Reptilicus

Here’s a 4K Ultra HD special edition we didn’t anticipate — who would expect the lowly monster movie Reptilicus to be revived in such style?  But the movie has plenty of fans, and Vinegar Syndrome has come through with an added-value commentary loaded with information and production context. No more making cheap jokes because we don’t have the answers … well, we’ll make fewer cheap jokes.

Does the ‘W.’ stand for ‘What was he thinking?’ 

The butt of a thousand jibes and put-downs, this colorful monster romp is the first Danish production of the ‘minor but persistent’ American producer Sidney W. Pink, who several years previous had helped Arch Oboler put together the movie that ignited the 3-D craze, Bwana Devil. We know about Pink’s erratic career mainly through a collector’s book by Kip Doto dedicated to everything Reptilicus,  and  Robert Skotak’s book on Pink’s frequent collaborator, screenwriter Ib Melchior. Having sold his clumsy yet imaginative independent production  The Angry Red Planet to American-International Pictures, Pink was looking for ways to cheaply make two more pictures. We have to presume that the Copenhagen-born Melchior steered Pink to the cost-saving potential of filming in Denmark. To learn a little more about the battles between Pink, Melchior and American-International’s Samuel Z. Arkoff, we direct readers to  our review of the first Reptilicus DVD in 2001.

Deep-think articles on Reptilicus did not appear in periodicals like Sight and Sound and Cahiers du Cinéma. At his long-running, worthy film blog Shadowplay, critic David Cairns deals with camp Sci-fi and horror by ghettoizing them under a bucket-list heading called “See Reptilicus and Die” — a smart angle that allows him to dismiss them with a joke. But even he found the saga of the Muppet that Took Copenhagen fun to analyze — how did the movie get to be the way it is?  What’s this business about two separate versions?

Mining engineer Svend Viltdorft (Bent Mejding) uses an oil drilling rig to search for copper in Lapland, ‘far above the arctic circle’ yet blessed with a verdant forest and warm, sunny skies. The drill’s core sample yields a hunk of bloody flesh, presumably from a frozen prehistoric bog deep below the earth. Transported to a Copenhagen Akvarium / research establishment, the flesh proves to be alive. It grows into a giant tail, until a lightning storm frees it from its holding tank. It then reappears completely regenerated, a giant dragon that crawls (and in the Danish version, flies) across the landscape, eating farmers, crushing buildings and spitting horrid green acid slime (only in the American version). Professor Otto Martens (Asbjørn Andersen) and General Mark Grayson (Carl Ottosen) can’t stop the reptilian behemoth; their last chance is a showdown in Copenhagen’s main square.

Reptilicus was ideal for children looking for movie matinee exitement. When it played our town early in 1963, my adolescent peers were already confirmed members of the giant monster cult worshipping  Godzilla,  Gigantis, the Fire Monster,  The Giant Behemoth,  Rodan,  Gorgo,  Mothra and Ray Harryhausen’s  The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Spangled with multicolored scales and spewing huge gobs of lime-green acid vomit, the wickedly fanged serpent-thing Reptilicus made a big impression. An entire city seemed to be fleeing its path of destruction. The key must have been that I was eleven years old: catching up with Reptilicus TV airings as a teenager taught us a cruel lesson in disillusion. No longer glaring down at us from a 40-foot screen, Reptilicus was now a wiggly marionette that moved like something from Kukla, Fran and Ollie.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Reptilicus but Were Afraid to Ask.

At a 2000 convention at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Gary Teetzel introduced me to author Kip Doto, who was selling his book on the movie. Kip’s research was our first insight into the Danish cut of Reptilicus. He stressed that it was not the original cut, as Poul Bang of Copenhagen’s Saga Studios supervised both versions simultaneously for the American producer Sid Pink. The versions were cut separately from a filming shoot in both English and Danish. Back then the rumored scenes of Reptilicus in flight were a mystery seen only in blurry stills in Famous Monsters of Filmland. The Danish version also contains a kiddie musical number performed by the Akvarium’s hayseed janitor, Petersen (Dirch Passer). When not getting shocked by an electric eel, the clownish Peterson leads some bored-looking kids in a song called “Tillicus.” Kip Doto’s book explained that the late Dirch Passer was a beloved entertainer in Denmark; the Region 2 DVD that appeared a few years later was marketed as being part of the ‘Dirch Passer Collection.’

