Gargoyle (2004) (V)

User Rating:

3.8/10   

Director:

Jim Wynorski

Writers:

Ion Ionescu (written by)
A.G. Lawrence (screenplay)

Release Date:

26 October 2004 (Russia)

Genre:

Action | Horror | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

Once thought banished forever, winged, fire-spitting creatures are resurrected and immediately begin wreaking havoc on a port city.

Plot:

Two CIA agents are sent to Bucharest, Romania to solve a high profile kidnapping. But what they discover is something inexplicable. An evil gargoyle, once thought dead and banished forever, has returned with a vengeance. |

Plot Keywords:

CIA | Gargoyle | Romania | Bucharest Romania | Kidnapping

Cast

Michael Paré	...	Ty "Griff" Griffin
Sandra Hess	...	Jennifer Wells
Fintan McKeown	...	Father Nikolai Soren
Kate Orsini	...	Dr. Christina Durant
Tim Abell	...	Lex
William Langlois	...	Inspector Zev Aslan
Petri Roega	...	Father Adrian Bodesti
Rene Rivera	...	Gogol
Arthur Roberts	...	Bishop
Jason Rohrer	...	Richard Barrier
Mihai Bisericanu	...	Gregor
Bogdan Uritescu	...	Zero
Claudiu Trandafir	...	Boris
Cristi Groza	...	Ionut
Lewis Cojocar	...	Yuri

Also Known As:

Gargoyle's Revenge (International: English title)
Gargoyle: Wings of Darkness (USA) (TV title)

MPAA:

Rated R for some violence and language.

Runtime:

87 min

Country:

USA | Romania

Language:

English | Romanian

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Finland:K-15 | USA:R | Canada:14A (Ontario) | Italy:T

Filming Locations:

Bucharest, Romania

Company:

Avrio Filmworks

Goofs:

Continuity: In the scene where Fr. Bodesti is about to give a plane ticket to Fr. Soren, Soren is drinking from a glass liquor bottle. As Bodesti approaches, the bottle is uncorked, but when the camera cuts away and returns, the bottle is mysteriously corked again.

Quotes:

Ty "Griff" Griffin: [to Wells] I wounded it. But, I want that thing dead. Now
[turns and points to someone off camera]
Ty "Griff" Griffin: get me the god damned flame thrower!

Movie Connections:

Features Maximum Risk (1996)

and yet "Gargoyle" may not be the worst film I was in that year

I don't think I'm spoiling anyone's experience of this film by telling you not to see it if you have anything better to do, like clean under the stove. It gets dirty under there and you've gotta clean it sometime.

I think the movie suffers from a lack of sex and violence, though there is one car chase stunt that looks so dangerous it could only have been filmed in a country where life is cheaper than beer. "Gargoyle"'s heart is in the right place, but its aspirations are conservative. It is at least not pretentious. But I had a great time acting in it, playing the perennial idiot in the horror movie who says "What's down this hole?" and dies for his hubris. Plus I got to meet Michael Pare. Every film junkie should work with a B-movie staple at least once before death. And Romanians are the loveliest people I've met. Literally the loveliest. Walk down the street in Bucarest: if 7 of every 10 women aren't absolutely beautiful, you're walking down a street I didn't come across; and be consoled by the fact that at least 5 of the 10 are available for drinks.

Part of the film was shot in Casa Radio, an abandoned, unfinished Classic Communist Bloc-cum-Georgian Nightmare edifice originally intended to house KGB propaganda ministries, i.e. Radio Not-so-Free Europe. The building's five stories tall and takes up a city block; best of all, while its facade radiates Big Brotheresque state solidity, it resides near the city center like a post-apocalyptic ruin in a jungle of burdock and hemp peopled by dozens of Gypsies and scores of wild dogs. Construction on Casa Radio was suspended when Caucescu and his wife were executed on TV in 1989, and still there are gaping holes that drop from the sun-baked top floor (offering surreal vistas of a modern quarter-mile stretch of concrete roof, decorated with jutting rebar and old car parts, overlooking a crumbling ancient city) all the way down to the damp, creepy sub-basement (which doubles in the film for the Gargoyle lair.) No American-style guardrails or warning signs for Bucarest.

Since the demise of the Soviet Union, Casa Radio has hosted several non-union film shoots, including "Highlander III". It is attractive to producers because it's a cheap location, massive in terms of scale and available space, bizarre looking, and free of insurance headaches as it's still state property. Plus no one complains if you don't clean up after your production: anything left onsite is interpolated into the resident Gypsies' construction of their shanty town in this actual urban jungle.

An assistant director was bitten bloody by a wild dog during the shoot of "Gargoyle". The apples provided by catering were pressed into service by cast and crew as projectiles in order to keep the prowling dogs at bay. I too was bitten by wild dogs in Bucarest, once in a bar (!) and once in a city park. I also survived two car wrecks in two weeks, both in taxis and neither of which was seen by the drivers involved as grounds for stopping the cars.

GEEK NOTE: The Sci-Fi Network or Channel or whatever was one of the backers of this film (the smaller the budget, the more producers on set), so it's a little weird that nobody had a problem with the original title, "Gargoyles", until it was almost time to show it on the network, even though Sci-Fi already had an unrelated series of that name. The title was changed sometime relatively close to release, as I have a color-corrected copy labeled with the former title.