OGCMA0653NOTMegara_DevineGilling

The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1400 - 1990's, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.

Cf. the article s.v. “Medusa” where this might also have been considered but is not: 0652NOTMedusa_DevineGilling; because there is only an indirect reference to Medusa in the film.

The Gorgon (dir. Terence Fisher; Hammer Films/Columbia, 1964), Screenplay by John Gilling, based on an original story by J. Llewellyn Devine. Stars Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Richard Pasco, Michael Goodliffe, and Barbara Shelley.

Crawl: “Overshadowing the village of Vandorf stands the Castle Borski. From the turn of the [20^th] century a monster from an ancient age of history came to live here. No living thing survived, and the spectre of death hovered in waiting for her next victim.”

From the Netflix sleeve: “Christopher Lee gets the star treatment with this Hammer Films Production[, in which] he stars as a university professor [of literature, at Leipzig] aiding in the investigation of a series of murders wherein each victim has been mysteriously turned to stone.”

The monster is identified by the first professor as “Megara (me-GEH-rah)” and acknowledged as a character from mythology. Petrifaction does not occur immediately. When Prof. Heitz encounters the Gorgon in the Castle Borski, he has time after the gaze to return to his study, give directions to his servant, and write a 3-page letter. “Leave me now. There is nothing you can do. Goodbye.” He has time to write an analytic description of his mortality.

The film’s premise is based upon the creation of a new mythology. We learn in the narrative that one of the ancient gorgons is unaccounted for. Tisiphone, Medusa, and Megara: their heads were crowned with living snakes. “So hideous was the Gorgon that anyone who looked upon her was petrified. The proper word was ‘gorgonized ‘which literally meant turned to stone.”

A photographic montage (500 px wide) is at ogcma.byu.edu/images/0653NOTMegara_DevineGilling.jpg

Poster; Barbara Shelley made up as Megara; Barbara Shelley and Peter Cushing suggest in their embrace that their love affair is hiding some dreadful secret.

For another image at IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058155/mediaviewer/rm2260737792