Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Reptilicus

Grab your drug bazooka! In this classic 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.” (originally published 11/22/2024)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, we have
a fun one here for you today. This one originally
published eleven, twenty two, twenty twenty four. It is the
early sixties Danish American co production Reptilicus. So we have
some excellent euro Kaiju action to dive into here. Let's

(00:25):
do it.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
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 Reptilicus, directed by Sydney Pink. Now, one
thing to mention right at the beginning here is that

(01:06):
this movie is kind of weird. There exist 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.

(01:30):
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 gonna 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 remains of

(01:52):
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

(02:17):
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 (02:26):
Yeah, So I guess you could say 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 3 (02:46):
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, if.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
They had been like okay, Bella, how's your Spanish, that
they went a different direction. Obviously.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
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

(03:29):
a great script. I would not honestly. You know, 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 a

(03:54):
certain way, but none of they're not even on the
level of Gorgo, which we'll get to in a minute.
So there is there's 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 (04:08):
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 got to be on board
for something that has this vibe. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
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 that the

(04:48):
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 Reptilican. They've
all gone to look for Reptilicus and so forth. There's
been a lot of that going on at the house.

(05:09):
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

(05:30):
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

(05:53):
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,

(06:15):
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.

(06:38):
So there's plenty of you know, 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 Gorgo episode, I think we had a
brief discussion about the question of why people seem to
think it's inherently funny or countering intuitive for a giant

(07:01):
monster to attack 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,

(07:22):
we buy that monster comes 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.

(07:44):
Or maybe it's 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 (08:05):
Yeah, I think part of it is that we 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.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
Oh that'd be great.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
But I mean, but then from the Danish perspective, why
not Copenhagen, As we learn in this film, it's a
beautiful city with a lot to offer. That's all right.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
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 too too good
to believe, just travel brochure for the city of covid.

(09:00):
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 (09:11):
Yeah, everything that they say during this ten minute travel
brochure section of the film, you could easily imagine Rick
Steve's saying all of it in an episode of his
show or his podcast Love Rick Steves 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 3 (09:32):
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 the state and they just go to a nightclub
and like watch a musical number and we watch too.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Here we are. 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 3 (10:01):
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 rasslin, but
other Kaiju movies have some pretty serious ideas in mind,

(10:24):
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 an embodied monster, a sort of
meat form immago of the very real but sometimes more

(10:47):
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 rep Tilicus have any serious themes in mind?
I'm not sure, but we could come back to this
question later.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yeah, if they're there, it's a very and we can
only 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 very shallow if it's

(11:28):
there at all.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
Okay, should we hear some trailer audio?

Speaker 1 (11:31):
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 get pained for that anyway. Yes,
the US trailer for this is pretty fun. Let's have
a listen.

Speaker 4 (11:49):
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.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
Fossil bones.

Speaker 5 (12:13):
I have never seen bone fragments like this before.

Speaker 4 (12:24):
I'll work with the army through Captain Bratt, Commandersvencent, you'll
stand by for any naval action required. As chief of police,
I'll rely on you to handle the population. Handel Grayson
where day out of his way? How long do you

(12:47):
expect me to continue this hill?

Speaker 5 (12:56):
All right?

Speaker 1 (12:57):
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 3 (13:18):
I own this Blu Ray set from Vinegar Syndrome and
it is gorgeous. I highly recommend it.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, they do great work. Sadly this version was checked out.
When I went to rent in at Video Drome, they
were very apologetic. They were like, they were like, I'm sorry,
you're not gonna be able to watch it in the
best quality possible. And I was like, it's fine, this
is a time constraint situation and so forth. So I
had to rent an older DVD of the American cut

(13:45):
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 3 (13:55):
What was the movie that we watch that had hard
burned Dutch subtype titles? Was that the Hawaiian Werewolf movie?

Speaker 1 (14:03):
It was, Yes, there was a TV movie, so we
were having to watch like a YouTube cut off it,
YouTube up load of it that had been like ripped
from television over there.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
Yeah, with a verk beast.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
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,

(14:40):
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

(15:04):
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

(15:26):
Planet right before this picture in sixty two, starring John Agar.
There you Go. 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

(15:47):
in it.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
I Was a teenage reptilicus.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
All right. The other writing credit goes to an individual
who's come up on the show before. It's Ebe Melchior,
who lived nineteen seven team 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 3 (16:10):
Oh, I knew I recognized the name.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
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 into the nineteen seventy five Corman
producer Paul Bartel directed movie Death Race two thousand.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
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 (16:45):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (16:46):
And what's Stallon's in it?

Speaker 1 (16:49):
Right?

