@68:
“I bet when we get to rating KTMA and Season One, we’ll find some 1 and 2 star episodes. Though many of them are good, a few are definitely sub-par”
Perhaps, but I expect the gaggle of folks who are only interested in the Sci-Fi eps to visit here a lot less once we get through with season 10, so we’ll probably be left with the fans of the whole series.
“Poor guy was only there for take your brother to work day”
This one just didn’t click with me, even though it has great host segments and some really funny riffs. I also haven’t watched it in quite a while so I’ll pass on my full observation until after I see it again.
#85: Anyone here able to translate (or transcribe) the Gaelic dialogue from the rowboat scene?
This comes from Skenderberg’s MST Blog:
(mst3kfanguide.blogspot.com/2007/01/909-gorgo.html)
RE: #81 I’m not a medium, I’m a petite
No worries. Also, my apologies: Rereading my second post it could come off as “how could you not know this,” which was not my intention. That post was written with the spirit of enthusiasm and interest rather than pedantry.
And if anyone is still reading:
Don’t give the monster a rifle!
Servo: You know, this could put some people in “hospital.” Even people who attend “university.”
I love that. In fact, that line could probably apply to the posting-wars going on above in this thread.
“McRoar! O’Growl!”
This movie provides me a good opportunity to advance the following theory of linguistics:
Of course, when the Irish language first began in its ancient form, it wasn’t written using the Latin alphabet. Over the centuries, the language, like English, has evolved and changed, and these days it is written with Latin letters. Unfortunately, from the point of view of an English speaker, the spelling currently used in Irish has basically SFA to do with how it’s pronounced. It seems to me that this feature of the language must have been created as a giant prank on those “filthy Sassenach” so that the Gaelic-speakers of Ireland could laugh in secret amusement at English-speaking tourists trying in vain to pronounce the name of the pub down the street. Even Irish people, namely author Eoin Colfer, whose own given name is pronounced “Owen”, have noted this feature of the language. In his H2G2 book And Another Thing…, Colfer refers to an Irish woman whose name is spelled “Aoibheannhi” or some such, but pronounced “Brenda.” Clearly, this is an intentional example of obfuscatory language used to confuse outsiders. Thank you for your time.
this is the second episode in a row where mike uses the name “Poopdeck Pappy” to describe a character. always made me laugh when i watched popeye cartoons.
Re “dork”: In the USA, the word was apparently used as a synonym for “penis” at least as far back as the 1950s. Getting from there to being a synonym for “f_ck” isn’t much of a stretch, I guess, but this episode is also the first time I ever heard it used as a verb. Maybe it’s a Wisconsin/Minnesota/etc thing?
“Putz” is another word that can mean both “penis” and “idiot / geek / etc.” Oddly (or not) enough, I don’t think either word has ever been used as a derogatory term for “man” in the same way that multiple synonyms for “vagina” have been used as a derogatory term for “woman.”
I’m glad someone else recognized the use of the “Dorkin” as a kind of naughty riff.
Mike: “It doesn’t even work!”
Crow: “Oh, it works, Mike.”
For me, replay-worthy moments:
*Servo: “Her Majesty’s S. S Over Easy”.
*Crow: (as the guys in scuba gear are in backflip position to make the plunge into the water) “Hey guys? I’m just gonna hang it out over the side here”.
*Servo: “Don’t give the monster a rifle!”
*Mike: after the exhausting battle of securing the monster at Dorkin’s, the phone rings inside the guys’ quarters and after a fed-up Sam answers and hands the phone to a weary Joe, Mike does a hilarious “RAWWWRR!” on the other end.
*Mike: toward the end, as Mama Gorgo is being attacked, electrocuted and whatever else, while she’s rocking back and forth with mouth wide open, Mike, with perfect timing, matches her movements with a huge, doubled-over-like guffaw.
“Getting from there to being a synonym for “f_ck” isn’t much of a stretch, I guess, but this episode is also the first time I ever heard it used as a verb. Maybe it’s a Wisconsin/Minnesota/etc thing?”
As a lifelong Wisconsinite, I can say that this was the first time I’d heard it used as a verb, too (and until reading a brief note in a Far Side collection, I had never known it was used for “penis” too). Around here, a dork is simply a person who’s lame or dumb without really realizing it – basically somebody who’s awkward and unpopular, but ignores that fact or is just unintentionally goofy. This is in contrast to nerds (bookish, dull, intellectual) and geeks (anti-mainstream or over-enthusiastic about stuff they like).
However, I *am* very familiar with the practice of substituting virtually any word that sounds remotely like “f***” in place of it – like “fork you” or “eat your forkin’ food” when referring to actual utensils. So “dork” is hardly a stretch in that respect . . . and with “Dorkin” already sounding like a verb, it must have been a natural to jump to the innuendo jokes.
Gorgo contains one of my favorite and oft used riffs: Large Bob. Can use it for many British Movies and some that aren’t.
My wife’s favorite riff is “What is that octopus doing with that hacksaw” during the diving bell scene.
Average episode. But still watchable (if I’m not overly tired….It can induce sleep)