Greetings once again, fellow intrepid interlocutors of the insidious and the incredible, it is I, your humble author, once again delving into his personal DVD archive to bring you only the finest is bizarro horror filmmaking.

This week we take a look at the largely forgotten 1972 made-for-tv movie, Gargoyles. I’m afraid I don’t have much to regale you with in terms of production information; such is lost in the sands of time. And in the sands of New Mexico, where this beauty was filmed on a single camera in 18 days.

Opening title card. It’s always promising when they go with “day-glo slime” font.

No dear readers, this film is remembered for one reason, and one reason only: the exemplary practical gargoyle effects, made for zero dollars and whipped up over only a few days time. Now when I say, “exemplary,” understand that I’m grading on a curve here. Obviously, they don’t touch what is seen in much larger budget films. The costume designer was a fellow named Tom Dawson, who also did the wardrobe and costume effects for Blazing Saddles and Arnold Schwarzenegger crap-fest End of Days. It is interesting, however, to note that one of two people tasked with creating and applying the gargoyle makeup is Stan Winston, in his first credited special effects role. If after perusing that link you find yourself still unimpressed with the fine work of Mr. Winston, then you can go right to hell – my reviews are not for the likes of you.

Our story begins with a voice over explaining that gargoyles are actually the earthly spawn of Satan himself and that they arise every 600 years to try and take over the planet. However, it appears humans whip dat azz pretty badly every time because the creatures are now on the verge of extinction. However, it does result in many of the world’s myths about monsters.

Cut to anthropologist Cornel Wilde (who, fun fact, was blacklisted during the HUAC era) taking a drive through the desert, with daughter Jennifer Salt in tow (Salt would later touch again on the world of the macabre as a producer for sometimes-great-sometimes-dumb FX staple American Horror Story). Interestingly, throughout the film, Jennifer always seems to wear her shirts tied up to show off her stomach, which is, I suppose, something of a welcome diversion. Coming across a barely-functional roadside tourist trap run by lovable old Uncle Willie, the drunken coot ushers them out back to show them his prized possession: a gargoyle skeleton hung up in his shed out back. Willie proceeds to tell the anthropologist (the character has a name, but does it really matter?) about how the Injuns in the area used to have a lot of stories about these and….you know what, it’s just the usual hokum spun out in crappy horror movies. I’m so damned sick of people acting like/assuming that a bunch of freaking dudes dancing around smoking peyote have some kind of magical powers or great insight into the universe that I lack because I wear pants. Fuck that noise.

Bernie Casey is a Critical Monster Studies Professor

Anyway, the titular monsters attack, killing Uncle Willie and driving Generic Anthropologist and Hot Daughter to seek refuge at a nearby roach motel run by horny drunk Grayson Hall (best known for her long-running stint as Dr. Julia Hoffman on the original Dark Shadows). Having escaped with the gargoyle skull from Willie’s shed and with audio recordings of the attack, our protagonists try to make sense of all the shenanigans and goings on. They are attacked again by two of the creatures trying to retrieve the skull, and once they have it, they flee across the road only for one of them to be hilariously run over by a semi. It comes out of nowhere and is really quite funny, because normally when you see the creatures running or attacking, they director uses a kind of weird slow-mo, so it cuts straight from that, to a damn truck coming out of nowhere and smacking one of them.

“I don’t remember you from the faculty meetings at UCLA…”

Running to the police station to report the latest attack, Hot Daughter pleads with the cops to believe her, and to release several dirt bikers they caught at the scene of Uncle Willie’s earlier that day (the lead biker being played by Scott Glenn, who is one of those guys whose name you don’t know but you’ll recognize him when you read through his IMDB). On her way back, she’s kidnapped by King Gargoyle…Bernie Casey?! I think that’d be racist today. You may know him from his work in Revenge of the Nerds or Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, but because I’m me, I’ll always remember him from Suzanne Somers and Stacey Keach eco-horror film, Ants. Yes, I have that on DVD as well. Anyway, the actually pretty awesome looking head gargoyle takes Hot Daughter back to their cave, where he explains that 1) they’ve only been woke for a few weeks, 2) he’s taught himself pretty good English in that time, and 3) he likes to have chicks read stories about 15th century rapes out of scholarly books to him. We also see the gargoyle hatchery, where eggs literally half the size of the adults hatch the creatures, and we learn that the ones with wings (such as Casey and his female gargoyle consort) are “breeders”.

A close-up of the really quite good monster makeup used in this film

Generic Anthropologist convinces the cops and the local dirt bikers to help search for Hot Daughter, and the group is eventually assaulted by the gargoyles. The humans manage to kill a lot of them with shotguns and pistols, which really makes one wonder how the whole, “We’re going to exterminate humanity” thing is going to work out for the monsters. Scott Glenn goes in to throw gas around and burns the hatchery, and upon seeing him beset with gargoyles, Generic Anthropologist declares him dead and flees (he did the same to Uncle Willie earlier – seriously, the guy will decide you’re a lost cause within seconds of you running into any adverse circumstance). The supposedly thousands of eggs burn up from the two gas cans splashed around one room, and Bernie Casey, along with his consort, try to fly away with Hot Daughter to, I guess, rape the shit out of her, since it’s pretty clearly established that the monsters only produce offspring with each other. However, Generic Anthropologist makes a Quick Decision and uses a handy rock to bust the consort gargoyle’s wing, forcing Bernie Casey to abandon Hot Daughter so that he can fly away with his basic bitch. And…that’s it. They get away, they end.

Bernie Casey: Critical Monster Studies Professor’s breeder counterpart. She actually gets jealous of Hot Daughter and helps Generic Anthropologist to escape at one point, dooming her entire race because she can’t control her womanish cattiness.

The movie basically sucks, but really, if you have the 74 minutes to spare, it is honestly remarkable how good they do with the gargoyle costumes given what you know must have been incredible time and budgetary constraints. So kudos for that. Director Bill Norton went on to acclaim *coughbullshitcough* as the director of such masterpieces as More American Graffiti, and Hercules and the Amazon Women. If any of you have seen either of these, sound off in the comments.

Actually please don’t, nobody gives a shit.

On a parting note, apparently it’s not safe to trust the TCM website’s user-generated movie ratings, because holy hell, check this out. The lowest one is 4.31  out of 5.

Personally, I award Gargoyles 10 Pubic Hair Cartoons out of a possible 30. Keep track of the percentages here; 10 isn’t very good.