Watch out for the hideous death stare!

It's funny. I watched this like last week yet it has taken me six days to write about it. I did wonder how good this really could have been had Harryhausen been on the payroll and given Mygera some personality.

Christopher Lee is this forceful professor whose colleague goes to a sleepy village when his father doesn't return after going there when their son/brother is determined to have been responsible for a murder/suicide. Lee doesn't allow the behavior of angry villagers to try and warn him away like his fellow professor and professor's son. The village police themselves barely try to solve the problem of a Gorgon's hideous visage's causing victims to turn to stone.

The village is hush-hush under this veil of secrecy, perfectly willing to accept that a painter (an "outsider") from the nearest city, considered by them to be a deviant/degenerate who has a rep of bedding women, getting a local man's daughter pregnant (she was a model for him). She tells the painter, he plans to talk to her pops, and the end result has the young lady meeting her end thanks to Mygera with the painter lynched (by the villagers?). Obviously, the painter's father, a respected university professor (Michael Goodliffe), wants answers but the courtroom drama is decided with little room for doubt: the man's son is considered the killer. So Goodliffe takes it upon himself to investigate and the villagers are pissed that he won't leave. They even intrude upon his son's hired cottage, demanding him to leave, assaulting him even! The cops arrive, the villagers back off, and the professor sticks to his guns. He takes a look into Mygera's eyes and also turns to stone, but not before sending a letter to his *other* son. This son (Richard Pasco) arrives and gets the same shit from the villagers. They want him to go. He wants to see his father. The local doctor (Cushing, a real snobbish prick, cold and introverted), who is the jack of all trades in the village (sanitarium, coroner, physician; this guy does it all), insists every victim died through strangulation, when in fact they were turned to stone.

Where does Lee fit in? Each outsider that comes into the village is treated as an unwanted intruder. The village can be a bit pushy, belligerent, and insulated. They also would rather not confront an issue that is dangerous to all of them: the Gorgon. Barbara Shelley is a nurse who works for Cushing, and she's obviously unaware of her curious malady. Cushing loves her and is willing to sacrifice all in order to keep her from suspicion and prosecution. When she falls for Pasco (he sees Mygera's reflection in fountain water which ages him), it gets a bit difficult. Lee is more or less Pasco's "muscle". He's an archaeological professor, sure, but he's no pushover and certainly doesn't quake in fear from the village folk or tiny police force. In fact, he threatens to go over the top of the chief police officer in the village (Doctor Who #2, Peter Troughton) if he gets any flack. And Lee tells Troughton that the villagers better not mess with him, either!

Ultimately, it is the secondary actor who gets a good bit of the screen time despite the A-class talent of Lee and Cushing being in this movie. Pasco is the last Heitz left that Mygera hadn't been responsible for (the painter because of her gaze into the girlfriend, his father directly caused by her). He recovers from a different kind of look at Mygera (but not direct which means he suffers but doesn't die), and locking eyes with Shelley seals his fate. Their burgeoning romance leaves Cushing less than pleased.

Cushing enables Shelley, falsely reports cause of death, and will go as far as fight with Pasco to protect her. He defiantly stands behind his lies, and Lee won't allow any nonsense to deter him from seeing that his colleagues will suffer without justice. A perilous battle of Shelley in the ruins of a castle, Lee wielding a sword, and Mygera being silenced. By film's end, The Gorgon (1964) sees quite a grim conclusion for damn near everybody. I think the film works because of the superior casting, sets, and willing to not give us a happy ending. Mygera isn't about happy endings. She is about leaving those who look at her in repulsion worse for wear in the most creative of ways possible.