"Gorgo"
What is really fun about British movies
is their linear plots. Beast appears, gets rowdy, buggers off.
They proudly hail that native son, Wm. 'The Bard' Shakespeare,
who so obviously influenced this movie, 'Gorgo, A Midsummer's
Nightmare' with piquant and an affecting immediacy that so rarely
escapes notice, even when we dig through six feet of concrete
with our fingernails
trying to avoid it.
While Tonka Trawler floats majestically through the North Atlantic
in search of magma displacements heretofore unknown to anyone
with a basic knowledge of tectonics, our heroes, fresh from studying
alien artifacts and taming 'born free' lion cubs, scuba
through the murk, perpetual fog, and paleolithic landfills before
stumbling onto the title character. Gorgo, the low-rent leezard
leezard leezard, causes the ship to founder so that it is forced
to limp into the Harbor of Darkness where the locals scream at
them in ancient Assyrian about 'viscosity'. Here we discover that
lovable lad, Sean, who manages to do absolutely nothing for the
entire picture.
Our heroes /treasure hunters/kidnappers/extortionists then lock
onto Gorgo's merchandising potential, and vanquish it with flaming
campfire logs, steel reinforced martini shakers, and leftover
cider. As Gorgo swings goofily from the mizenmast's fo'c's'le
ay-matey arrrgh, our heroes *finally* get a change of clothes
and U-Haul their prize through downtown London past a cheering
throng of two, and make farthings by the bucket leasing Gorgo
to the Dorkin Man who declares a national holiday. Obviously,
St. Patrick missed one of those Hiberian reptiles.
And a nasty one it was, too, because Mommyzilla shows up and boy
is she ticked. As the outer islands of Empire are smashed to crumptets,
the Royal Navy is called out to save the day, inconveniently forgetting
that they invented sonar, but somehow managing to launch fighter
jets from the decks of destroyers. All is for naught, however,
and NATO is then commissioned to help by gawking through binoculars
a lot, and firing torpedoes at each other, which only drives Mommy
ashore and up the Thames
where she proceeds to destroy various landmarks and gets disco
fever. The Prince of Wales stiffens upper lips by dispatching
the Mike Dukakis tank brigade and hordes of Eagle Scouts to guard
cobblestoned intersections and soccer bleachers.
However, Mom will not be thwarted in her purpose, in spite of
lacking digital effects and Rick Baker, she scares London crowds
into stampeding for their lives, which takes up the rest of the
movie. Peter Arnett is recalled from Club Med to give commentary
as the RAF sprays Mom with what appears to be bottle rockets left
over from celebrating Elizabeth II's corgi finally getting spayed.
With a Shakespearean flaunt, all's well that ends well, because
Mom finds Baby, they stroll happily away into the surf,
London is reduced to cinders, and Sean will presumably hang with
his new buddies until he matures into Trussman and can have a
monster of his very own to exploit.
Meanwhile, the boys have fun with migratory fowl, weasel carnage,
loopy existential one-act plays to thunderous applause by thankfully
no encores, a calendar bimbo hunt, and (literally) a two-bit Ned
and Nate Nanite carnival complete with ironic freaks. But the
best part, the very *bestest* part, was a cameo by Leonard 'Siskel'
Maltin, and Pearl glowing like she just tackled and trapped Robert
Redford deep within Castle Forrester. Many happy endings all around.