GARGOYLES (1972)
TV-Movie
Article 3352 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-3-2010
Posting Date: 10-18-2010
Directed by Bill L. Norton
Featuring Cornel Wilde, Jennifer Salt, Grayson Hall
Country: USA
What it is: Monster movie

A skeptical writer and his daughter encounter a race of gargoyles, evil minions of the devil who want to take over the world.

I remember seeing the promos for this one on TV as a kid, and thinking how cool it was that a TV-Movie was going to be full of monsters. Of course, not having any control over the TV in my house, I missed the movie, and it’s only now, almost forty years later that I’ve gotten to see it. I would have loved it without reservations had I seen it back then; the monsters are great, you see them quite a lot, and even the somewhat arty jerky-slow-motion photography they use in the action sequences manages to keep from being annoying. As an adult, I still think the monsters are cool, but I have reservations on the movie as a whole. I found the script, direction and acting all rather weak; the scene where the writer and his daughter meet the desert rat is in particular badly written and awkwardly paced. My guess is that most of the budget on this movie went into the monsters, and the rest of the movie was given short shrift. I think it’s a bit of shame they couldn’t come up with a story that was worthy of the monster costumes. Oddly enough, it’s one of those genre TV-Movies that doesn’t feel like it was designed to launch a TV-Series. Overall, though, the great monster costumes and makeup still make this one fairly enjoyable.