The Revenge of the 31 days of Cheese Day 5 - Reptilicus

Due to podcasting and super bowling I seem to have been falling behind on the cheese slices – never fear I will catch up.

We continue our small sidebar of Giant Monsters smashing places other than Tokyo with 1961’s Reptlicus.

In short Reptilicus is ridiculous.

Syd Pink shot the film on location in Demark using pretty much all Danish actors. As most of the Danish actors spoke English he shot it in two versions – one in Danish and one in English using the same actors for both versions. I guess on the set it was like: ‘Okay English version scene 112, Take 3. Right cut Print. Now Danish version Scene 112 Take one. Roll tape”

So Syd finished the film – American International refused delivery of the English version saying it was un-viewable – which considering what AI was willing put up on the screen was saying something. Syd sued and finally, as a compromise, they had a group of film professionals look at the English version. And what they found was yes, the actors did speak English but too many of them sounded like the Muppet’s Swedish Chef “Fern A Dern A Monster yopmin Ser” so Syd had have the film dubbed.

But that’s not the movie’s real problem. The story is typical Monster Movie stuff – they find something frozen in the arctic and it turns out to be a part of a monster – the assembled scientists discover after the frozen bit is accidentally thawed out it is a) still alive and b) has started to grow. They estimate that the original animal was almost 90 feet long and so they decide to help the growth process along without stopping to think that they are going to need to put said 90 foot long monster somewhere. These are scientists but they are not bright scientists. As an example of that they hire some guy in Bib overalls (never hire a guy in bib overalls) to watch over things at night. He is or course a total idiot who does things like when the power is out see if the eclectic eel is still charged. He was also played by someone who the IMDB calls Denmark’s greatest clown. Well if true my heart breaks for Denmark.

Anyway the monster finishes growing breaks out of the lab and goes on several rampages pursued by the Angry American General who yells a lot. . At one point the monster is driven into the sea by flame throwers (which are never used again) and then rampages the ocean shipping lanes until he returns to rampage again through Denmark – especially Copenhagen – it’s a mark of how poor this film is that there is what amounts to a travelogue of Copenhagen in the film (just before the monster gets down to business.) and not one of the landmarks mentioned in the section gets smashed during the monsters rampages- it’s very poor planning).

With the beast lurking under the water the Angry General orders it blown up by depth charges until one of the scientists points out that if you blow Reptilcus to pieces you get a lot more monsters. Angry General sees the wisdom of that but not before they blow one of the beasts legs off.

So with a 90 foot killer monster lurking under the waves does Denmark close the beaches? No of course not. We are treated to a very badly done shot of the monster rising out of the water behind some bathers who Panic and are then slimed – the monster spits green slime – well he doesn’t really they animate as it’s a cartoon the slime. The monster then rampages through generic Copenhagen until angry General seizes on the idea of drugging the beast so it be destroyed later. He does this with a bazooka (don’t ask really) and as the beast sinks into a coma he says “I’m glad there was only one” Cut to under the water to the limb blown off earlier. The only thing missing is “The End?” right after that. But the silliness of the story isn’t the real problem.

The problem is with the beast Reptilicus itself. If anything this beast is faker looking than the Giant Claw – is a stiff badly done marionette style puppet on strings and the mouth doesn’t even close properly. It’s so absurd that ersatz Beatles the Monkees would routinely pop clips from the film while they were running about doing Monkee things on their TV show. The legs don’t work – it seems to have wings but doesn’t use them in the US version. (I’ve read that that segment was cut because it was not very well done – what compared to the rest? Just how bad could it have been? The mind Boggles) all it does really is wave side to side while not very convicting looking buildings collapse – really a lot of the guff Japanese Monster Movies get about using cardboard buildings (which they didn’t it doesn’t crumble right) I think comes from people who remember things like Reptilicus and assume since it had a Giant Monster – it had to be Japanese.

Enjoy with Danish blue.