Gargoyles (1972)

This might not be an unbiased review, because Gargoyles stars none other than Cornel Wilde, of whom I am a big admirer. A made for TV movie, I was expecting Gargoyles to be a little hokey; and, yes, it is a little hokey. The film begins with a slideshow of gargoyles and demons accompanied by a voice-over explaining that gargoyles are a species that fights with humans for dominance of earth every so often. How they became gutter spouts is a tidbit lost to history, I guess.

Then we skip to the plot. Cornel Wilde plays a pretty interesting character, as the first 5-10 minutes makes clear to us. He's an academic whose research is into mythology, legends, occult, demonology--but all strictly as a non-believer. It's just a dry, academic subject to him. The plot sort of develops out of this. He's going to write a new best-seller on these subjects (these were the days of Eric von Daniken, after all) and wants to check out a story the story of an old curiosity shoppe owner out in the desert. So he takes his lovely daughter (Jennifer Salt, of Brian DePalma's Sisters) and heads out, where the creepy old man shows him the bones of a supposed devil.

This is where things get weird. You expect a lot of build-up before the gargoyles start making appearances. Not so. They show up in the desert and start trashing that old man's curiosity shoppe. This kind of caught me by surprise. This isn't a normal horror film I'm dealing with here, I'm thinking. And I thought right. In fact, after a few more not-really-scary encounters with the gargoyles, we get into a plot about gargoyles struggling to dominate humans and needing human education to do so while Wilde, the police force, and some bikers try to destroy them.

So it suddenly becomes a sort of fantasy epic with horror elements, namely, that the gargoyles have no qualms about savagely killing humans. Oh yeah, and the lead gargoyle tries to put the moves on Jennifer Salt. And she's all like, "Come on, I'm not even sure I'd date a black guy; I'm not ready for gargoyle love."

And that's the gist of it. The gargoyles are clearly guys in suits, but I actually like the costumes. The suits have a nice, skin-like texture that looks plausible enough. The masks are a bit more difficult to accept, but the film does what it can and I felt the film was fun enough to make me want to go along with it.

There are also some moments of unintentional humour, as one might expect in a made-for-tv fantasy horror epic about gargoyles. One of my favourites is when the old curiosity shoppe owner falls down and catches on fire, for no reason Cornel Wilde just declares, "He's dead," grabs the gargoyle skull and runs out of the building leaving the old man to burn. Another favourite is when the gargoyles come to reclaim the body of a fallen comrade and find Wilde and his daughter have slipped out of the window in a matter of seconds carrying a gargoyle body that, it would seem, suddenly weighs no more than a small bag of cat food. Incidentally, there are moments of intentional humour as well.

Gargoyles makes a good effort at entertaining and it succeeds. It is a bit awkwardly structured and doesn't seem 100% certain of what kind of movie it wants to be, but I found myself thoroughly charmed. Old fashioned goofy fun. Check it out.