The Mighty Gorga

There are a lot of bad giant ape films. There are also a lot of bad movies which feature less than authentic "African" safaris which are shot on tacky studio back lots with stock footage of wild animals in place of the real thing. Therefore, to stand out in this field is an accomplishment. The Mighty Gorga does. I've seen, and enjoyed, a large number of bad giant ape films and I can assure you they don't come any worse than this one. The only exception might be the Korean made atrocity A*P*E, but its a close call.

This film is absolutely awful in every way! So I was thrilled to tape this off TV one night. The ape costume is among the cheapest ever with plastic eyes which do not move. The Witch Doctor character (who also has a 2nd speaking role as a cashier in a booth at the circus near the start of the film) rants and raves a lot about evil "white men" coming to the ape's territory in "Africa" while he offers up "young maidens" as sacrifices to the Mighty Gorga giant ape. Of course the witch doctor is as white as Pat Boone and "Africa" is a few bits of stock footage and the worst movie back lot set imaginable.

The special effects are among the worst ever. I especially enjoyed the "fire" scene in the animal trader's complex. Grade Z movie leading man Anthony Eisley and 1 dimensional evil "heavy" Scott Brady team up again after being in the same director's awful Journey to the Center of Time a year or so before.

Its hard to convey in words just how awful this movie is. If you enjoy bad films, check this one out! You will be amazed.

A cast of familiar B-movie stars is most appealing. But start your gall bladder engines, quick! I cannot express feelings about the designers who created an ape costume with eyes that look to the right. That's only the minor feature this one has to offer. I'm going to dictate something to you that will shock and amaze you with a bloated stomach. No one, and I repeat, NO ONE has ever thought of filming an ape and a miniature plastic "Godzilla" that came from the Ideal toy factory, in a conflicting battle to their graves for supremacy! Pentium III graphics it sure ain't! Imagine yourself living in 1969. You'd agree why 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY blows this miles out of the sea in stunning visuals. Well, that's enough. Don't forget to eat your daily regimen of bananas and go ape wild! How embarrassing!

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.

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.

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.