One of the less well-known films from Hammer Horror, “The Gorgon” pairs Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in a muddled version of the gorgon of Greek mythology, transported to a European village. I say muddled because Megara, the gorgon of the title, was not a gorgon at all, but a fury. The gorgon Medusa could turn people to stone, but that was not a power of the furies. The character was also given a psychic power to compel people to look at her, which is not a talent of either creature.

The film starts with a young artist and his model. He insists he will marry her when he has money, and she says he needs to marry her now because she is pregnant. The artist goes to see her father, and, worried about him, she follows. She turns up dead, turned to stone. He also turns up dead, though not stone, but hanging from a tree. Doctor Namaroff (Peter Cushing) has a conversation with the police inspector Kanof (Patrick Troughton) where they mention several other unsolved deaths. However, at the inquest the doctor perjures himself to swear she died of a head injury and the coroner rules that the artist did it and then killed himself. The artist’s father is present at the inquest and does not believe this.

After the dad gets petrified, the surviving family member his son Paul (Richard Pasco) turns up. He survives his first encounter with the Gorgon by only seeing her in reflection, and then meets nurse Carla Hoffman (Barbara Shelley) with whom he promptly falls in love. Karl Meister (Christopher Lee) turns up rather late in the day and throws his weight around. Events roll on to their tragic conclusion, with Meister killing the gorgon and Paul and Doctor Namaroff also dying. Due to the lack of female characters, even before the audience is told the gorgon has taken human form it is not hard to work out who the gorgon is.

Much as I adore Cushing, Lee, and Hammer in general, there are too many problems with this film for it to be considered more than average. The errors in mythology are only one example.

Why does the artist Bruno kill himself anyway? We can only assume that he heard his girlfriend screaming, found her corpse, and killed himself after that. However, we must assume this because it’s never specified.

Secondly, there is a marked difference in the rate of death between victims. Most of the victims die quite quickly, except for Paul’s father, who manages to get himself home and write a whole letter before he dies. It’s an obvious plot device which stands out like a sore thumb.

When Paul’s father goes to the castle, we have not been told about the castle and there is no indication of what house he has entered. (It also seems to be in quite good shape for an abandoned building). We also don’t know why he has gone there. It seems at the climax of the movie that the gorgon has some kind of mesmerist ability, compelling people to come to her and look at her, but this is never mentioned or explained.

Why has the gorgon returned after how many centuries, to inhabit the body of this particular woman? Why does she entice and kill people? What’s in it for her? No idea.

It’s not all bad. In my opinion Peter Cushing could not be bad if he tried, irrespective of the quality of the movie he is in. This particular role is a very understated one, and he does it beautifully, even though the character’s motivations are not entirely clear. It seems as if the doctor became emotionally attached to Carla and is trying to protect her. He says he does not know who the gorgon is, but his actions in relation to Carla suggest that this is not true. He’s not a particularly ethical person – he calmly falsifies death records and lies under oath at inquests to cover up the deaths, aided and abetted by the policeman who just wants to avoid getting a bad reputation for failing to solve murders. Namaroff doesn’t care about the distress being caused to the families of the victims. He doesn’t care about his other staff either, sending one to watch Carla and not warning him of the danger he could potentially face. He is only interested in protecting Carla.

Christopher Lee is not particularly good in this movie. He plays Meister as a one-note character, very forceful and blunt, and doesn’t give the role any nuance. I love Lee as an actor, but unlike Cushing, he was more inclined to phone in a role if he found the movie tiresome, and it did seem to be what he was doing here.

Barbara Shelley as Carla is very good, playing the character with dignity and sympathy. Carla does not know what is happening to her, only that she has occasional lapses in memory. She seems to sense that she is doomed and does not know why. Shelley’s portrayal is convincing, making the audience empathise with the character.

As is typical of Hammer films of this period, the cinematography is lush in colour, the night scenes are atmospheric with mist and the wind blowing through the trees, and the score is suitably eery, creating a Gothic vision. There is a fatalism to the story that leads to a dark conclusion, all the more tragic as there is a moment where the outcome might have been different if the characters had understood what was happening sooner. The overall mood is of death and despair.

“The Gorgon” is by no means a good example of the horror movies coming out of the Hammer studio at its heyday. Issues with the plot and scripting, as well as an obviously very low budget, makes it a second-rate offering. There are, however, aspects of the film that certainly make it worth viewing.