Come with us now … from the bubbling tarpits to the sulfurous wasteland … from the rotting forest to the stagnant mud flats … to the long lost Land of Gorch! These are not the muppets that we all know and love, the inhabitants of Gorch were nasty, ill-behaved little buggers, and Jim Henson created them that way. The reason – it’s 1975 and Henson is trying to transition from the pre-school world of Sesame Street to reach a broader audience, but nobody will take him seriously. The answer – join the cast of the hip new late night show Saturday Night Live, and perform the grossest, nastiest, most twisted and disturbing sketches he can come up with, starring a whole new cast of characters.
The cast: left to right: Scred, Queen Peuta, Wisss, Vazh and King Ploobis with Mighty Favog in the front.
The ineffuctual ruler of Gorch was King Plubis, performed by Henson himself. Scred (Jerry Nelson) was the king’s right-hand “man”. Queen Peuta (Alice Tweedy) was Ploobis’ charming wife, and Wissss(Richard Hunt) was their crater-head son. Vazh (Fran Brill) was the king’s maidservant and the object of his true desires. Last but not least there is the Mighty Favog, a statue, who served as the all-powerful spiritual leader of Gorch.
From October 1975 to January 1976, these creepy creatures fought, flirted and drank their way through just ten bizarre sketches. Ultimately, though, the twisted muppets were fired on live television only to be banished to the forgotten Land of Gorch forever, living on today as little more than a distant memory of the most dedicated Henson fans, while their creator moved on to the much more successful Muppet Show.
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