The Danish version is 14 minutes longer than A.I.P.’s American re-cut. It has conventional titles, different music, more monster action and more tame ‘romance’ — no tight clutches or passionate kisses. Handsome leading man Bent Mejding seems to have been cast for terrific blonde hair that any Viking would envy. It was an early role for Mejding, and he looks fairly foolish in coy scenes flirting with Karen Martens (Mimi Heinrich), the elderly scientist’s daughter. Mejding shows accomplished acting skills in Lone Scherfig’s Dogme 95 romantic comedy  Italian for Beginners, and especially in the more recent, superb Danish miniseries  The Killing (Forbrydelsen), on Netflix.

Clearly after an all-ages family audience, Pink and Ib Melchior keep the dramatics simple and corny. Bent Mejding’s Svend looks noble while observing the manic, overdone posturing of Carl Ottosen’s General. In military planning rooms and even on the anti-Reptilicus ‘battlefield,’ the he-men are frequently joined by Karen Martens and her perky sister Lise (Ann Smyrner), 20-somethings that oscillate between glamour posing and cutesy behavior more appropriate for boy-crazy 13-year olds. Some of Karen’s dresses are age-appropriate but others belong on a pre-teen. The Danish version has two or three phony beach scenes, with Svend standing awkardly with a bikini-clad Karen. After mostly hanging around and getting in the way, in the third act the women turn into chemists pouring colored liquids to make an anti-Reptilicus poison.

The same as with The Angry Red Planet, the dramatic scenes in both versions display truly poor direction and blocking, indicating that Sid Pink just plain didn’t know what he was doing. More than once, a key conversation occurs back in a corner, with both parties almost facing away from the camera. The actors speak slowly and never overlap dialogue… actually, they talk as if they were told to leave big gaps between lines. It’s both distracting and soporific. We recognize actor Robert Cornthwaite voicing the Akvarium’s Professor Martens, his Dansk accent coming and going. Cornthwaite reads some lines exactly as he will thirty years later in the satirical comedy Matinee. Some dialogue is so bad, it’s quotable, although you won’t hear the bizarre way it is performed:

General Grayson:  “I’m a soldier Dr. Martenson, not a scientist. That’s the way I know how to kill.”
Professor Martens:  “Then learn another.”

Captain Brandt:  “You’ll have to fire point blank — at very close range!”

The Danish Cut.

Overall, the Danish cut is slack and shapeless, like a first-cut assembly before a director decides what can stay and what should go. It meanders through several unrewarding ‘romantic’ scenes and scene extensions. It has a less gripping music score, that frequently defaults to a lush romantic theme, some of which is retained in the American cut. Plenty of travelogue material is present, plus the Tivoli Nights song. The Tillicus Song plays like something from a preschool video. Likely recruited from the families of Saga Studio personnel, the kids on screen look very uncomfortable.

Pink wangled first-class cooperation from the Danish defense forces. As pointed out by the audio commentators, it’s the best-directed footage in the show. The same can’t be said for the ‘fleeing crowds’ shots, which look like a tame lunch-break jog in street clothes. Unlike the insanely panicked mobs in Gorgo, this bunch looks quite pleased with itself, trotting along in fine form.

