In this movie gargoyles are real. They hatch out every 400 years and utterly fail to take over the planet, as they don't have super powers or weapons and are highly vulnerable to small arms. This time their big invasion is quelled by an author and a dirt biker with a can of petrol. Nonetheless, they will remain a mild inconvenience to mankind as long as two winged breeders remain.
Wow, a gen-u-wine 70s TV movie complete with sideburns, slacks and a station wagon. This is the real deal shipmates, not one of these retro imitations wishing it were 70s kitsch. If you were a brat back then you saw stuff like this and it was a big treat, 'cause there weren't even VCRs in those days. We watched what they put on TV, and we watched when they showed it and pissed during the adverts, and we liked it dammit. You people with your pause buttons and your video on demand.
Does it still hold up today in our world of robot cops and hovercars? Goodness no. It wasn't even a good movie back then, but it may bring a tear of nostalgia to a jaundiced old eye if you remember that bygone era when finding a real live monster movie on the boob tube was a rare and exciting event. It's actually kind of fun, with lines like "hey there's a lady hanging from that pole!", and there's a pretty neat gargoyle skeleton (we said "neat" back then; "cool" was reserved for actual cool stuff). It seems almost wrong to watch this on a widescreen flat panel TV though. Gargoyles should crackle to life on a grainy old Magnavox after you've messed with the rabbit ears for a half hour.
And what magnificent gargoyles they be, this ancient race of stunt men zipped up in wetsuits with rigid plastic heads and bits of fuzz glued on. Tragically the movie is packed with full-body shots of them moving around, and there's not enough suspended disbelief in all the universe to stop you looking away in guilt at having seen the movie's shame. Rick Baker and Stan Winston made 'em, which goes to show that you shouldn't necessarily quit if you fail horribly at something on your first try. In their defense this movie was shot in 18 days without much money, and 1972 was a really really long time ago now.
