Reptilicus (1963)

Excellent adaptation.

A Masterpiece!

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

After literally 18 years of no new episodes, we finally get my favorite show of all time, Mystery Science Theater 3000, back on the air! It is interesting to see Denmark's attempt at a giant monster movie. With the British "Gorgo", it seems like every country has tried its hands at a giant monster movie. I'm not going to judge the MST3K show based on this film. I'm just reviewing it as a film by itself. It actually does start off pretty well but slowly gets dumber. There's this one big guy who I guess is supposed to be the comic relief. He just isn't funny and is mostly useless.The special effects in the movie are quite bad. It looks like some cheap Photoshop effect when Reptilicus is using its radioactive breath. There's these really cheap effects that are probably stop motion when it shows Reptilicus eating people. Another flaw is that the title monster doesn't even appear until halfway through the movie! In a film with that title that's a major flaw. It just builds itself up quite poorly and isn't rewarding. *1/2

The only real thing I can fault this movie for is everything relating to the monster, and sadly this is a monster movie. The acting was alright and the plot was slightly unique. Sadly even as monster movies go though this monster is very.... lets say aged. The monster is purely a set of different puppets that have no movement. In a single scene they show a leg moving to stomp a car but past that you just see a crude puppet being dragged behind buildings, in forests, or submerged in water. I was impressed at the scale of WW2 props used when fighting the monster, I just wish that effort was redirecting into the actual monster. At first it was so bad it was good but over time it just became painful to watch. Even the viewer is relieved when the monster is finally taken down just so we don't have to see it "act".

After copper miners discover part of the frozen tail of a prehistoric monster in Lapland, scientists inadvertently bring it back to life.The American version, which is in English with a nearly identical cast to the simultaneously-made Danish version, was directed by the film's American producer-director Sidney Pink; this version was initially deemed virtually unreleasable by American International Pictures and had to be extensively reworked by the film's Danish-American screenwriter, Ib Melchior, before being finally released in America in 1962. Pink was angry at the changes and wound up in a legal dispute with AIP. After Pink and others viewed the English-language version, the lawsuit was dropped.I suspect he American version is the one currently available on Blu-ray from Scream Factory and now lampooned by "Mystery Science Theater" in their 2017 reboot. The film is, well, rather disposable. It's good fun, but not a good film, and pales in comparison to the film they paired it with, "Tentacles". Which is saying something, because "Tentacles" is not a great film either. I liked the creature and was amused by the cartoon green breath, but... it was pretty bad, even by AIP standards.Seeing the Danish version might be interesting. I am not sure if it would be any better, but maybe we could at least see what they were trying to do before AIP stepped in. I suspect this film is also slightly better if you appreciate the comedy of Dirch Passer (1926–1980), who was apparently a big deal in Denmark but completely unknown in America.

A frozen tail of a giant reptile is found in Denmark. It is then brought to Copenhagen to be studied but(of course) due to a screw-up is accidentally thawed out and regrows into the full-size dinosaur that proceeds to destroy the city, until the military and a group of scientists try to stop it(assuming of course they can...)Shoddily made film(Denmark's sole contribution to the genre) is utterly clichéd, tacky and preposterous, with an embarrassing looking, and goo-spewing monster that will likely provoke laughter with the viewer, though it has become a cult classic with its fans, who cherish its awfulness!