Unquiet
Things

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I discovered The Gorgon through Jack’s piece last year in A Morbid Scholar’s Treasury of Euro Gothic Cinema, where he enthuses about this Hammer Horror film that replaces the usual vampires and werewolves with a snake-headed gorgon. And while he prepared me for the schlocky thrills, I wasn’t prepared for how absolutely sumptuous this movie looks. Every single frame could be framed and hung on a wall. This might be the most visually gorgeous film I’ve watched all month. Maybe all year.

The bohemian chaos of the Heitz chateau with its cluttered artist’s studio, canvases stacked against walls, paint-splattered furniture, creative disorder that feels both lived-in and romantic. Dr. Namaroff’s laboratory is also a feast for the eyes: walls completely lined with apothecary bottles in amber and green glass, anatomical posters covering every available surface, brass instruments catching the light, a densely layered scientific atmosphere that makes you want to spend hours just examining the background. The ruined castle everyone keeps wandering into any time they step outside for a stroll, with its crumbling stone archways, cobwebs thick as curtains, moonlight streaming through broken windows, atmospheric shadows pooling in corners. Those autumn forests with leaves perpetually blowing through them, carpeting the ground somber pools of shadows.

The color palette alone! Deep burgundies and forest greens, golden lamplight glowing against dark wood paneling, the rich jewel tones of Victorian clothing against all that Gothic architecture. Even the outdoor scenes at dusk have this painterly quality, all purple shadows and orange-pink skies.

In the early 1900s Vandorf, folks keep turning up dead. Turned to stone, specifically. When young artist Bruno Heitz dies under mysterious circumstances, along with his pregnant girlfriend, his father arrives to investigate and also gets petrified (or, “gorgonized,” as one of the characters says later.) Then Bruno’s brother Paul shows up, immediately falls for the beautiful Carla Hoffman in a record time of about twenty seconds, and gets caught up in the mystery himself.

There’s a possessive doctor (Peter Cushing, playing it cold and calculating), a corrupt police inspector (Patrick Troughton, about whom I couldn’t stop thinking he looked like Jason Isaacs even though Isaacs would have only been one year old when this was made), and eventually Christopher Lee shows up as a disheveled professor with overgrown facial hair who barges into the investigation.

The monster is beside the point. You barely see Megaera (not Medusa, but one of her sisters, although the movie gets its mythology muddled, calling her by the name of one of the Furies). When you do glimpse her, it’s in shadows or reflections, and the final reveal of the full creature makeup it’s…not great. But that doesn’t matter because the film isn’t really about the gorgon. It’s about Carla, who suffers memory lapses during full moons and doesn’t know what’s happening to her. It’s about Dr. Namaroff, who clearly knows more than he’s saying and is desperately trying to protect someone. It’s about Paul falling for a woman who may be inhabited by an ancient curse. The romantic tension and the gothic atmosphere are what this movie is.

Barbara Shelley is luminous as Carla, playing her with dignity, confusion, and a mounting sense of doom. It’s tragic watching her realize something is very off and wrong, but not understanding what. Cushing gets to be unsympathetic and lustful and kinda gross, and Lee, arriving late in the film looking completely unkempt (the wig! the mustache!), provides a weird energy, he’s almost comic relief despite playing the Van Helsing role, throwing his physical presence around to intimidate everyone. When he jumps out a window to escape arrest, it’s genuinely amusing to watch his tall, lanky frame squeeze through.

I loved everything about this: the gorgeous autumnal cinematography, the rich color saturation, the way every scene felt like a painting come to life. The methodical, atmospheric pacing.  The moody romantic melodrama where the monster is more psychological threat than physical presence. It’s a sumptuous supernatural soap opera of a good time.

Looking for more 31 Days of Horror? Day Thirteen 2024 | Day Thirteen 2023 | Day Thirteen 2022 | Or check my 31 Days of Horror category for more!

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