A young John Carpenter made a fan film titled Gorgo Vs Godzilla that will never be seen. John Carpenter made his directorial debut with 1974’s Dark Star, a movie that started as a student short before being expanded into feature-length. Despite the tiny budget and amateur performances, the movie is still wildly imaginative and hilarious and is now a cult classic. While Carpenter has dabbled in other genres, he’s most closely associated with horror.

He also helmed one of the greatest creature features of all time with The Thing, his 1982 remake of a ’50s sci-fi classic. The Thing features one of the great movie monsters, which is an alien shapeshifter that can take on the form of any living thing it’s imitated. Despite being hailed as a classic now, the film received a frosty critical and financial reception upon release. Carpenter’s love of monsters and creatures is still evident in his later work too, from the title killer car of Christine to the Lovecraftian beasts glimpsed In The Mouth Of Madness.

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John Carpenter’s own love of movies was cemented during childhood watching b-movie favorites like The Thing From Another World or Forbidden Planet. He’s also a self-professed major fan of Godzilla and has seen every entry in the franchise. Carpenter began making movies from a young age and used an 8mm camera to make shorts with titles like Revenge of the Colossal Beasts, Terror From Space and Gorgo Versus Godzilla.

Gorgo is the title monster from the 1961 movie of the same name, with the beast being a thinly-veiled rip-off of Godzilla. Sadly, very little is known about John Carpenter’s Gorgo Versus Godzilla, and in the Gilles Boulenger book John Carpenter: The Prince Of Darkness from 2003 the director himself stated of his early works “Nobody will ever see those films – they are so devastatingly bad.” Not even the year Gorgo Versus Godzilla was made can be confirmed, because while IMDb may list it as 1969, it was likely made years before that date as Carpenter was studying at USC during this time.

Of course, the somewhat mystic quality of Gorgo Vs Godzilla has only made fans of John Carpenter want it even more. Even if the director still has a personal copy, it’s doubtful he’ll let any of those old shorts be seen. While Carpenter admitted to being somewhat proud of the shorts Gorgon The Space Monster and Warrior And The Demon, he also regards them as amateur efforts unfit for public consumption. It would be nice to see it resurface before the release of Godzilla Vs Kong, but that somehow feels like wishful thinking.

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About The Author


Padraig Cotter
(3485 Articles Published)

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It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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