The ’70s TV Horror Classic That Scarred An Entire Generation, Stream Without Netflix

The Gargoyles movie begins with Dr. Mercer Boley (Cornel Wilde) and his daughter Diana (Jennifer Salt) in the New Mexico desert on a research project. They travel off the beaten path to a tourist trap, Uncle Willie’s Desert Museum, and are shown a skeleton of a creature that appears to have horns and wings. While questioning the credibility of Uncle Willie’s find, the proprietor is adamant that the discovery is real and purports that it’s likely a creature from local indigenous folklore.

At that moment, the building begins to shake and a falling timber strikes and kills Uncle Willie. During the fire that breaks out and rapidly spreads, the father-and-daughter team manage to barely escape with their lives and the skull from Uncle Willie’s museum.

The Gargoyles movie sees a local biker gang blamed for the fire, though Dr. Boley is skeptical. His suspicions are confirmed when two gargoyles enter his motel room late that night and steal the skull. During a chase, one of the creatures is struck and killed, giving Dr. Boley a fresh specimen to study.

The intensity accelerates in the Gargoyles movie as more creatures ascend upon the researchers and capture Diana. She is confronted by the ancient leader (Bernie Casey), who reveals to her that their queen’s eggs are about to hatch after a 500-year incubation period. As the gargoyles emerge, a battle between these ancient and intelligent monsters from mythology and the locals erupts, with Diana and her father trying to escape the gargoyles’ lair with their lives.

Gargoyles brought great star power to the small screen in a movie that honestly should have been a Hollywood studio production. Bernie Casey is terrifying, Cornel Wilde is more than effectual as the hero, and Jennifer Salt a great damsel in distress. The storyline is fast paced and utilizes common horror and action movie tropes, but the movie still makes the cut as one of the better made-for-TV movies of that era.

The camera work in Gargoyles captures the creatures hiding in the shadows in ways that will certainly give chills. But at times, the lighting is so poor that it’s difficult to discern what is on the screen. Whether this was an intentional move to create a certain atmosphere or an issue with the stage lighting itself isn’t clear, but there are times that some of the better action in the movie is difficult to ingest.

While the Gargoyles movie is a low budget television movie, the studio went above and beyond when it came to the special effects and creature makeup. For this task, the legendary Stan Winston was hired to bring the creatures from the screenplay into a terrifying reality. For his efforts, Winston shared that year’s Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Makeup.

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Winston’s gargoyles were so realistic that his work caught the attention of other filmmakers. Two decades and four Academy Awards for makeup later, Winston amassed a large body of work in horror and science fiction movies. He and his team brought to life the creatures in Aliens, Predator, Jurassic Park, The Terminator, and many other legendary film creations.

You can stream the Gargoyles movie for free with Tubi and Crackle.