Review – The Gorgon

For a crappy old Hammer horror movie, this one isn’t all that bad. It helps that I think the Gorgon sisters are among the cooler members of the monster family, and here we get “Megara” rather than the more famous Medusa (according to Ovid, Medusa’s sisters were names Stheno and Euryale, but then again Ovid says only Medusa had snake hair, so we’ll need to avoid strict adherence in order to get our movie made). The head of a mental hospital (Peter Cushing) aids townspeople in hushing up the circumstances surrounding the deaths of a local girl and her wealthy artist boyfriend. But the boy’s family digs deeper into the mystery, enlisting the aid of a college professor (Christopher Lee) willing to believe that an ancient Greek monster might be lurking in a nearby castle. I guess the fact that the victims were turned to stone was a big clue. We even get a side-point or two about the ability of a totalitarian society to sweep great evil under the carpet. To be sure, the plot’s a little threadbare in points, and 21st century computer graphics would probably have been able to conjure hair snakes more convincing than the rubber appliances used here. Overall, however, this is one of the better entries in the Hammer catalogue. Mildly amusing