Ah women
They mess with your head, break your heart or as it is the case in "The Gorgon" turn you to stone! This is one of the only classic movies I've seen featuring a female monster (apart from "Ariel, The Little Mermaid") and that alone is enough reason to check it out. Other damn good reasons to watch "The Gorgon" include: the production company (Hammer), the director (Terence Fisher) and the fact that it's another film pairing two of the most legendary genre icons that ever lived: Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Granted, they share very few scenes together and actually Christopher Lee only appears late in the film, but still their mutual presence adds a whole lot of charm to an already intelligent and atmospheric Gothic chiller. In the small & isolated place of Vandorf, people are regularly murdered during the nights when there's a full moon. They're not sucked dry by vampires or shredded to pieces by werewolves, no
they're gorgonized! Literally turned to stone, as a result of looking straight into the eyes of Magdar; one of three ancient gorgon-creatures with serpents in her hair and suffering from a severely ghoulish personality. University professor Jules Heitz, as well as his son Paul, tries to investigate the peculiar murder cases, but they're obstructed the entire townsfolk and particularly the nervous local Dr. Namaroff (Cushing). Only when the arrogant and straightforward professor Karl Meister (Lee) arrives to help Paul with his investigation, progress is made. "The Gorgon" benefices from the original choice for a monster as well as from the brisk performances and direction. The set pieces and filming locations are visually striking and deeply impressive, most notably all the sequences that take place inside autumn gardens and nearby old castle ruins. My only complaints concern the lack of Grand Guignol, the rather tacky make-up job on Prudence Hyman and the abrupt & disappointing climax. The actual Gorgon creature doesn't look terrifying at all, which is quite a shame.
Review of The Gorgon
