The Gorgon
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Gorgon is a 1964 British horror film directed by Terence Fisher for Hammer.
It stars Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Barbara Shelley and Richard Pasco. The film was photographed by Michael Reeves, and designed by Bernard Robinson. For the score James Bernard combined a soprano with a little-known electronic instrument called the Novachord. The film marks one of the few occasions when Hammer turned to Greek mythology for inspiration; this time it is the legend of the Gorgon that is respun for the Hammer audiences.
Plot
The year is 1910, in the rural German village of Vandorf, seven murders have been committed within the past five years, each victim having been petrified into a stone figure. Rather than investigate it, the local authorities dismiss the murders for fear of a local legend having come true. When a local girl becomes the latest victim and her suicidal lover made the scapegoat, the father of the condemned man decides to investigate and discovers that the cause of the petrifying deaths is a phantom. The very last of the snake-haired Gorgon sisters who haunts the local castle and turns victims to stone during the full moon.
Casting
- Dr. Namaroff – Peter Cushing
- Prof. Karl Meister – Christopher Lee
- Megaera (the Gorgon) – Prudence Hyman
- Paul Heitz – Richard Pasco
- Carla Hoffman – Barbara Shelley
- Prof. Jules Heitz – Michael Goodliffe
- Inspector Kanof – Patrick Troughton
- Coroner - Joseph O'Conor
- Ratoff - Jack Watson
Novelization
A novelization of the film was written by John Burke as part of his 1966 book The Hammer Horror Film Omnibus.
