The Great Stone Face

 

My partner’s brother Roddy is a movie buff too. He has learning difficulties, which partly means he’s even more certain about what he likes than most of us, and what he likes is Hammer Horror. As he’s with us for Christmas, we’re going en famille to the digitally restored DRACULA tomorrow, but this afternoon we ran Terence Fisher’s lesser-known THE GORGON, also with Cushing and Lee.

It’s a slow-paced bit of thick-ear, with a Greek gorgon rather oddly transplanted to Germany, and an unusual restraint shown in revealing the monster, perhaps due to the makeup and special effects departments’ inability to muster a convincing headful of serpents for the titular mythological beast-woman. They really needed Ray Harryhausen to pull this one off.

Then there’s a distinctly Scooby Doo shortage of suspects — there is precisely one. Essentially all we have to see us through to the climax is atmosphere (dry ice and lighting, sets, Peter Cushing and what Scorsese calls “the precision of his movements within the frame”, James Bernard’s yowling score) and a few petrifications, though at the end there’s a rather lovely effect as we are startled by the decapitated gorgon Megaera’s transmutation into — the only other woman in the film!

THINGS SAID BY RODDY DURING “THE GORGON”

“Is this black and white?”

“Where’s he going?”

“Who’s this?”

“What’s he doing?”

“Where’s he going?”

“I don’t think it’s her.”

“I can’t see a thing.”

“Where’s Christopher Lee going now?”

“Uh oh.”

“That did the trick.”

Harryhausen can’t help but make monsters more monstrous than they’re supposed to be! His cyclops has goat legs, his troglodyte has a horn on his head, and Medusa is kitted out with scales and a serpent’s body. Generosity, that’s what I call it.

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Frankenstein Must Be Deployed
• Roddy, Prince of Darkness