Weirdhouse Cinema: Reptilicus

Grab your drug bazooka! In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe dive back into the wild world of euro-kaiju films with the 1961/1962 Danish/American co-production “Reptilicus.”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
we are going to be talking about a movie that
has two faces, but one slimy toxic heart, and that
is the nineteen sixty two English language version of the
euro kaiju movie Reptilicous, directed by Sidney Pink. Now, one
thing to mention right at the beginning here is that

(00:38):
this movie is kind of weird. There exists two different
versions of the film, one in English and one in Danish,
and neither one is simply a dub of the other.
There were actually two different movies shot separately, but sharing
the same story and most of the same cast, but
with different lines in each language and two different directors.

(01:02):
So the Danish version you'll get was directed by Paul
Bong and the English version by Sidney Pink, the latter
of which, again is the one we're going to be
talking about today. Both of these movies have the same
basic storyline, the same scenes overall. Both films are set
in Denmark and concern Danish paleontologists attempting to investigate the

(01:24):
remains of a giant frozen dinosaur tale uncovered from deep underground,
which eventually turns into a big dragon thing is named Reptilicus,
and then just goes nuts on Denmark, runs around eating
cows and attacking people at the beach, attacking the city,
attacking famous beautiful landmarks that you should visit by the way,
if you're ever in scene at Copenhagen. And yeah, and

(01:49):
so this is a giant monster movie like many others
we've talked about before, but with I don't know, some
interesting distinctions we can get into as we go along.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, so I guess you could say it's it's kind
of like the situation with nineteen thirty one's Dracula, where
you have the Mexican version that is shot on the
same sets, though that one doesn't have the same actors.
This one has almost exclusively the same actors. They're just
we just have them delivering their lines in different languages
in separate shots.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Exactly. It would be like if the thirty one Todd
Browning Dracula and then the Spanish language version were It
would be like that situation if they used mostly the
same cast, but not entirely.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
If they had been like okay, Bella, how's your Spanish,
that they went a different direction. Obviously.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yes, Now we were talking about something before we came on, Mike,
which is that I think both of us really enjoyed
watching Reptilicus. But I do have to be honest about
this one and not over sell any of its individual merits,
because I don't think it has a lot of extreme
merits in any particular direction. I would not honestly be
able to say that this is a great idea or

(03:02):
a great script. I would not honestly.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
You know.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Sometimes we can say, like the story's kind of weak,
but it's got a great cast. No offense to any
of the wonderful cast members involved here, but it is
not an especially stand out screen presence we're dealing with
with anybody here. The I would say, even the special
effects are not really that impressive. They're they're enjoyable in

(03:26):
a certain way, but none of the they're not even
on the level of Gorgo, which we'll get to in
a minute. So there is really no element of this
movie I can point to and say, well, at least
that's really great. And yet overall, I love Reptilicus.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Yeah, it's it's a charming picture, like it's a feel
good monster picture, and the areas where it's rough around
the edges adds to its charm. But indeed, it's hard
to recommend it to folks unless you are looking for
a picture like this. You gotta be on board for
something that has this vibe.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah. So maybe despite not being stellar filmmaking in any
particular direction, Reptilicus has many appealing things. One of them
is just the word reptilicus, which is one of the
most pleasing words to say that I've ever come across.
I discovered before we came in to record. I was
walking around the house with my wife, and I discovered

(04:20):
that the word reptilicus has the same stress pattern as
the word america, and then for that reason, can be
subbed into any song lyrics containing the word America. So like,
you know, Reptilicus the beautiful. I'm proud to be a reptilicon.
They've all gone to look for reptilicus and so forth.
There's been a lot of that going on at the house.

(04:41):
So you know, take reptilicus into your vocabulary and use
it with whatever gusto you please, But I will say
another big appeal of Reptilicus for me is conceptual. For
some reason, audiences seem to have long reacted to this
movie with amusement at the idea of a giant monster

(05:02):
attack film set in Denmark, and I recall a similar
sense of fun in the way that people including us
reacted to another movie we covered earlier this year, Gorgo,
from nineteen sixty one, so right around the same time period.
I think these were produced within like a year of
each other, And Gorgo was a movie in which an
enormous rat like god monster emerges from the sea off

(05:25):
the coast of an Irish island, is captured and transported
for display in a London circus, and then triggers a
monster rampage in the streets of London, sort of a
rat god amphibious attack from the Thames. Yes, and so
of course no one language or culture owns the idea
of a giant monster. Giant monsters go back in you know,

(05:47):
literature of many different cultures deep into history. But I
think it's safe to say that Japan in general and
Toho Studios in particular really grew and perfected the art
of the giant monster movie, though of course, the creators
of films like the nineteen fifty four Godzilla were inspired
at least in part by American films like RKO's King Kong.

(06:10):
So there's plenty of trading back and forth of inspiration
and creative energy across borders, as there always has been.
But many of the greatest and most enduring giant monster
movies ever made are Toho productions from Japan, and in
the Gorko episode, I think we had a brief discussion
about the question of why people seem to think it's
inherently funny or counterintuitive for a giant monster to attack

(06:35):
and crush office buildings in London or in the case
of today's movie, in Denmark, in a way that it's
just not counterintuitive or funny for that to happen in Japan, or,
for that matter, in the United States. So like a
monster from the sea, giant monster comes out and attacks
Tokyo or New York. Yeah, we buy that monster comes

(06:56):
out of the copper minds and attacks Copenhagen. That just
makes people laugh. And I feel this as well, but
I don't quite fully understand it. I was trying to
think of reasons. And I was thinking, maybe it's as
simple as this is the only Danish kaiju movie that
I know of, so it's just unfamiliar. If there were
more of them, it would feel normal. Or maybe it's

(07:16):
something about the like the cultural or geographic setting that
just doesn't interface as naturally with the soul of a
beast like Reptilicus. Could it be something about I don't know,
predominant styles of local architecture. I really don't know the answer,
but I do think it's it's interesting that people quite
consistently have this reaction, So it's just something to think about.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Yeah, I think part of it is that from very
early on, we associate like New York City and Tokyo
with giant monster attacks and it kind of sticks, and yeah,
it would we would maybe expect, like Copenhagen have its
own thing, like I don't know, like you know, killer
mermaids come out and attack Copenhagen. That tracks, Oh that'd

(07:58):
be great. But I mean, but then from Danish perspective,
why not Copenhagen As we learn in this film, it's
a beautiful city with a lot to offer.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
That's all right. I was not able to research this
before we recorded today. But I would love to know if,
like the I don't know local the Copenhagen Tourism Board
or something was a producer on this film, if they
put some funding into it, because there is a segment
in the middle of the movie that is an almost

(08:27):
too good to believe just travel brochure for the city
of covid Look at all of the beautiful local landmarks.
You can visit the swinging you know, nightlife district. Oh,
check out this gorgeous bridge and fountain. Great place to
take the kids.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah, everything that they say during this ten minute travel
brochure section of the film, you could easily imagine Rick
Steet's saying all of it in an episode of his
show or his podcast Love Rick Steeves by the way,
but yeah, I can imagine him saying, like, you know,
many people say that Danes were born on their bicycles
and when you travel through Copenhagen and so forth.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
And it it ends with a scene of it's like
two military guys who are both on a date with
the same woman at the same time. That's what it's showing.
I don't know what that means, but they go out
on this date and they just go to a nightclub
and like watch a musical number, and we watch too.
Here we are.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
But I love that the film felt as if the
film knew that American audiences might say, why Copenhagen, and
so here's the answer, Here's why Copenhagen.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Okay. Another thing to consider this also has come up
in past episodes where we talked about giant monster films.
The surprisingly sober themes that come out of some of
these movies. Now, many of them are just deliberately and
consciously silly, just some good wholesome atomic beast rastling, but
other Kaiju movies have some pretty serious ideas in mind,

(09:56):
at least in the back of the mind. I think
it's well known that the original fifty four Godzilla obviously
had nuclear weapons on its mind. Later Godzilla films have
some pretty clear environmental themes, like the idea that we
have polluted the earth, and the Earth is striking back
in the form of like an embodied monster, a sort
of meat form immago of the the very real but

(10:18):
sometimes more invisible and diffuse human consequences downstream from pollution,
pollution of the air and water, and destruction and natural habitats,
and so forth. So I was wondering, does Reptilicus fit
into this picture. Does Reptilicus have any serious themes in mind?
I'm not sure, but we could come back to this
question later.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yeah, if they're there, it's a very and we can
always speak to the American version here, something like this
could be more stressed in the Danish version. But I
got maybe mild vibes of the importance of international cooperation
against threats, regenerative threats, but it's it's very shallow, it's

(11:00):
there at all.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
Okay, should we hear some trailer audio?

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Sure? Sure? My? Oh my elevator pitch. By the way,
is springboarding off? Is something you said? Is they're coming
to Reptilicus today. I'm not going to sing it because
I don't know if we'll get pained for that anyway. Yes,
the US trailer for this is pretty fun. Let's have
a listen.

Speaker 4 (11:21):
Somewhere in the Forbidding Tundra mountains of Lapland, high above
the Arctic Circle, a group of mining engineers were prospecting
for copper. But what they on earth was a story,
a story that was to terrorize the whole world. Fossil bones.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
I have never seen bone fragments like this before.

Speaker 4 (11:56):
I'll work with the army through Captain Brant, Commander Svenson,
you'll buy for any naval action required. As chief of police,
I'll rely on you to handle the population. Handled Grayson
where day out of his way? How long do you

(12:19):
expect me to continue this hill?

Speaker 3 (12:28):
All right?

Speaker 1 (12:29):
If you want to go out and watch Reptilicus yourself,
we encourage you to do so. The Vinegar Syndrome Blu
ray is clearly the best choice here, features a restored
cut of the American version of the film, as well
as the original Danish version, or I guess it's the original.
I will say it's the original version, but anyway, both
English version and Danish version.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
I own this Blu ray set from Vinegar Syndrome and
it is gorgeous. I highly recommend it.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, they do great work. Sadly, this version was checked
out when I went to rent a video drome. They
were very apologetic. They were like they were like, yeah,
I'm sorry, you're not gonna be able to watch it
in the best quality possible. And I was like, it's fine,
it's this is a time constraint situation and so forth.
So I had to rint an older DVD of the

(13:15):
American cut of the film, which was fine. I thought
the quality was certainly watchable, though I did have French
subtitles that I could not make go away, but that
did not get in the way of my enjoyment of
the film.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
What was the movie that we watch that had hard
burned Dutch subtitles was that the Hawaiian Werewolf movie.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
It was, Yes, there was a TV movie, so we
were having to watch like a YouTube cut of it,
YouTube up load of it that had been like ripped
from from television.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
Over there, you know, with a verk beast.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Yeah, Death Moon. Death Moon is the motion picture. Someone
needs to put it out on Blu Ray. Someone make
that happen. All right, Let's get into the connections here,
starting with the director we already referenced. This is Sydney W. Pink,

(14:13):
director of the US version, producer I believe of both reptilicuses,
and one of the credited writers. He lived nineteen sixteen
through two thousand and two, American director and producer, often
singled out for his contributions to three D cinema. In fact,
he was an ap on the associate producer on the
first widely released feature link three D film Bwana Devil

(14:36):
in nineteen fifty two, a film we mentioned in our
previous Weird House Cinema episodes talking about three D pictures.
He also gave us the cinemagic technique in nineteen fifty
nine's The Angry Red Planet, in which a pink red
tint is applied to black and white film to give
us the surface of Mars to take us to the
surface of Mars. He also directed Journey to the Seventh

(14:59):
Planet right before the picture in sixty two starring John Agar.

Speaker 4 (15:03):
There you Go.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
Also, I'm always into a good I was a title
that always catches my interest. So I'll just point out
that his first film, both as a director and a
producer was nineteen fifty three's I Was a Burlesque Queen,
which also had three D dance sequences in it.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
I Was a teenage Reptilicus, all right.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
The other writing credit goes to an individual that's come
up on the show before. It's Ebe Melchior, who lived
nineteen seventeen through twenty fifteen, Danish American screenwriter with some
impressive credits. We previously referenced him as one of the
writers of Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
Oh, I knew I recognized the name.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
Yeah, I mean, it's a name that stands out. He
wrote and directed The Angry Red Planet fifty nine, Time
Traveler sixty four, co screenwriter on Robinson Crusoe on Mars
And sixty four, and his nineteen sixty five short story
The Racer was adapted to the nineteen seventy five Corman
produced Paul Bartel directed movie Death Race two thousand.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
Ooh, yeah, man, I haven't seen that one in many years,
but I have some fond memories about it. Is it
as good as I remember? I don't know Frankenstein Frankenstein, Yeah, Oh,
that's the Chardine character, right, yeah?

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (16:18):
And what's Stallon's in it? Right, Cass like one of
the villains. He's like machine Gun Joe V Turbo or something.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
I don't remember him. I just remember Franken STETI. Yeah,
but I also remembered as being fun, all right. Now,
getting into the cast, there are a lot of folks
that kind of fade into the background here performing various
bureaucratic kaiju fighting duties. This is often the case in
some of these older Giant Monster films you have governmental
bodies in organizations responding to the threat. And so there's

(16:49):
a lot in this movie and other movies of like
folks setting around having meetings and smoking cigarettes, and it
can get a little boring. It can be also incredibly thrilling,
as we know from films like Shin Godzilla. Yes it's
not an inherently boring idea, but it can be boring.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yes, Reptiloicus has many pleasures, as we've said, but I
do not think it is a highlight in the stretches
where we're just like watching military men stand around a
table and like you know, talk about their strategy. They're like,
we're going to have to flesh them out here, we
will position our artillery. It's not very thrilling.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
All right. So I'm not going to have as much
to say about some of these actors because a number
of them, like almost almost have not exclusively worked in
Danish cinema. And if there's more to add about some
of these folks that we don't get into, if you
were familiar with Danish cinema, if that's like your area
of expertise, or if we have any Danish listeners or

(17:46):
listeners of Danish heritage out there, and you recognize these
names right in. We'd love to hear from you. So
let's go through some of the names here. We have
Karl Ottosen who live nineteen eighteen through nineteen seventy who
too playing General Mark Grayson. He was a Danish actor
who was also in Journey to the Seventh Planet. This
is the dark haired general guy.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
He is. I think it took me a while to
realize this, but he's like the voice who's narrating at
the beginning of the movie, and then he shows up
halfway through.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
Okay, yeah, all right. Then we have Anne Smyrner playing
Lisa Martin's. She lived nineteen thirty four through twenty sixteen,
Danish actress who appeared in a handful of Sydney Pink movies,
mostly worked in German cinema though until her retirement from
acting in the seventies. And then we have Mimi Heinrich
as Karen Martin's she lived nineteen thirty six through twenty seventeen,

(18:39):
Danish actress who was also in Journey to the Seventh Planet. Oh,
and then we have Asjorn Anderson as Professor Otto Martins.
This is the he's also the parent of the character
I just reference. This actor lived nineteen oh thirty through
nineteen seventy eight. Danish film actor and director who plays
one of the more memorable parts here as the kind

(19:01):
of l Ron Hubbard looking professor who is studying the
rise of Reptilicus. He mostly worked in Danish cinema, but yeah,
he's memorable here. I do like him a lot.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
The movie plays him like a hero, but he's kind
of low key the villain of the movie. You know,
he's like, yes, let's grow Reptilicus some more.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yeah. Yeah, he's not presented like a mad scientist, but
he does mad science for sure. Yeah, all right. We
also have Bent Midgeing playing Svend Vitroloft. He lived nineteen
thirty seven through twenty twenty four. This is our slim
blonde sort of leading man type. He's the guy who
goes in parties on the beach, played by award winning

(19:41):
Danish actor here only in his third film role, but
he would go on to have a long career in
Danish cinema. So this is definitely I think one of
those names where if Danish cinema is your sweet spot,
you know, this guy and you can tell us all
about it.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah, for most of the runtime, he is completely superfluous
to the plot, which makes me think that originally this
movie was just written to be about like the old
scientists and the military guys, and the producer might have
been like, what is going on, Why don't you have
any like young attractive characters in here? So they just
wrote in like, oh, yeah, there are just like several

(20:17):
good looking people in their twenties who are standing around
in whatever scene. So that's when we get Svinn and
Lisa and Karen and that problem solved.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Oh yeah. And then also we have Connie here. The
character of Connie, who I think was probably brought in
for the same reasons, almost definitely played by Marley's Barons
born nineteen thirty nine. You know, occasionally a former nationwide
beauty pageant winner pops up in the movies we watch,

(20:47):
and including Miss Mexico's. I think we've had a few
different Miss Mexicos pop up, and so I was not
shocked at all to read that this majorly attractive minor
character in this film was played by Miss Germany nineteen
fifty eight.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
Now, wait a minute, is this the actress who plays
this role in the American version or in the Danish version,
because I believe this role is the one that where
they actually swapped out the cast, wasn't it.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
This is yes, you will only find her in the
English cut of the film because the actress who plays
Connie in the Danish version apparently she couldn't do the
English lines, so they needed someone else to play the
character in the English version. Okay, she didn't appear in much,
but yeah, her presence here kind of highlights some aspects
of the filmmaking process.

Speaker 4 (21:33):
Well.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah, as I was saying this, this movie is full
of characters who there's no plausible reason that they would
actually be in the place where this scene is happening,
but they're just standing around to sort of like fill
out the cast. So it's not just you know, General
Grayson standing there being sad and like, oh, we gotta
fight Reptilicus. So let's just have Spinn and Lisa and

(21:55):
Karen and Connie and everybody kind of pile into the
shot and they'll be like, what's happening with Reptilicus?

Speaker 3 (22:03):
All right?

Speaker 1 (22:03):
But as far as the cast goes, we save the
best for the last. In my opinion, because we have,
for my money, the most visually stimulating performance in this film.
It's not another former Miss Germany, but rather the legendary
Danish comedian and character actor Dirtsch Passer who lived nineteen
twenty six through nineteen eighty.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
He is the true star of the film. He only
gets a couple of scenes and we never learn what
happens to him. We never learn of Dirtsch's fate. Does
he does he succumb to Reptilicus or does he make
it out and live happily ever after? We don't know
knowledge at all.

Speaker 3 (22:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
He plays Peterson, who is very much a comic relief character,
a sort of bumbling janitor slash security guard slash occasional
sort of lab assistant. And he may or may not
sleep in the building on chairs. It's unclear, unclear what
his job is.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
He's a guy in overalls who is broad in by
one of the professor's daughter, is almost as if like
he's her boyfriend or something, and she brings him in
like here he is father, and he's just this guy
in overalls who's like, yes, hire me, and I will
keep an eye out for anything fishy. And then he
walks around the halls and like sticks his hand in
eel tanks.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
Yeah, he has some great comedic moments because Pat Passer
in this film is a big man and he has
one of in wearing the overalls, and he has one
of the most comedically expressive faces. I think you could
ask for the eyes, the mouth, the energy he's able
to project through his face. We started you and I
started talking about him when he showed up instills for

(23:39):
a movie that came up in our discussions on our
train episodes for stuff to blow your mind. It's a
nineteen seventy six what is this? I think this may
have been a TV movie, a Danish TV movie called
ghost Train.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Oh, which was an adaptation of this. I think it
was British play. There's like a play about a ghost train.
People trapped in a station with a story about a
ghost train, and then it all turns out to be
a ruse covering up a like secret espionage caper where
like communists are infiltrating Britain by way of a secret train. Yeah,

(24:13):
which is okay, but then yeah, so there were many
adaptations of this plot, and one of them is this
one that has Dirt Passer in it, who I don't
remember which character he plays.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
But yeah, he ends up on some of the promotional
materials for it because he had that very expressive face,
which I think he could use for sort of terror
as well as comedy, like he could open his mouth
really wide, and yeah, I was instantly impressed by those stills,
Like you know, you see a still like that and
you're like, who is this hyper expressive actor. Indeed, he

(24:48):
was a pretty legendary within the Danish world of entertainment
as an actor, a kind of a character actor, but
also as a comedian, noted for his improv skills and
apparently also just really explosive loud performances. Though in his
private life, as is often the case, you know, he
was said to be a very quiet, reserved man, huh,
that's funny, but on the stage a loud speaker for

(25:12):
the absurdity of the human condition. He was also apparently
had a clown act and famously slash tragically died in
his clown makeup. He suffered cardiac arrest in the midstore
immediately following a performance, and so, you know, I guess
this is one of the things that cannot help but
sort of add to one's legendary status. But he's apparently

(25:34):
highly influential within the Danish acting world, and I can
see why. Like this is a guy that even in
this small, you know, just comedic role, like he stands
out like he's the main actor that sticks in my
mind from this picture.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
Agreed, there are some shots where as we were discussing,
he has a bit of a Stephen King in the
eighties energy going on. Yeah, he brings with him the
great suggestion of tom foolery soon to follow. Like when
he's walking down the hall and you see the eel tank,
you just know before it even happens, is like he's

(26:11):
going to end up at least part of his body
is going to be in that eel tank.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
Yes, yeah, thank goodness it happens. But again we'll just
going to prepare you for disappointment. He does just disappear
at some point in the film and does not come
back for more comedic misapps.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
They should have had him defeat Reptilicus.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
I would have bought it. Yeah, he seemed like a
big guy. I think he could handled it all right. Finally,
the music for this picture of the US version anyway,
it's another Less Baxter score. I lived nineteen twenty two
through nineteen ninety six. We've talked about him numerous times
for some of his very traditional scores, his weird score
for a very minimalist electronic score for Frogs in the seventies.

(26:52):
This is another film score by the master of exotica
music that I guess mostly doesn't hit any exotica notes,
at least until the very end, right, it gets a
little exotica right there at the end.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
No, there's some I mean, so, there's nothing wrong with
the music in this movie except the way it is
matched with what's happening on screen, like persistently funny music
choices throughout. It'll have these these like stings and stings,
the orchestra stings that are timed strangely. It'll have the

(27:23):
use of like blustery march music like seventy six trombones
kind of marches playing over scenes where it doesn't feel
like it makes any sense, just like a car's pulling
up to a building. And then one of the funniest
things is like right at the end, when they're looking
out over the water and it's like, well we killed reptilicas,
and it's while the guy is saying this. It's playing

(27:45):
like the nightclub music that we heard earlier, like the lounge.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
Song it needs it feel good film.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah, all right, time just talk about the plot.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Yeah, let's get into it.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
Okay. So we begin with the glorious AIP logo as
we pan over a vista of rippling hills dotted with
green shrubbery, and then we get a voice over. This
is later going to be revealed to be I'm pretty
sure it's the Milt, the General, Brigadier General Grayson, but
we don't know that yet. It's just somebody saying somewhere
in the forbidding tundra mountains of Lapland, high above the

(28:30):
Arctic Circle, a group of mining engineers were prospecting for copper.
But what they unearthed was a story, a story that
was to terrorize the whole world. I'm already fact check
they did not. This movie does not have worldwide implications.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
This is more regional conflict.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yes, And so what we see, by the way, when
this is happening, we see some guys in like khaki
jumpsuits and white helmets working on a bunch of mining
equipment in the middle of a four forest. What looks
to me I could be wrong. What looks to me
like a pretty warm forest wherever this is. I don't
think this is the tundra, as he says. But then

(29:10):
he goes on to say, when the events began that
were to place a burden of decision involving the lives
of an entire city on my shoulders, I was far away, unsuspecting, unknowing.
And then we zoom in on one of the miners
who is busy retracting a drill bit from a borehole
in the earth, and as the drill comes up out

(29:31):
of the ground, he feeds it onto a pulley system
above his head and then notices that the drill is wet,
not with water or with oil, but with some viscous,
bright red substance. He says, it's blood, and then we
zoom on his bloody hands and then get the tidal reptilicus.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
I mean it's it's a great start. It's shocking.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
I'm in dried, yeah, chiller font reptilicus. It's all dripping everywhere,
and the orc extra is like stinging again and again.
But after the title we rejoined the scene where the
miners are freaking out about the presence of blood on
their drill. They start digging at the mudcaked threads of
the drill bit with their hands and then they start

(30:14):
pulling all of this weird gore off of it, floppy,
moist red flaps of something, and one of them says,
it's a piece of skin, like leather.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
This is effectively gross that I was reminded of the
music video for a sober bitool. They're like scenes of
like meat moving through a tube at times, and like
that's similar vibing.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
Yeah, yeah, So more gore comes off of the drill,
and it's like sometimes it's sometimes it's these flaps of stuff.
Sometimes it's something rigid covered in blood. And to the
rigid stuff, the head miner says, bones, fossil bones. And
then this other guy says what kind of thing is
down there? And the head miner says, I don't know,

(31:00):
but I intend to find out. And he decides they
have to halt operations until they figure out what's going
on with the drill. And there's some great dialogue here.
The main guy who later will learn this guy is
the character Spin. So Spin says to his friend Henry,
as an American, you have drilled all over the world,

(31:21):
What do you make of it? And Henry says, it
can't be a living thing. Let it be. And so
spin here is tall, blonde, handsome. He's going to be
our geo hunk for the film. He's a minor and
he's just a good looking, strapping lad. He says to
his friend that he's going to radio someone named Navik

(31:43):
at the University of Copenhagen. But first they're going to
take some polaroids of this wheelbarrow full of bloody slop.
And what they don't see, like they take some pictures
and then walk away. What they don't see is that
the gore starts breathing. These little sacks are inflating deflating
in the gunk. Then the same voiceover from earlier resumes,

(32:04):
saying within hours two Danish scientists had joined the mining engineers,
Professor Martin's from Copenhagen's don Mark's Aquarium and his associate,
doctor Peter Dalby, as well as a third man, Hans Carlson,
a newspaper reporter. So we see all these guys sitting
around a campfire wearing hats with ear flaps, and the

(32:26):
narrator says the two scientists had examined the startling find
hidden beneath the frozen tundra and brought up by the
drill bit. They reasoned out the meaning of the gruesome
puzzle without ever dreaming of its full deadly secret. So
one of the scientists explains the results of their investigation.
They're like, these are the bones of a gigantic creature

(32:48):
which lies fossilized down in the ground below us. And
then the miner is like, but how do you explain
the blood? And Professor Martin's then says, there is quote
a street of icy muck underground. The creature must be
embedded in it, frozen solid. And then this was great,
Dalby says, not unusual really, So they say, the drill

(33:13):
cut through this frozen creature's flesh, the friction of the
drill thawed the flesh out, and bam, there you get wet,
wet blood.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
It's pretty I mean, for the time and for the
relative vibe of the picture, pretty gory. Like it's an
effective slop in.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
This sure, yeah. So Dalby explains that normally when this happens,
the frozen animal underground is a mammal, like a wooly mammoth.
In this case, the flesh brought up by the drill
is instead from a giant reptile, and that is totally unique.
So the scientists explain that they're going to excavate and

(33:51):
then ship the remains to the aquarium in Copenhagen. So
let's go straight straight to Copenhagen now, So we get
like a Openhagen title in yellow text in this metal
band font. People are walking around in the streets. We
see lots of bicycles, motor traffic, old buildings and so forth.
The music in this part is funny because it's just

(34:13):
playing this march when what we're seeing is like a
red convertible pulling up to a building. So the people
in the car are Professor Martin's who've already met Otto
Martins is his name, and his adult daughter Lisa, and
she's dropping him off at the aquarium, and Lisa says,
don't spend all your time with those old fossils, father,

(34:34):
you might become one. And then Otto says, with two
daughters like you and Karen, it's a pleasure to retire
my old bones. From what I can tell, this was
written in English and not in Danish, and then like
losing something in translation, but it feels like something where
we've lost something in translation.

Speaker 1 (34:54):
Yeah, yeah, there are a lot of lines like this
in the picture.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
So we follow Professor Martin's as he wandered through the
don marx Akvarium to his laboratory. He's like passing through
exhibit tanks full of fish and sea turtles on the way,
and what I just noticed. They've got these sea turtles
in a tank that looks quite small, and then the
professor stops to bang on the glass.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
At them, and everyone knows you're not supposed to do that.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
So they get to the lab and there are various
technicians at work. Martin's and Dalby discussed the remains they
unearthed from the mine. Dalby has been trying to reconstruct
the creature, and so far his attempts have all failed.
He expresses his puzzlement, saying, I don't know why we
can't put this thing back together. We've got plenty of bones,

(35:41):
and Martin's says, too many bones. We aren't even sure
they belong to the same animal, but Dalby is sure.
He says it's unlike anything in the fossil record, completely unique.
So anyway, Otto's other adult daughter, Karen arrives with a
telegram from Spinn, the handsome miner, that apparently he found
more bones and he's bringing them to the museum and

(36:03):
he'll be here in an hour. You need somebody to
pick him up at the airport with the bones. So
Otto sends Karen and his daughter to pick him up
at the airport, and Karen is portrayed as boy crazy.
She's like, ooh, is he handsome father? And he tries
to dissuade her. He says, like, no, he has three
eyes in a false mustache. Now hurry up. But the

(36:26):
next scene is that Savin and the bone fragments are
already here, and this is where we get that great
delivery where Otto says like, I have never seen bone
fragments like this before. Well, what's so weird about the bones? Well,
the professor explains they are resilient but very strong, almost

(36:47):
like the cartilaginous bones of a shark, That's what he says. Meanwhile,
they discuss how they have identified the frozen piece they discovered,
and it is from the creature's tail, and now it's
being kept under deep freeze conditions beyond this heavy iron
door in the wall of the laboratory and we get
to see inside and this actually looks kind of cool.

(37:08):
They've got it under like blue green lighting, sort of
frosty and shimmering. I thought it looked like the texture
of a puppet from The Nightmare before Christmas.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
Oh yeah, that's good. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
But then later we see a cross section of it
and it looks like a beef roast. It's like an oxtail. Anyway,
they can estimate just from the tail that this creature
would have been among the biggest reptiles or dinosaurs ever
to live. They say ninety feet or more. They don't
specify in what direction, and they say it lived seventy
to one hundred million years ago. And then also in

(37:43):
this scene, Karen Martin's daughter is just coming on so
strong to Spin. She says, like, father, now that you've
told Spin about frozen matters, can I thaw him a little?

Speaker 3 (37:57):
Yeah? Oh?

Speaker 2 (37:59):
But then the other professor otto daughter shows up again.
This is Lisa, And now Lisa brought a guy with
her as well. But this is Dirt, So I don't
think they actually meant that like dirtch is her boyfriend,
but that's almost how it comes off. She like brings
him up like here he is father.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yeah yeah, because again this is Peterson. He appears to
work here, or at least he is here and is
ordered around to do things right.

Speaker 2 (38:23):
So he's this strange looking guy in a gray flannel
shirt and denim overalls. And by the way, in the
scene like this, the sisters are mocking and sniping at
each other like they're fighting over the handsome minor, the geohunk,
literally pulling him in opposite directions, you know, they each
take one of his arms and they're fighting over him.
And then these two old scientists Martin's and dalby are

(38:45):
acting like creeps one of them. Dalby's like, Auto, I
envy that young man and running off with your daughters,
and Auto is like, yes, he will be very busy now.
And this gives way into the dirt passer scene where
he is explaining that he is there to help them
keep an eye on things when no one's around. He

(39:06):
will be there to keep a lookout. So he seems
to me more security guard than janitor, but it's still
never very clear. Like basically what he does is he
just walks around in the hall and gets into gets
into trouble.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, it gets in little mishaps. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Now, the scientists stressed to Peterson that the most important
thing is to always keep this reptilicous tail frozen, never
let the freezer thaw out. And he's like, okay, got it, boss.
And so I really had my expectations subverted because as
soon as I saw this scene, I was like, I

(39:44):
know what's gonna happen. Dirt dirt passer is going to
mess this up. He is going to thaw this tail.
But it is not Dirt's fault, is it.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
No, No, not at all, which is surprising. Again, like
generally when someone says, hey, make sure this doesn't happen,
a thing is going to happen. And if you have
a comic relief bumbling security guard like who better than
to accidentally thaw the reptilicus.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
That's right. But so he's not the one who thows it.
He does get into some other trouble. He is walking
down a hallway and just in the middle of the
hallway there is an open tank that has all these
like electricity warning signs on it. I guess it's got
electric eels in it, and dirtch is like, I just
got I gotta stick my hand in the tank.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
Oh yeah, well we build up to right. It's the
first is it the first scene where he just passes
by and he's like he says, like, yep, everything around
here runs on electricity, which is a line I genuinely
laughed at. I thought, oh, yeah, it's pretty good.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yes, yeah, okay, No, he doesn't stick his hand in
it yet. That's later, but he he comments on the
fact that they're electric, just like the lights.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
Yeah, but you know that hand is going in there.
You know we're going to come back to that electric eel.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
It's Chekhov's eel. Yeah. So later that night, Delby is
taking some Reptilicus samples and analyzing them under the microscope,
but he is overworked and drowsy and soon falls asleep
at his desk. Meanwhile, outside there's a lightning storm raging,
and somehow this leads to the freezer door falling open.

(41:16):
I think that Dalby like didn't shut it right or
something when he was getting the sample out and the
freezer begins to thaw.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
That's right, you can't nail Peterson for this. No hand
in this right, not his fault.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
It was Dalby. And then the next morning, Professor Martin's
and Lisa. They come into the office and discover the scene.
Dalby is asleep head on the desk. The freezer's hanging open,
and the Reptilicus tail is dripping blood on the floor,
and we see it in its thawed state after it
has come up to room temperature, and it now looks
much nastier than before, like it's covered in a red

(41:50):
brown damp wool. Obviously unhappy to see this that everybody
rushes in and Auto is like unfrozen. There's some general
fretting and chewing out of people until they discover something shocking.
The drill hole in the tail that the handsome miner
made with his drill bit. It is now healing, and

(42:13):
the scientists say, you realize what this means. You let
it thaw and now it is alive. So the next
scene is Professor Martin's having a meeting in his office
with somebody we haven't met before. It turns out this
is a UNESCO official named Connie Miller, and the first
thing he says to her is some casual sexism. He's like, oh,

(42:35):
we don't often see women as beautiful as you associated
with science, and she's like, dude, I am qualified, and
he's like, ah, yes, I'm sorry, I am old. But
I'm still unclear on exactly what Miller's job is supposed
to be here. I take it this is like a
job interview where they're having this meeting here, but they

(42:56):
don't explain exactly what she's doing. It's something related to Tilicus.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah, I'm not sure exactly what this character is supposed
to be doing. Like I was mainly distracted by, like,
who's this actor playing this role?

Speaker 3 (43:07):
You know?

Speaker 1 (43:07):
And this is where I came upon the miss Germany factoid. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
And then also for some reason, the dude's daughter Lisa
is just looming over this lady during the interview. Just
one of many, many examples of throughout the whole film
why would this character be here? But then suddenly we
meet another new character, the American brigadier general named Mark Grayson,

(43:33):
who again this is I think this was the guy
narrating in voiceover earlier, but we meet him through one
of those sentence completed from across the room by a
newly arrived character intros. So I think Martin's is saying,
we have a general coming in. His name is and
then he's looking amongst his papers, and then the guy

(43:53):
you hear another voice and he says Mark Grayson, and
I have never seen a man introduce him himself in
a movie with such apparent disgust. He says his own name,
the way that cop talked about hippies and the living
dead at Manchester More.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
Yeah, it's so weird.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
So Grayson wanders over to Professor Martin's. He's scowling, he's
not happy about whatever's going on. The professor welcomes him,
and Grayson says, I think the line is I don't
know why I'm here, Professor, I assume you'll let me know. Classic,
didn't We just talk about movies with the scene of
the scene convention of like we're all here for a mission,

(44:33):
but we don't know what it is. Now we're going
to get the briefing.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
Yep, yep. We have kind of like a mini version
of that here.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
Yeah, though, I guess we talked about how the most
believable context is when it's a military things.

Speaker 1 (44:44):
Yeah, I guess it makes sense here.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
Yeah, but here all of the characters are introduced to
each other. He got Miller, Lisa Grayson all saying hello, introducing,
and it's very stiff all around. Now, the next scene
is a news conference hosted by Otto Martin's highlights. So

(45:12):
the press is gathered and he gives sort of a talk,
and the highlights are, this creature is alive. It is
quote regenerating, and he explains that by saying a lizard
can regrow its tail when it's chopped off, a flatworm
can regrow whole parts of its body, even its brain
after being cut in half. And that's what's happening right now. Also,

(45:34):
we learned that the animal is called reptilicus. The name
is suggested by a journalist and Martins is just like reptilicus.

Speaker 4 (45:41):
It is.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
I think the standard, right. It's like the journalist gets
there first, they get to officially name a new organism. Yeah,
don't matter what publication they're from.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
What if we name it the Daily Maelosaurus. So all
the journals come in and flock to look at the tank,
like they're clamoring up the staircase to look in the
window inside, and they're murmuring. And then we see newspaper
headlines spinning at the screen. We see prehistoric monster growing
in huge tank. And I really like that one because
it's got the word huge in it, but it refers

(46:17):
to the tank. And then another headline prominently featuring the
concept of tank, it is incubator tank feeds monster from pass.
So after this there's a scene of Brigadier General Mark
Grayson sulking because he is being relegated to the command

(46:37):
of in his words, two captains, three office boys, and
a damn lizard. And he's like, I'm a war hero,
I'm worthy of prestige. How dare they put me on
Reptilicus detail. Now, the next scene we get is a
good old dirt scene. Here we're not at the eel
part yet. Instead, here he's eating a sandwich and painting

(47:00):
something on a microscope slide and then looking through the microscope,
then putting his sandwich under the microscope and seeing lots
of bacteria, and then he burps, and then we get
like harp music playing and we cut to black.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
I have no idea. This is a scene where I
really was trying to figure out what Peterson's role here is,
Like he did not before the scene. He did not
seem like a character who had microscope access.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
You know, It's like he's just now discovering that there
are microbes on his food.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
I guess, I guess maybe I would not be surprised
if they this was not a scene where they were like, hey,
let's just improve some stuff. Let's just get the camera
on this guy and just see what he's got.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
Turn dirt loose in the lab. See. Yeah, he's like
Billy Crystal and h oh. Also, this right after this,
I think is when he actually does cram his hand
in the electric Guell tank. Yes, so he's like going
down the hall and just wants to get a little
taste a free sample of electric geel, and I don't know,

(48:02):
I guess it shocks him. I assume we were to
take it as him really being electrified, not him pretending
to be.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
Oh yeah, I think it was supposed to be real electrocution,
because we get, we get as we're hoping, like full
like a full array of facial emotions. Here he goes
to the seven stages of being shocked by an eel
and it's pretty great.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
But while this is happening, there is distraction because he
hears a rumbling in the Reptilicus tank and he gets
very alarmed, in fact, so alarmed that he pulls an alarm.
He pulls the fire alarm. Everybody comes running. They're like,
what's happening. What's wrong Peterson? And he explains, but then
Martin's says to him, don't worry Peterson. Here's the quote.

(48:45):
He says, reptilicus has no conscious life. Yet what you
heard was merely involuntary embryonic movement.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
So you know.

Speaker 2 (48:56):
In the meantime, we learn more about reptilicus. The scientists
are constantly studying it as it grows. Martin's is like, yes,
grow more reptilicus, and they learn he has big, strong
scales on his back, slimy secretion from his mouth which
has a corrosive effect, like highly concentrated acid, and so
they're like, yes, keep keep growing it. Oh, and this

(49:18):
is the part where we get to the Copenhagen tourism reel.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Yes, like there's this I think I don't know. German general.
There's a general from somewhere named Brandt who is working
with Grayson, and he comes into his office and he says,
is there is there anything I can do for you?
And Grayson says, yeah, get me transferred out of this
damn place. So he's being grumpy as usual, but then
Brandt suggests to him, why not go out for a

(49:44):
night on the town and see all the sights in
this beautiful locale, and Grayson is like splendid idea actually,
So they go out together and we see all of
the fountains and the bridges and the trams and the
bicycles and the the palace, and then we end up. Oh,
they go over the longebro Bridge, which is an important

(50:07):
landmark in the movie that will happen we will encounter
again later when Reptilicus is rampaging. But this is the
part where Brant and Grayson both take Connie Connie Miller
from Unesco on a date to dinner, and she's walking
around holding both of their arms, and it's playing what
the subtitles referred to as soft sultry music, and this

(50:30):
like nightclub singer is singing a song called Tivoli Nights,
Tivoli Knights. So what a sight. This might be a
standard I wasn't familiar with it though, but it does
include also some pretty good Danish scat singing.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love this whole sequence here again,
it just it's so overt, you know, it is like
a travel brochure. But at the same time. This is
probably a sequence where some viewers are saying, Hey, didn't
I pop in a monster movie? Isn't there supposed to
be a monster rampage at some point?

Speaker 2 (51:04):
Well, if that's what you're thinking, you're in luck, because
it is finally time for Reptilicus to break loose. So
one night, I don't know if it's supposed to be
the same night, but it's continuous with what we just saw.
There's another frightening thunderstorm. Only Dalby and Peterson are working
late in the office as usual, and they hear what
sounds like a crash, and they go out in the

(51:24):
hallway looking toward the Reptilicus tank and they see something
with horror in their eyes. Dalby sends Peterson off to
the police, and then there there's like a weird exchange
here where I thought it was building up to some
big comedic payoff, and then it doesn't. It's just Peterson
and this cop playing chess with himself, going back and
forth over and over trying to figure out what they're
talking about about the monster being loose.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
There's some fun lines, there's there are more electric eel jokes.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
Yeah, oh that's right. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, you're right,
because what do they say is like the electricity went out,
and the cops like really, and then Peterson, yeah, even
the electric eel went out?

Speaker 3 (52:00):
Wonk, wonk.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
It's great.

Speaker 4 (52:02):
I like it.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
So next thing that all the other characters arrive at
the lab and Reptilicus is gone and so is Delby.
Only his glasses remain. And then meanwhile, some military guys
find Reptilicus's tracks leading down into the water where they vanish,
And here the movie shifts into rampage and response mode.

(52:24):
So there's going to be a lot less fewer dialogue
scenes from now on, and more of people running around
trying to set up artillery and soldiers and jeeps and
tanks and everything to face off against Reptilicus. And Reptilicus,
is he going to be put down by the artillery?
Of course not. We're going to have to have some
kind of secret weapon in the end, but we're not
there yet.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
Pretty standard stuff. So when she reached this stage of
a Kaichu film, you know, the stock footage is coming out.
You know, they're going to be a few different plans
to kill or capture the beasts. One or two are
not going to work, and that third one is going
to be what really is effective?

Speaker 2 (53:01):
That's right. So one thing that's different at this point
in the movie is that General Grayson is in charge now,
so what he always wanted. He's very excited, so he's
he's like chasing around after the monster. The first attack
is at what they call a small farm on the coast,
So we see a lot of footage of people, you know, soldiers,
loading up into transport vehicles and heading down the road,

(53:23):
and we get to the farm and the farmer there
he's like, oh, he killed fourteen of my best cows.
And we see a bloody skinned cow head on the ground.
And then it's a bunch of military dudes driving around
and barking things back and forth on radios, trying to
find the monster until finally they do. And I like
this line delivery because it has kind of unintended implications.

(53:47):
This soldier like he looks up when he finally sees
Reptilicus and he says, it's my god. It is your god.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
Yeah, I mean really it could be.

Speaker 2 (53:58):
You know, you were created serve it as a character.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
Yeah, Reptilicus is pretty it's pretty cool looking, you know,
though the effects, like we say, are rough around the edges,
hard not to love, but also difficult to believe. At times,
he seems to he has like little stationary jazz hands,
you know, yeah, when he's writhing about. But I like him.

(54:21):
I think he's a memorable kaiju.

Speaker 2 (54:24):
Reptilicus is kind of like a snake. Like he has
a long, thin neck, but it's covered in very raised,
layered scales. He has fangs like a snake and a
head like a snake, and then he has big spiny wings.
So I don't know, maybe these wings are We never
see Reptilicus fly from what I recall, so the wings
might be more like, you know, neural spines. It might

(54:47):
be more for cooling purposes. To go back to a
core episode we just talked about.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
Would you say that Reptilicus is a cross between a
sorrow pod and an aquatic lizard that is striving to
become a mammal?

Speaker 2 (55:00):
Ooh yeah, wow, the perfect yes, because.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
That's how it presented a couple of times in the film.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
Aren't we all striving to become a mammal?

Speaker 1 (55:09):
I mean yeah, I mean every day it's it's you know,
it's you get up every morning, and you strive to
become a mammal, stay a mammal, be a mammal, and
so forth.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
I just want to live up to my destiny. So yeah,
the military guys unleash artillery and machine gun fire at Reptilicus.
They and then they even so that doesn't work at first,
but then they try a giant flamethrower, and Reptilicus really
does not like the flamethrower. Reptilicus squeals quite repetitively. The
same sound effect is used over and over.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
Yeah, it's terrifying stock footage of a military flamethrower, Like
not one of these like novelty. You know, I'm still
dangerous things you see like it, you know, burns and whatnot,
but like the real jelly gasoline horror show. So I
understand Reptilicus's response here.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
Yeah, it's not mega weapon. It's like, actually you're seeing
the jet come out. It's scary as hell. Yeah, but Reptilicus,
after being hit with the flamethrower, gets really upset and
then slithers off into the sea. So all of the
characters are standing here on the beach. Why are they
all here? I don't know, But they're like spins here.
The daughters are here, they're all here on the beach.

(56:18):
They're watching what's going on. Grayson is like, maybe he'll die,
and then Connie, for some reason says, not a chance.
He's just taking time to let his wounds heal. And
then Grayson says, regeneration.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
You know, I just dawned on me. The thing that's
missing that I guess Connie's kind of filling in for
here is we need a child. We need a child
that is having revelations about the kaiju. Like that's what's
missing here, Timmy, if you will.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
Yes, we do need that, yeah, to like sort of
intuit the intentions and spirit and meaning of the monster. Yeah,
but in lieu of child, Connie, we don't even know
if Reptilicus is a friend to all children. It's possible
he is, and nobody and just nobody ever gets to
say so. So it's like not even considered, nobody thought
to try. So. After all this, the military and scientists

(57:08):
regroup and they launch a naval search operation to find Reptilicus.
So we're out on the water and we see all
these you know, battleships and destroyers going around and again
Why is Spinn the miner on one of these battleships. Yeah, yeah,
So they find Reptilicus with sonar and then they launch
a depth depth charges as he is slumbering on the

(57:30):
ocean floor. Connie tries to get them to stop. She's like,
don't you realize what you're doing. If Reptilicus is hit,
you'll never find all the pieces underwater. He'll regenerate Mark.
But it's too late. We see some bloody Reptilicus chunks
floating around in the water column, so it's too late.
And then there's fallout from this. Martin's, who was also

(57:51):
on one of the boats, has a medical event and
is taken to the hospital. Later we learned that Reptilicus
has been attacking ships in ports throughout the Baltic Sea
and retaliation, so it's very oh the humanity. And then
we get a scene of Spin, the handsome minor, being
consoled by Karen the I think by Karen, the daughter

(58:12):
of Martin's, and Spinn says Harbor's freighters, I had the
blood of Reptilicus on my hands. Sometimes I feel that
it's perhaps also the blood of all those people, Yes,
of all the ridiculous dark Knight of the Soul.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
Scenes in movies.

Speaker 2 (58:32):
This is one of the best.

Speaker 3 (58:34):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (58:35):
Oh, anyway, next, this movie has been very short on
like bikinis up to this point, so they just bring you, like,
what if we did a Jaws style beach scene, beach
attack scene, So that's what's next. We just go to
the beach, a bunch of young hip people hanging out
in bathing suits, lounging in the sand, and then here's Reptilicus.

Speaker 1 (58:53):
Yep, shooting green slime out of his mouth. That everyone
the effect here is marvelous, not believable at all, but
but charming.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
Agreed. So when Reptilicus rears up out of the water,
everybody panics and runs away. And then we see more
military personnel and vehicles getting into position to face the
Reptilicus menace. And we just know now is the time
for Reptilicus to attack all of those beautiful tourist friendly
landmarks and affordable locations in Copenhagen, not the Little Mermaid.

(59:24):
So we see like the you know, the military, they're
just shooting and shooting and shooting and shooting. They unload
zillion bullets into Reptilicus but it's just making him matter.
Reptilicus rides around, he slams his head into little models
of buildings. They say, we can't use our flame throwers,
which he didn't like last time, because we can't get

(59:45):
close to the acid slime. Now Reptilicus is like spitting
green goo at people so they can't get too close.
And next we see Reptilicus attack the lungebro Bridge where
s Vin the miner I think to have a heroic
moment because like somebody has to operate the controls of
the bridge to lower the drawbridge so that the panicking

(01:00:07):
civilians can run away, but the guy who's supposed to
lower it is paralyzed by fear, so Spinn has to
do it. I think that's what happened. Yeah, so the
military tries more plans. They're going to try to like
steer Reptilicus in one place or another to so they
can use certain weapons. Reptilicus attacks the stock exchange. Oh no,

(01:00:29):
not the stock exchange. More rampaging and shooting, all heading
toward a final confrontation. So we get the lead up
to that final showdown where there's another plotting scene where
they're all like standing around in a room over a map,
and Grayson says he wants to use bombs, but Martin appears,
now recovered from his medical event, to argue. He says

(01:00:51):
Reptilicus cannot be blown to bits because the pieces of
him will regenerate, and Grayson says, I'm a soldier, not
a science That's the way I know how to kill,
and then Martin says, then you will have to learn
another way. So what's it going to be? We have
a showdown here between these worldviews, is like science versus militarism,

(01:01:13):
and who's which one is going to triumph over Reptilicus.
It seems like they go for a synthesis of the
two because ladies and gentlemen, the solution to all of
the Reptilicus problems in this movie is a drug Bazuka.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Yes, the drug Bozuka another one of my favorite aspects
of this picture.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
So they get the idea from like they're just having
a conversation. I think it's Vin and Lisa are talk
Svin and Karen are talking and he's like, how's your
father and she says sedated? They gave him a hypo
And then somebody says, what about reptilicus, and somebody says,
if only we could give him a hypo, and then

(01:01:52):
you can see it dawn on them and they're like, bye, George,
that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
There's some great lines here, like they're they're like, well,
is there some sort of we could give him? And
they're like, could we get enough of that drug? And
somebody in the midst of this I don't remember who's
like drug, Like they'd never heard the word before.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
One of them says, by my calculations, we'll need a
gallon of it for reptilicus. So yeah, they well, they
kind of split up into different teams, like the young
attractive people all go to get a gallon of reptilicus drugs,
and Grayson is like rigging up some way to deliver it,

(01:02:30):
and I love that. After this spart there are repeated
scenes of people explaining the drug bazuka concept to each
other in detail, as Reptilicus is raging in the background,
and they keep saying things like I'm going to take
a crack at reptilicus. So eventually they load up the
drug bazuoka and shoot, Grayson does it. Of course, you know,

(01:02:52):
he's the he's the real hero. In the end, he
shoots and it's a hit. It hits Reptilicus right in
the mouth, which was the only place they could get him,
but it works, and then Reptilicus thrashes around a little
bit and then falls asleep. So afterwards we surveyed the destruction,
you know, the burned and crushed buildings, and everybody wandering
around looking like what happened? What has Reptilicus wrought? But

(01:03:16):
then the weirdest thing I mentioned this earlier, the what
the subtitles describe as soft, sultry nightclub music starts playing
and Grayson is standing there with Connie and he says,
it's a good thing that there's no more like him.
And then we cut to the bottom of the ocean
where one of Reptilicus's legs, severed legs, is walking around

(01:03:37):
by itself.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
And then the end, you know what that means. It's
going to regenerate into a full Reptilicus, And then the
whole problem emerges again.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
That's right, Reptilicus can never be defeated unless they launch
him into space.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
That's right. I mean, I guess that's where we're going
in the sequel, Like maybe sedated reptilicus versus new regenerated reptilicus,
and then we have to just yeah, we to launch
both of them into space today.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
How long does the drug sedate reptilicus for?

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
Though, I don't know. They don't really get into that, Like,
what's the plan next? Yeah, launch him into space, freeze him.
We don't know. It just we have to trust that
the scientific world will take care of it this time,
even though they're the ones that accidentally thawed the foot
to begin with and did the mad science that got
us to this predicament in the first place.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
They had to do that with one of the villains
on the Boys, right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
That's right, they did, like I forget his name, but
like the evil take on Captain America.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
Yeah, like couldn't be destroyed. They had to just keep
him permanently sedated.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Yeah, yeah, I mean sometimes that's the way it is
with your area. As we've discussed on weirdhow some of
your various takes on vampires and werewolves, Like, is the
what does the stake do to the unholy creature? Does
it murder them or does it just hold them in place?
A steak that may one day be removed And free them.
It's like a lock, yeah, which you know, it's an it.

(01:04:58):
I feel like if Reptilicus does have any kind of
like deeper meaning, it is getting at the idea that, Yeah,
solutions to problems are not permanent solutions. They are They
are all inherently temporary, you know, and you have to
you have to keep at it and or keep solving
the same problems over and over again. In this case,

(01:05:19):
giant lizards that regenerate.

Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
Yeah, well, I guess Reptilicus is an update on the
tail of the hydra, right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
Yeah, yeah, the hydra is very much like the classic
telling of that story.

Speaker 4 (01:05:29):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
The problem not only a problem that keeps springing back up,
but springs up, you know, with additional problems. Every time
you cut away the head, you get more heads, and indeed,
every time you defeat one reptilicus, you potentially get more.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
So you got to think outside the box. For Hercules,
it was what it was like cauterizing the stumps with fire.

Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
Yeah, and help from your cousin, right, but his cousin
helping them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
In this case, it's it's a drug bazuoka.

Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
All right, well, and that we're going to go ahead
and close it out here. We hope everyone has a
good Turkey Day if you celebrate Turkey Day. In the past,
we've kind of made it an official thing to do,
or an unofficial thing even to sort of to do
a film that has been covered on Mystery Science Theater
three thousand, you know, thinking back to those Turkey Day
marathons of old and they still put it on, So

(01:06:20):
look for that if you're into it. But this movie
was of course covered on one of the recent seasons
of Mystery Science Theater three thousand, so just a reminder that, yeah,
if you don't want to seek out the original version,
I think you can still find the MST three K
version on Netflix, so you know, go watch it there.
This is a fun movie. This is a good one
to refund.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
I think it was the first episode of the reboot.

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):
Yeah, yeah, it was a Jonah episode. I think it
had a fun song in there about how every country,
every culture has its monster. So oh yeah, all right,
just to remind it that Stuff. To Blow Your Mind
is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes
on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside
most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
on Weird House Cinema. Find the full list of the

(01:07:03):
movies we've done on a letterbox dot com that's l
E T T E R B o x d dot com.
Our username is weird House and if you're on Instagram,
follow the show feed at st B y M podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

(01:07:36):
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
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