"Moira taught him to love and Gorgo taught him to fear"
This was a tie-in for the 1960 movie (which itself was a lot of fun and which I should review at some point. The GORGO book was sold through FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, and I imagine many young fan were suprised (and pleased) by the rather lurid sex scenes here, definitely NOT to be found in the movie. I had a copy of the other Monarch Books tie-in BRIDES OF DRACULA but for the life of me I cannot find it now. It will probably turn up eventually. Monarch Books seems to have been less than family oriented. At the back of GORGO are blurbs for NIKKI by Stuart Friedman ("A compelling novel of a beautiful, neurotic woman's search for a man virile enough to master her") and THE FLESH PEDDLERS by Frank Boyd ("This is the daring and explosive novel of a beautiful girl who might have had everything-- but was led by her own twisted emotions to become a call girl"). And these are in the back of a science-fiction thriller about a giant dinosaur stomping all over London, so you have to wonder if these were the tamer items Monarch had to offer.
GORGO was written by Carson Bingham, whom I recognize as a name for Bruce Cassidy, mostly for doing a few of the 1970s Phantom paperbacks. He's okay. I find him readable but not really compelling. He tells the story in the first person through Sam Slade, which limits what he can present about Gorgo's activities when Slade is not present. If you haven't seen the movie, it tells the tender story of a twenty foot tall dinosaur discovered off the Irish coast, which is captured and brought to London as a tourist attraction. The big jolt and a very cool scene is when we learn that Gorgo is just a babe and that an adult of the species would be two hundred feet tall. Then we see the kid's mother surface, really ticked off and determined to rescue her offspring.
There are some interesting details scattered throughout. I don't see the word dinosaur used. Instead, we are told the beast is "some prehistoric saurian, a giant marine lizard of some kind left over from the Mesozoic era." The critter is called Ogra by the Irish locals, and the name Gorgo is derived from the mythical Gorgon. Personally, I think they should have said this was a species called Gorgosaurus and derived the name from that but I wasn't there at the studio. The scenes of rampaging destruction are described rather flatly and don't come to life on the page. Gorgo does have a duel not found in the movie, which likely was derived from 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH: "Gorgo shifted stance again to sidestep the elephant's rush. The elephant tore into Gorgo's side, and as it did so, Gorgo turned and sank his own sharp fangs into the neck of the elephant. With a sudden flip of the body, Gorgo lifted the entire five tons of the elephant into the air and threw him down to the ground." It was a bad time for elephants.
The infamous sex scenes are described in that indirect way of that era, before more graphic details became acceptable. ("She strained and twisted and clutched at me in the ecstasy of her stabbing, tearing pain and with the unfeigned sincerity of innocence, she abandoned herself to me. And for me, it was like dying and being reborn, It was a dizzying climb to a cloud of ecstasy such as I'd never experienced." Sure, that's what all the guys say.)
Yet, despite a couple of scaly monsters knocking down London Bridge and making crowds flee in emotional distress, and despite virginal young Moira surrendering her treasure to Sam, GORGO is not really much fun. The tone is sour, the characters distrust each other and there is much bitterness and self-reproaching ("I'm no good! I'm a lousy no-good song of a bitch, Moira!..." The black waves of remorse rose before me and I stood alone in a black, empty void, and I was blinded by self-loathing.)Sheesh. I get enough of that in an average day, I don't want it in my reading.