29Mar
REPTILICUS, 1961
Reptilicus, 1961 Danish/American film (directed by Poul Bang, Denmark version, released in 1961, Sidney W. Pink in the US for American International Pictures, of course, released in the States in 1962 after being extensively reworked).
Highly recommended for fans of old monster movies with giant anythings in them, lovers of the cheesiest of cheesy special FX (as one critic put it: “special effects that look like they cost a buck fifty”), bad dolly shots, and/or zooms, cringey early 60s sexism, wooden acting, (especially the dubbed in English!), awkward dialogue, and other endearing low-budget goodness. Of which I am, thank you very much.
As with every “good” B-movie, this one starts off with a lot of voice-over narration…which I believe is supposed to be coming from Brigadier General Mark Grayson, whom we meet later in the film, but don’t quote me on that. We also begin with a major mistake right off the top, where we find some Danish miners drilling “far above the Arctic Circle”, yet no one’s wearing a coat, there’s no snow to be seen, and we’re clearly in a leafy green forest. Very promising indeed! 😁
I also love that they’ve accidentally drilled into a huge prehistoric beast frozen below the surface of the earth and end up extracting the tip of his tail, and the blood is drawn up with the piece of the beast, soiling the drill and one of the miner’s hands (Svend Viltorft). It’s a mess—the blood runs easily and the flesh they discover is quite soft, despite supposedly being frozen. Anyway, as you do in these situations, they send this piece of prehistoric reptile off to the scientists working at the Denmark Aquarium in Copenhagen. One dork of a scientist doses off one night and the door to the cold room accidentally opens, thawing the tail. But this is actually sort of a good thing because they then discover that the tail is regenerating (think newt regrowing a lost tail, or a starfish regenerating one of its arms). Naturally, they want it to fully heal back into the gigantic monster that he once was, so they get it a bigger tank and name it Reptilicus.
As you can guess, things go wrong…Reptilicus Doctor Whos himself back into a rather dragon or serpent-like monster and escapes, but not before making a snack of the scientist who originally slept on the job. We don’t get to see the creature in all its $1.50 glory until about 30 minutes or so into the movie (that’s right! keep us in suspense…)—but when we do see him, he has wings! But he never uses them. Apparently, in the Danish version, they originally had a few scenes where he *did* fly around, but it was so poorly produced it couldn’t be included in the film. I say, return those flying scenes, dammit! I want ALL the cheese…and I love dragons, so, yeah, let’s do this restoration! Somebody? Anybody?
So, Denmark gets its one and only giant monster rampage movie, as of 2017, anyway. According to Wikipedia, Sidney Pink wanted to do a remake of the movie around 2001 (after Godzilla made a comeback), but it never happened. And we are all the lesser for it. The movie has an open-ending (from a previous attempt to destroy Reptilicus with a bomb, his foot is blown off—it is shown at the end of the movie with the obligatory DA DA DA—and we KNOW that foot is going to regenerate into another angry monster with a grudge to nurse), so it seems only natural to at least do some sort of follow up.
What were some of the most enjoyable and equally perplexing moments from the movie?
Well, as I mentioned before, but happens again, the flesh and blood being all fresh and oozy and soft despite, you know, supposedly being frozen. This is not only seen in the first scene with the miners drilling into the earth but also in the Aquarium cold room when the sleepy scientist decides he wants to slice off a piece of tail and examine it under the microscope.
I also loved how the film implied that Reptilicus somehow harnessed the electricity-charged air (during a thunderstorm), and even sucked out electricity from the electric eel tank in order to give himself the boost he needed to fully form himself, then escape.
It was also pretty awesome that the brilliant scientists who came up with the solution to destroying Reptilicus—create a gallons-worth of a drug powerful enough to put the huge beast to sleep (and deliver this drug via a bazooka, point-blank into Reptilicus’ mouth, so that the drug could get into the soft tissues and directly into his bloodstream)—also did not bother explaining (and the film did not show) what they did to actually kill Reptilicus in a way that destroyed every part of him so that he could not regenerate before the drugs wore off. They just ended the movie after remarks from General Grayson about being a good thing that there aren’t any more like him—cut to the foot under the sea.
But does it really matter how they actually managed to destroy Reptilicus anyway? Is that really the point? To me, the point is watching a silly dragon stomp around model buildings, eat someone’s father (the cheap special effect of which I still barely understand—it’s like, it’s so terrible looking, I’m not sure how they did it…maybe cut out a picture of the father guy, animate that to make it look like he’s writhing around, then cut and paste that onto the footage of Reptilicus gnawing on something? I want to know!), vomit acid mucus all over people, and then storm off into the ocean when he needs to heal from a blow torch attack. As is always the case for me, I want the monster to win. The humans just haven’t earned my loyalty. 😂
But one thing that really struck me had absolutely nothing to do with Reptilicus whatsoever. It was some filler I suppose they needed to pad the film out a bit. General Grayson needs a break from being bored sitting around the Aquarium (this is prior to Reptilicus’ escape), so Professor Martens’ daughter takes him for a night on the town—specifically to Tivoli amusement park. It comes off like a tourism ad. Honestly, I’m wondering if Tourism Copenhagen or the government of Denmark provided funds in exchange for visibility in the film. There’s even a singer at an establishment in the park singing the praises of Copenhagen and Tivoli. Plus later, during the rampage, we get to see Denmark landmark Langebro bridge. Everybody—come to Denmark! We’ve got the prehistoric creatures you want to see!
Where can you get this masterpiece for yourself? You can do what I did—I love hardcopies of everything, from books to movies, so I am now a proud owner of the DVD released by Cheezy Movies (you can get the blu-ray, if you prefer).
More sources, from Wikipedia, where you might be able to find it: The American version of Reptilicus was released on DVD on April 1, 2003, by MGM Home Entertainment under the Midnite Movies banner.[8] The Danish version was released on DVD from Sandrew Metronome in 2002. On June 16, 2015, the film was released in the Blu-ray format by Scream Factory as a double feature with the 1977 film Tentacles.[9]
And where, again, according to Wikipedia, you can find bits and pieces of Reptilicus (maybe you can get those bits to regenerate into the whole movie!):
- A clip of the movie was featured in the South Park episode “Cancelled“.
- Clips from this movie often appeared on various episodes of the 1960s TV show The Monkees.
- In the Green Acres TV show, season three episode, “Instant Family“, this movie was playing at the drive-in theater.
- The movie was featured as the premiere episode for the 2017 revival of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
- Argentinian music group Los Twist composed a song about this movie for their album La máquina del tiempo.
- In the TV show Disenchantment (Season 1, Episode 3), King Zog refers to his wife Oona as Reptilicus.
- In the 1960s TV show The Beverly Hillbillies (Season 5, Episode 3), Jethro double-dates in a sports car to a drive-in movie theater featuring this film.
Cast
- Carl Ottosen as General Mark Grayson
- Ann Smyrner as Lise Martens
- Mimi Heinrich as Karen Martens
- Asbjørn Andersen as Professor Otto Martens
- Bodil Miller as Connie Miller (Danish version)
- Marla Behrens as Connie Miller (American version)
- Bent Mejding as Svend Viltorft
- Povl Wøldike as Dr. Peter Dalby
- Dirch Passer as Peterson
- Ole Wisborg as Captain Brandt
