Yuku free message boards

Continued.... This film must have had a long shooting schedule or a delayed opening. The scenes of Gorgo being driven around Piccadilly Circus on an early Sunday morning was photographed around late September, 1959. (The film finally premiered in the US in January 1961). The London Pavilion Cinema which was located on the edge of the Circus clearly displayed Hammer's "The Mummy" which opened on 25th.
The film was photographed in, among other places, Dublin at Coliemore Harbour - which a friend and I visited a few years ago and it had hardly changed in the forty odd years since it was shot. It took some time to figure out where this scene was shot and I entered the information on the IMDB. Then months were spent at MGM's British Studios in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire shooting interiors and miniatures.
I worked at the studio for a few months in 1968 and Tom Howard was my boss. Apparently his secretary told me that he was very proud of his contribution to "Gorgo".
One of my co-workers, who had been at the studio for many years, one day took me down to the props department and pointed to the far rear of the building. Sitting on a rack was Gorgo's head! I have been kicking myself ever since for not trying to claim it as the following year the entire studio was bulldozed!!
A beautiful studio gone forever.
The backlot still had set remains from "The Liquidator", Hammer's "Quatermass and the Pit" (tube station) and what remained of the chateau and bridge from "The Dirty Dozen".
"2001" had recently vacated the studio and I recall seeing a miniature of the moonbus sitting in the window of an office and the big white dish, which was on the 'Discovery', sat rotting on the backlot.

GORGO: Monsters and Miniatures by Ray Mercer A.S.C.
From the December 1959 issue of American Cinematographer.

Technical Excellence of "Gorgo", new horror film, result of improved
techniques, faster color negative.
By Ray Mercer A.S.C.

MINIATURE SETS, a plethora of special effects, and a huge animated monster combine to make the King Brothers' forthcoming "Gorgo" one of the most technically interesting productions ever made in a London Studio. Because Ray Mercer and Co. was comissioned to put the
finishing touches on the production's special effects in Hollywood after shooting on the London sound stage was completed, the assignment took me to England in an advisory capacity.

On August 10th (1959), MGM's huge Elstree sound stage, long a closed and closely-guarded set, was finally opened to visitors. What they saw there left even the most hardened studio veterans goggle-eyed.

Not that the scene was wholly unexpected. Those in the industry had known for nearly two months that Hollywood's King Brothers were in production on a million dollar feature about a monster that cuts a destructive swath through the heart of London. They were aware - the professionals at least - that such a picture would require extensive use of miniatures. But they were scarcely prepared for the magnitude of the elaborate miniature structures which occupied the entire area of the largest sound stage in Europe.
Here, in the stage's tank - which is some 300 feet in length - were erected a River Thames setting in miniature, scaled approximately 1-to-30. Complete to the most minute detail were the Tower Bridge and Pool of London, clear up to and including Westminster, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. More painstaking care could have not got into the
scale reproduction of these historical landmarks of British Culture.

When the King Brothers first conceived their project nearly two years ago, they reasoned that for real success more was needed than unmotivated and indescriminate destruction on the screen. The primary requisite was a story - a rattling good one. Six script revisions finally netted a tense yarn of Man's stupidity and greed, climaxed by action of a huge anguished monster over 200 feet tall taking a short-cut through the heart of London to rescue it's kidnapped offspring - a "junior-sized" monster a mere 40 feet in height. In this understandable act of maternal devotion, Mama Monster naturally took the most direct path to her objective. She could hardly be blamed if she ignored such obstacles such as the Tower Bridge and the Houses of Parliament which
stood in her way.

The Mama Monster I found to be one of the most outstanding jobs of design and construction of this sort used in any motion picture to date. It consisted of a molded rubber body operated by a man encased within it, and having a control panel almost as complicated as a jet airliner's through which the Monster's life-like action was set in motion and controlled. Besides the usual movement of forepaws and feet, the Monster could be made to swing it's lethal tail in a 180 degree
arc, twitch it's ears, blink it's red-tinged eyes, and roll back it's lips in a spine-tingling snarl before opening it's ponderous jaws to receive some hapless victim. With this full-scale monster figure, the King Brothers were able to achieve greater realism than would have been possible with a small-scale animated figure - the bane of all previous monster pictures.

MATTE SHOTS ALSO USED

In addition to the extensive use of miniature sets and the two
monster figures, the production also involved extensive traveling matte and split-screen shots, underwater sequences, and combinations of all these. This required a screen director having substantial experience in
the incredible intricacies involved in the shooting. For this task the King Brothers selected Eugene Lourie, well-known in both Paris and Hollywood. Cinematographer Freddie Young did the photography and Tom Howard, another British cameraman, is credited with the special effects executed at Elstree.

According to the King Brothers, the time was at hand for a bang-up big-league monster picture because of certain recent technical developments which would enable them to achieve greater realism in the action. One of these was the availability of Estman's new fast color negative. The increased sensitivity of this new film would ensure better color results in the slow-speed camerawork required in photographing the miniature sets in course of destruction. Other assets were the numerous recent new developments in miniature set construction, and in the improved techniques of construction and operation of the monsters themselves.

From a technical standpoint alone, the production of "Gorgo" is worthy of detailed study. For nothing like it has ever been produced on a Hollywood sound stage.