On the other hand, the dangerous-looking drawbridge sequence incorporates a truly spectacular stunt in which a score of bicyclists tumble at least 30 feet into the river. The Danish miniatures man Kai Koed constructed an entire model bridge, seen in angles to hide the fact that no miniature fleeing crowd is present. None of the miniature effects footage tries hard to be photo-real. A shallow depth of field makes the often-impressive miniature buildings look exactly like what they are, good models just 3 feet or so tall. The Danish version has what looks like some decent rear-projection, but no opticals — the animated green slime is not present. Compared to the American version, the Danish miniature shots are very clean, but the dragon’s motions look more wiggly, like a marionette-Muppet.

The Hollywood Cut.

The creative fracas on Reptilicus began when the A.I.P. rejected the finished picture delivered by Sid Pink. The studio ordered an editorial re-cut and a full dialogue re-dub, as the tracks by the English-speaking Danish cast were considered dreadful. The visual effects were also judged as sub-par. The company Project Unlimited was commissioned to fix them; they would soon be busy turning out monsters for TV’s  The Outer Limits.

The post-production revamp of Reptilicus was a major undertaking. Indications are that Sid Pink’s cut was not that different from Poul Bang’s Danish cut, but each contains unique material not used in the other. The two cuts of the monster’s demise use very different angles. A.I.P.’s uncredited re-cut editor trims things nicely, paring scenes to their essentials and dropping entrances and exits. The action scenes are shorter and more impactful. Our first glimpse of Reptilicus’s scaly tail disappearing behind a barn is much more effective than Bang’s slow-going, use-every-shot version. The music editorial is punchier as well … can we presume that new Les Baxter cues do more Mickey-Mousing with the on-screen action?

Step-Printing, repeating frames to slow down the action.

In the Danish version, Reptilicus is mostly restricted to woggling its head in various miniature settings. Project Unlimited’s enhancements required some real creative thinking. The first thing we see is that every monster shot is now an optical ‘stretch’ that repeats every frame, making the action slower but choppy-looking. This helps convey an impression of more mass and a bigger scale. The artificial slow-down helps with smoke and fire in the shots as well.

Time must have been short for this post-production overhaul. The monster footage in the final A.I.P. cut looks very beat-up. With the work having to be done in a rush, it’s our guess that Project Unlimited had to dupe the screening print they were given, not a negative element … every grainy step-printed monster optical has a built-in blizzard of emulsion digs, scratches and dirt. The same thing can be seen in a few obviously-rushed shots in A.I.P.’s  Master of the World, from the year before.

Very good editing helps a lot. The Reptilicus rampage looks ratty but moves smartly. Several shots are used more than once, most notably a close angle of the monster’s head veering quickly away from the camera.

In the Danish version, a monster claw stomps through a farmer’s house. Project Unlimited’s most ambitious challenge replaces that action with animated photo cutouts showing Reptilicus swallowing the farmer. The re-do shows a fake, far-too-bright farmer in the monster’s jaws.  (left-most image just below.)  The frame-by-frame animation job was probably approved as ‘good enough.’ A second try darkening the farmer might have taken the curse off the composite, as with these Photoshop-play frames.  ↓

A more successful embellishment is the organic-looking ‘Green Acid Slime’ effect. It is seen at least six or seven times, flying like flung spit, often straight at the camera. We kids thought it looked great, and was quite scary. It gives the live-action puppet something to do besides just wiggle.

Finally, the dripping main title card, zooming in from Svend’s bloody hand, let all of us kiddies know that we were going to be seeing some serious, scary stuff. A.I.P. was already putting most of its credits at the end of the film, a gambit that works well for this show.

The legal squabbling between A.I.P. and Sid Pink was over the assertion that Pink had violated the delivery schedule by not turning over an acceptable final cut. Pink likely thought a re-do was unnecessary, and we can bet that A.I.P. deducted the cost of recuts and effects improvements from Pink’s profits.

Around 2000 or so, Sam Arkoff visited MGM and held a Q&A session about his company, which had been absorbed by Orion and now belonged to MGM. He was still happily insisting that Sid Pink was an incompetent amateur, and that A.I.P.’s’ intervention had saved the movies Reptilicus and  Journey to the Seventh Planet from disaster.