Gorgo (1961)
VCI DVD - 2000
VCI DVD - 2005
Gorgo: Behind the Scenes - 9:51
Written by Tom Weaver, Narrated by Steve Garfinkel
This brisk featurette consists of a narrated essay set to film clips, photographs and storyboards with music from Angelo Francesco Lavagnino's score playing in the background. It begins with director Eugene Lourie and his debut feature, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms before transitioning into the genesis of Gorgo. The fast-talking narrator reads several quotes from Lourie and producer Frank King among others. One interesting fact offered here is that while the film began playing in commercial theaters in 1961, its world premiere in Tokyo actually took place in December 1960. This featurette packs in as much information about Gorgo as it can at just under ten minutes.
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VCI DVD - 2013
VCI BRD - 2013
Shout!Factory DVD - Mystery Science Theater 3000: 25th Anniversary Edition Set - 2013
The 9th Wonder of the World: The Making of Gorgo - 31:08
Co-Written by Tom Weaver; Narrated and Co-Written by Randal Turnbull; Edited, Co-Written, Produced and Directed by Daniel Griffith
This documentary is triple the runtime of the featurette from VCI’s previous DVD editions. With Weaver once again involved in writing this doc, it follows the same basic chronological structure and even includes some similar narrated lines as the shorter featurette.
Naturally, this longer doc goes into a lot more detail about the making of the film, Lourie’s background, the notorious King brothers, actors Bill Travers and William Sylvester, and the special effects. Rather than being carried entirely by the narrator, it includes talking-head interviews with historians Ted Newsom, C. Courtney Joyner and Bob Burns. More quotes from Lourie are read here along with recorded audio of Gorgo's second-unit camera operator, Douglas Adamson.
About 20 minutes in, we get to see some rare 8mm film footage and photographs of the Gorgo suit’s construction. In addition to clips from Gorgo, this doc also has clips from other movies like King Kong, Mighty Joe Young, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Them!, Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, The Colossus of New York, The Giant Behemoth, Reptilicus and several non-monster movies to illustrate the talking points.
Gorgo was riffed as part of Mystery Science Theater 3000’s ninth season in an episode which the SciFi Channel first aired on July 18, 1998. Shout!Factory included the Gorgo episode in the 28th DVD volume of MST3K, which they released in November 2013 to commemorate the show’s 25th anniversary. Gorgo is on its own disc in the same slim case as the set’s bonus disc. That Gorgo disc includes the same 31-minute documentary as VCI’s 2013 DVD and BRD releases, and it's also viewable on the .
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VCI DVD - 2013
VCI BRD - 2013
Before and After Restoration - 2:52
Now this is cool. About three minutes of footage from Gorgo is presented with the older DVD transfer taking up the left half of the screen and the much-improved restoration on the right side. The difference is striking.
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Original Production Notes - 2:05
Another unique feature, this photo gallery presents scanned pages from the King brothers' original production notes, complete with handwritten edits. It's a fascinating glimpse at the timetable of Gorgo's production.
This computer-animated gallery simulates camera motion to present the photos of the production note pages as though they're displayed in some sterilized museum with a white wall and floor. All of the subsequent photo galleries are presented this way as short video featurettes, hence their runtimes.
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Pressbook Gallery - 1:51
Here we get to see high-quality scans of the pages from Gorgo's original pressbook.
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Photo Gallery - 2:12
This begins with the four monochrome photos of the Gorgo suit’s animatronic head during construction, as shown in the documentary. The rest of the gallery consists of publicity shots.
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Toys and Collectables - 2:57
An image gallery of Gorgo toys and other products for the collectors out there.
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Lobby Card and Poster Gallery - 5:41
The longest of these photo galleries rounds up Gorgo posters and lobby cards from around the world.
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There are also two featurettes that play some Gorgo comic books from the '60s as lengthy motion-comics. I didn't watch them, just not my cup of tea, but they're there for those who are interested.
Bill Travers' wife, Virginia McKenna, did provide a photo of her husband for the special features. Wished that we could have heard from her and see what were her husband's overall impressions of this movie. One could say that this was somewhat of a precursor to "Born Free"!