The further and further I explore into these strange lost worlds, the worse and worse it gets…
THE MIGHTY GORGA
What we have here, folks, is a bona fide classic. This is the sort of film that separates the men from the boys, the women from the girls. Anyone can laugh their way through Plan 9 from Outer Space, and most who would read this site can get through far worse. But The Mighty Gorga is a true challenge. Pretty much everyone agrees that it’s the worst King Kong rip off ever made, even worse than the 1976 King Kong where the monkey die and everybody a-cry, or that one where Linda Hamilton brings King Kong back to life so he can save the future from the terminators. Pretty sure it was something like that. But forget it. The Mighty Gorga is so much worse than any of those that it’s hardly worth mounting a comparison. The is bad filmmaking at its most potent. Bad movie moonshine, if you will. It tests the viewer on every level, really makes you earn that scene where the witch doctor beseeches Gorga and Gorga fights a plastic dinosaur toy. But the reward, should one endure, is not unlike the plastic treasure the cast discovers at the end of the film. In fact, one could argue that The Mighty Gorga itself is an allegory for the trials of watching The Mighty Gorga, making it one of the very first “meta” films that are so common today. Or it could be a movie about a guy in a ratty monkey suit.
#1 by Blake Matthews on July 17, 2008 - 1:34 pm
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I read about this movie in the special Dinosaur issue of “Starlog” back in 1993. I kept thinking, “no budget crap? dinosaurs? 50-ton gorilla? How can you do all that on no budget?” Oh how naive I once was.
#2 by Ed on July 17, 2008 - 2:45 pm
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I love reading about that Florida film industry as well. There’s some great stuff in older issues of Fangoria.
#3 by KeithA on July 17, 2008 - 3:05 pm
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I reallt want to write a book about the Florida film industry. But then, I have a book on Italian sword and sandal films that is a 75% finished outline that has been ignored for the better part of a year now. i really need to finish at least ONE book, so I can get one of those people who bugs me to quit goofing off and get back to work. I mean, those Florida guys aren’t going to be around for much longer. Doris is gone, and looking at Friedman, every day he wakes up without having died in his sleep is another little miracle. I own a lot of Something Weird DVDs just because he did a commentary track (I wish the same could be said of Harry Novak, but the commentary tracks I’ve heard from here are pretty awful).
Florida film industry side note: My sophomore year in college, I dated a girl whose stepmother was Babette Sherill, one of the stars of Death Curse of Tartu. I wish I’d known then what I know now. She would have been a fun interview.
#4 by The Rev. D.D. on July 18, 2008 - 10:26 am
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Cool!
I wish I knew someone connected to someone in a B-movie. I know someone who was in a Billy Joel video, and Children of the Corn was filmed in and around my home town (but I don’t know any locals who might’ve been in it as extras so who cares, right?) and that’s about it.
*sigh*
Ever since reading Mr. Begg’s review of TMG I have been really wanting to see it. Mostly because of that godawful T-Rex puppet fighting the dude in the ratty monkey suit. It’s probably not enough reason, but then I’ve watched movies for less reason than that, so…
#5 by KeithA on July 18, 2008 - 11:50 am
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It better be enough reason, because the movie doesn’t give you much more of a reason besides that scene.
#6 by HP on July 19, 2008 - 8:50 am
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Like everyone else here, I have a great deal of affection for ultra-low-budget films. I admire the way the dogged tenacity of these small-time hucksters so completely outstrips their talent. That said, I have to admit it: I was completely defeated by The Mighty Gorga. It’s the only low-budget movie I’ve ever seen that actually made me angry. I started to get peeved at the filmmakers about halfway through, and by the end of the movie I was stomping around the house muttering and upsetting the cats.
I was only able to calm myself down by concocting a theory that Mighty Gorga was some kind of Redneck Mafia money-laundering scheme. You know, you hijack a couple semis full of cigarettes, divert the proceeds into the production of The Mighty Gorga, then skim off 90% of the film’s budget to buy drugs and hookers for corrupt cops and politicians. Which, come to think of it, would be a pretty cool movie.
#7 by MatthewF on July 20, 2008 - 5:38 am
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it the disconnect between the fantastic premise…”go-go dancer falls into the underground world to help king arthur fight a giant squid” …and the lousy execution as you realise that the producers never had any intention of even trying to live up to the concept.
also, I will get this movie mixed up with Gorga… which is of course a boring movie about a man in a dinosaur suit who gets taken to a circus by a showman
#8 by MatthewF on July 20, 2008 - 5:39 am
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…by which I meant Gorgo….with an ‘o’… damn those tricky vowels
#9 by KeithA on July 23, 2008 - 9:33 am
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See, it’s happening already!