The Mighty Gorga

On a hunch I picked this one up at the local video retailer, where it was reduced down to ten bucks, thinking it might afford a few laughs. And I was not disappointed. This one is thigh slappingly funny, from the giant ape, whose anatomy consists of a bad mask and two furry gloves (we never see him in full shot), a rubber dolly dinosaur which seems to be doing impressions of Geoffrey Rush in "Shine" and a heroine who....pauses.....more.....than.....William......Shatner. This woman even screams in a monotone. Compulsory viewing.

Grab a dozen or so of your friends. Make sure one of them has a camcorder. Have another put on a (cheap) rented gorilla suit from a Halloween store. Finally, go traipsing around somewhere outside where there's vegetation. (Your backyard will do.) And if your little brother has a plastic toy dinosaur you can bring along, so much the better.

I guarantee that whatever you end up recording will turn out as good as or better than "The Mighty Gorga." It really is that bad. Which is often a good thing, except in this case there's too much boredom in between the bouts of jaw-droppingly horrendous "special effects." Yeah, they're special, all right. Some of the specialest ever seen.

Therefore, since laughter is the best medicine, the Good Doctor can recommend watching only about 15 minutes of this atrocity. But figuring out which 15 minutes is the trick.

A couple chases an ape (in a far more ludicrous costume than was in "A*P*E", if you can believe in) into the wild to get it for the circus. A lame dime-story dinosaur also shows up. Naturally both feeble monsters have to "fight". While it was better then "One Million AC/DC" (what movie isn't??!!?) that was on the double-feature DVD I got, David L. Hewitt proves himself to be a worse director than his friend, Al Adamson (!!!!!). But the funniest thing about this film is that it took 2 writers to pen it!!!

My Grade:F+

Something Weird DVD Extras: Shorts: 'Nightmare', 'Prehistoric Days, and 'Diane the Jungle Girl and her Gorilla of Love'; explotation art Gallery; Trailers for :Valley of the Dragons", "Lost Continent", "Equinox", "the Lock Ness Terror", "The Cyclops", "Island of the Dinosaurs", "The Cyclops", "Tom Thumb", "One Million AC/DC". and "Sound of Horrors"

Easter Egg: Vintage car ad

The Mighty Gorga is a prime example of how not to shoot a kaiju movie on a budget. Whether or not this is better or worse than A*P*E is up for debate but it's a very close competition. The film problems are numerous and obvious, be it the giant gorilla costume is oh-so-very poor with its fixed bugged-out eyes, poor plotting, painfully slow pacing, non-existent acting with many lines that are obviously flubbed, shoddy mattes, over-reliance on unrelated stock footage, horrendous sound mixing with the stock music completely dominates the dialogue rendering it inaudible at points and a hilarious plastic T-Rex. The only real thing I can give it credit for is the location work which is a pretty good stand-in for a jungle. The Mighty Gorga is just a distressing experience that doesn't even enter the realm of so bad it's good. Whether or not this has any merit is certainly a question, the racism certainly doesn't help, but I can say like A*P*E it's a must-see in terms of Z-grade movie making.

What can you say about this fine film? My pals and I enjoy getting together a few Fridays a month and watching "bad" cinema - anything and everything - Turkish Star Wars rip-offs, Indonesian ghost movies, gory Vampire movies from Brazil, bad American biker movies. Well, after a long line of cheesy gorilla movies - Konga, Mighty Peking Man, etc. we have stumbled upon this....this....thing. The sound recoridng is so bad, which is a shame because you miss LOTS of bad dialogue. Plus the actors flub their lines constantly and keep on going. Obviously the budget for this 1969 epic must have been 100 bucks and some sandwiches, so it all looks like "we got one take and that' sit. Fine. Print. Lets move on." Horrible acting, there are literally NO special effects, just the worst big monkey outfit I have ever seen (the yes of the ape are just glass marbles,no blinking, no nothing). Now, the first twenty minutes of this film are very hard to take, but hang in there - once they get to the "jungle" (its filmed in Simi Valley, California and it looks it) and stumble the nest of a dinosuar, hold on - because it gets good. BAD good. The phoniest T-Rex you ever saw - in fact it lookslike someone holding up a PLASTIC dinosaur toy just in front of the camera lens and shaking it. Anyway - incredibly bad but oh so good. LOTS of laughs.