An interesting piece of TV film history, Gargoyles is perhaps the most intriguing monster film I have ever seen. That is not to say it’s good, the amount of runtime that the film goes in slow-motion whenever one of the Gargoyles are on-screen is too much for me to ignore and caused more than a couple of yawns from me.

Still, what is here is credible. Gargoyles starts with the story of the devil being banished to Hell and promising that if not him, his children the gargoyles will rule the earth. That’s a very interesting premise to start the film and certain the impression is carried on by the amount of real-life gargoyle statues and paintings we see in the start. The story then moves onto the Arizona Desert where it stays there for it’s brief 72-minute runtime.

The film can be called a monster movie that is just for entertainment but I like the way it approaches it’s monsters. It humanizes these…old enemies of mankind by showing the Gargoyles who are just coming to life from their eggs and are weak. The lead Gargoyle played by Bernie Casey is shown as a leader who cares about his race while being sure that asking for mercy from humans will not work. In that way, the movie creates an interesting dilemma: if they let the gargoyles live because they are so weak then they will eventually erase humanity but if they kill them then these intelligent beings will painfully die. I have seen movies where the filmmakers attempt to humanize their monstrous subjects but seeing a Gargoyle reading a book is a charming sight that one doesn’t see often.

For that matter, the costume work is elaborate and expressive and it imparts information to the audience (or at-least it did to me) without saying anything to our faces.

The human cast acts well enough and there is an ensemble cast with characters having their own quirks and it all works well for me. One complaint I have is that Scott Glenn deserved a lot more to do in the script than just carrying cans of gasoline…I mean, the guy is an action hero. However awful The Challenge was, it made me damn sure of that.

So, to wrap it up…watch Gargoyles. It’s very short and may or may not end in an unsatisfying fashion and the way it’s shot is damn near awful on the eyes but it’s got that Star Trek feeling with the way it deals with the question of what a monster is and I like it for that. A most surprising film