When scary movies like War of the Worlds have happy endings, it makes you feel good all over.
We like it when the humans prevail and the monsters/aliens/bad guys die or go away and leave us alone.
If it was the monsters/aliens/bad guys who initiated all the trouble, then naturally we need to defend ourselves and fight off the fiends.
But what if we were the ones who started all the trouble?
On those trips to the center of the earth, why are we killing creatures we thought were extinct, and hacking our way through jungles? We’re not even supposed to be there in the first place!
And how about King Kong … what a tragedy that was! He was doing just fine, living his peaceful ape-life in the jungle and not bothering anybody. Then people show up and he ends up lying dead in a New York City street.
King Kong made me cry. Sometimes we are the monster!
Then, in 1961, my most favorite, dated, man-in-a-rubber-suit, hokey movie of all time showed up … Gorgo.
Gorgo lived in the sea, and he stayed there. He wasn’t bothering anybody.
But some greedy men, who were out diving for gold and treasure, accidentally discovered him.
Nice men would’ve have said, What a wonderous discovery! Let’s just leave it alone to continue living peacefully right where we found it!
But these were greedy men, and greedy men have dollar signs for their eyeballs, as my late mother-in-law would’ve said. So they captured it and took it home with them, where they put the creature on display and proceeded to sell tickets to the public to come see.
But Gorgo had the last laugh … turns out he was just a baby monster, and his Mom was still out in the ocean wondering where in the world her youngster had run off to. She came looking for him, and find him, she did. And she took him back home to the sea, never to be seen again.
Never get between a mother and her baby. It will not turn out well for you.
Between looking for her baby, and returning home with her baby, lots of stuff got broken and lots of people got hurt or even killed.
In the end it all turned out well for the monster, who was just minding its own business and not bothering anybody. I love happy endings. They make me feel good all over!
I felt so good about it, in fact, that when I launched my web site, one of the first articles I put up was an appeal to the movie-makers to do a remake of Gorgo with all these wonderful, modern computer-generated graphics.
I thought for sure somebody would pick up on it … after all, I’m on the world wide web now! I’m practically famous!
Alas, nobody responded. It’s been almost five years now. I suppose they’re just too busy making their own movies … ol’ greedy guts!