Speaker 3 (16:49):
Cass like one of the villains. He's like machine Gun
Joe v Turbo or something.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
I don't remember. Him. I just remember Frankenstein, 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

(17:13):
in organizations responding to the threat. And so there's 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 3 (17:33):
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 (17:53):
All right. So I'm not gonna have as much to
say about some of these actors because a number of them,
like almost almost did not exclusively work 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 listeners of

(18:14):
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
lived nineteen eighteen through nineteen seventy too, playing General Mark Grayson.
He was a Danish actor. He was also in Journey
to the Seventh Planet. This is the dark haired general guy.
He is.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
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 (18:42):
Okay, yeah, all right. Then we have Anne Smyrner playing
Lisa Martins. 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,

(19:07):
Danish actress who was also in Journey to the Seventh Planet. Oh,
and then we have Asjorn Anderson as Professor Otto Martin's.
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

(19:29):
of l Ron Hubbard looking professor who is studying the
rise of Reptilicus. He mostly worked in Danish cinema, but yeah,
he's mimorable here. I do like him a lot.

Speaker 3 (19:40):
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 (19:49):
Yeah. Yeah, he's not presented like a mad scientist, but
he does mad science for sure.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
All right. We also have Bent Midging playing Svend Vitrolof.
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 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

(20:16):
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. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
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 young
attractive characters in here? So they just wrote in like,

(20:43):
oh yeah, there are just like several 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 (20:54):
Oh yeah, and then also we have Connie here. The
character of Connie 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, and

(21:15):
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 3 (21:29):
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's actually swapped out the cast, wasn't it.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
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.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
Prom Well, yeah, as I was saying, 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

(22:23):
Karen and Connie and everybody kind of pile into the
shot and they'll be like, what's happening with Reptilicus?

Speaker 1 (22:31):
All right? 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 nineteen twenty six through nineteen eighty.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
He is the true star of the film. He only
gets a couple of scenes and we never learned what
happens to him. We never learn of Dirtsch's fate, like
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 1 (23:06):
Yeah. He plays Peterson, who is very much a comic
relief character, a sort of bumbling janitor slash security guards
slash occasional sort of lab assistant. And he may or
may not sleep in the building on chairs.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
It's unclear unclear what his job is. He's a guy
in overalls who is brought 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

(23:42):
like sticks his hand in eel tanks.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah, he has some great comedic moments because Pat Passer
in this film is a big man and he has
one 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 a

(24:07):
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 3 (24:19):
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,

(24:41):
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 (24:54):
But yeah, he ends up on some of the promotional
materials for it. Because he had that very expressive face
with 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,

(25:16):
he 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,

(25:36):
that's funny, but on the stage, a loud speaker for
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 I guess this is

(25:57):
one of those things that cannot help but sort of
add to one legendary status. But he's apparently 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

(26:17):
this picture.

Speaker 3 (26:18):
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

(26:38):
going to end up at least part of his body
is going to be in that eel tank.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yes, yeah, thank 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 3 (26:54):
They should have had him defeat Reptilicus. I would have
bought it.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah, he seemed like a big I think you could
handle it all right. Finally a music for this picture,
the US version anyway. It's another Less Baxter score. It
Live nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety six. We've talked
about him numerous times for you know, some of his
very traditional scores, his weird score for a very minimalist
electronic score for Frogs in the seventies. This is another

(27:20):
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 3 (27:30):
No, there's some 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 use of

(27:52):
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 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 Reptilicus. And it's while
the guy is saying this, it's playing like the nightclub

(28:14):
music that we heard earlier, like the lounge song.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
Bum it needs to feel good film.

Speaker 3 (28:21):
Yeah, all right, time just talk about the plot.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
Yeah, let's get into it.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
Okay, So we begin with the glorious aip logos. 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 general, Brigadier General Grayson, but we don't know that yet.
It's just somebody saying somewhere in the Forbidding Tundra mountains

(28:55):
of Lapland, high above the 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 (29:14):
This is more regional conflict.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
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 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 he goes

(29:38):
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

(29:59):
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 title reptilicus.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
I mean, it's a great start it's shocking.

Speaker 3 (30:22):
I mean driu yeah, chiller font reptilicus. It's all dripping everywhere,
and the orchestra is like stinging again and again. But
after the title we rejoin 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 pulling all

(30:43):
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 (30:52):
This is effectively gross. I was reminded of the music
video for a sober bitool scenes of like meat moving
through a tube at times, and like that's similar, vibing.

Speaker 3 (31:05):
Yeah, yeah, So more gore comes off of the drill,
and it's like sometimes it's uh, 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,

(31:27):
but I intend to find out, and he decides they
have to halt operations until they, you know, 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

(31:48):
the world. 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 miner
and he's just a good looking, strapping lad. He says
to his friend that he's going to radio someone named

(32:10):
Navik 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 and
deflating in the gunk. Then the same voiceover from earlier

(32:31):
resumes 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,

(32:53):
and the narrator says, the two scientists had examined the
startling find hidden beneath the frozen tundra and brought 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

(33:16):
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 streak 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

(33:41):
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 (33:51):
It's pretty I mean, for the time and for the
relative vibe of the picture pretty gorey, like there's an
effective slop in this.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
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

(34:19):
then ship the remains to the aquarium in Copenhagen. So
let's go straight straight to Copenhagen now, So we get
like a Copenhagen 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

(34:41):
playing this march. 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 Auto 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, you

(35:02):
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 (35:22):
Yeah, yeah, there are a lot of lines like this
in the picture.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
So we follow Professor Martin's as he wanders through the
don marks 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 in.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
Them, and everyone knows you're not supposed to do that.

Speaker 3 (35:48):
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,

(36:08):
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

(36:31):
he'll be here in an hour. He needs 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 and a false mustache. Now hurry up. But the

(36:54):
next scene is that Svin and the bone fragments are
already here, and this is where we get that great delivery,
where Atto says like, I have never seen bone fragments
like this before. Well, what's so weird about the bones?
While the professor explains they are resilient but very strong,

(37:14):
almost 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

(37:36):
kind of cool. 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 (37:45):
Oh yeah, that's good.

Speaker 3 (37:47):
Yeah. But then later we see a cross section of
it and it looks like a 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.

(38:09):
And then also in this scene, Karen Martin's daughter is
just coming on so strong to spin. She says, like, father,
now that you've told Spinn about frozen matters, can I
thaw him a little? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (38:26):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (38:27):
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 (38:43):
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 3 (38:50):
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

(39:13):
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

(39:34):
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 (39:48):
Yeah, it gets in little mishaps. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
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

(40:12):
know what's gonna happen. Dirt, Dirt passer is gonna mess
this up. He is gonna thaw this tail. But it
is not Dirt's fault.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
Is it. No, No, not at all, which is surprising. Again,
like generally when someone says, hey, make sure this doesn't happen, ay,
that 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 3 (40:39):
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. It's got electric eels
in it, and Dirt is like, I just got I
gotta stick my hand in the tank.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
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 3 (41:10):
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 (41:17):
Yeah, but you know that hand is going there. You
know we're going to come back to that electric eel.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
It's Chekhov's eel. Yeah. So later that night, Dalby 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.

(41:44):
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 (41:51):
That's right, you can't nail Peterson for this. He had
no hand in.

Speaker 3 (41:55):
This, right, not his fault. It was Delby. 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,

(42:16):
like it's covered in a red brown damp wool. Obviously
unhappy to see this that everybody rushes in and Auto
is like unfrozen. So 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 by

(42:37):
you know, with his drill bit. It is now healing,
and 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

(42:59):
first thing he says to her is some casual sexism.
He's like, oh, 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

(43:20):
is like a job interview where they're having this meeting here,
but they don't explain exactly what she's doing. It's something
related to reptilicus.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
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? You know? And this
is where I came upon the Miss Germany factoid. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:40):
And then also, for some reason, the dude's daughter Lisa
is just looming over this lady during the interview.

Speaker 1 (43:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
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,
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

(44:11):
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
you hear another voice and he says Mark Grayson, and
I have never seen a man introduce himself in a
movie with such apparent disgust. He says his own name

(44:32):
the way that cop talked about hippies in The Living
Dead at Manchester Morgue.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Yeah, it's so weird.

Speaker 3 (44:39):
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

(45:01):
a mission, but we don't know what it is. Now
we're going to get the briefing.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
Yep, yep. We have kind of like a mini version
of that here.

Speaker 3 (45:07):
Yeah, though, I guess we talked about how the most
believable context is when it's a military things.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
Yeah, I guess it makes sense here.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
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

(45:40):
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,

(46:02):
we learned that the animal is called reptilicus. The name
is suggested by a journalist, and Martin's is just like
reptilicus it is.

Speaker 1 (46:12):
I think that's standard, right. It's like the journalist gets
there first, they get to officially name a new organism. Yeah,
doesn't matter what publication they're from.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
What if we name it the Daily Maelosaurus. So all
the journalists 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

(46:45):
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

(47:05):
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

(47:28):
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 (47:41):
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. You know.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
It's like he's just now discovering that there are microbes
on his food.

Speaker 1 (47:58):
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 let's just improve some stuff. Let's just get
the camera on this guy and just see what he's got.

Speaker 3 (48:10):
Turn dirt loose in the lab. See, Yeah, he's like
Billy Crystal and yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
Also this right after this, I think is when he
actually does cram his hand in the electric eel tank. Yes,
so he's like going down the hall and just wants
to get a little taste a free sample of electric eel,
and it I don't know, I guess it shocks him.
I assume we were to take it as him really
being electrified, not him pretending to be.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
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 like, he
goes to the seven stages of being shocked by an eel,
and it's pretty great.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
But while this is happening, there is a 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

(49:12):
the quote. He says, Reptilicus has no conscious life. Yet
what you heard was merely involuntary embryonic movement. So you know.
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

(49:33):
scales on his back, slimy secretion from his mouth which
has a corrosive effect, like like highly concentrated acid, and
so they're like, yes, keep keep growing it. