Gargoyles: When Myths Attack!

Doctor Mercer Boley (Cornel Wilde) and his daughter Diana (Jennifer Salt, Soap) travel to a small New Mexico town to meet with Uncle Willie (Woody Chambliss), who owns a novelty shop and “Desert Museum”. Who has promised to show them something amazing in hopes of partnering for a book deal.  What they are shown is a skeleton of a humanoid winged creature with horns.  Mercer originally believes this to be a hoax, but soon comes to realize it is real, when the building they are in is attacked and destroyed by a group of the creatures, Willie is killed and Diana and Mercer escape with the skeleton’s skull.

Mercer believes these are creatures that exist worldwide and are the inspiration for ancient depiction of demons and devils and gargoyles, which is what he begins calling them. They hibernate for centuries, only coming out of hibernation every four to five hundred years.  Later, the creatures return for the skull and as the story progresses, Diana is kidnapped by the monsters, who are much smarter than originally believed and can even speak. Originally they offered no threat to humans, but now, their leader (Bernie Casey) believes it is time for humanity to end and his race to become the dominant species. A search party is formed to find Diana leading to  a final battle between Mercer and the leader of the Gargoyles. Can Mercer save his daughter and prevent world domination?  Watch and find out!

One of the things which immediately struck me about this 1972 film was the look of the Gargoyles.  For a CBS Tuesday Night Movie of the week, I felt the unique look of each gargoyle was interesting as each one had different attributes.  Come to find out, this was the first feature film for Stan Winston who won an Emmy award for it.  Stan Winston would of course go on to bring us some of the most iconic make-up effects in the genre with such titles as The Thing, Aliens, Edward Scissorhands, Predator, Terminator, and Jurassic Park. Many of these titles bringing Oscar nominations and wins before his untimely death in 2007.

The rest of this movie is standard for television features of the 1970s.  Starting with a good premise these films sweep aside the themes and nuances that would help connect the characters to the audience and add depth and dimension to the film.  Instead, we get generic over the top characters and action sequences that go on for far too long.  The story, itself is fascinating, a race of beings that exist throughout the world, and are the basis for many legends and myths across the globe, but only appear every few centuries, and because of their look are constantly hunted, even though they offer no ill will.  But because of this, their leader decides now is the time to fight back and become the dominant species on the planet.  The problem is, this theme is basically swept aside, and the gargoyle leader is made to be a more over the top maniacal evil adversary, rather than the sympathetic anti-hero he could have been. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a fun film, with some good actors and I did enjoy watching it.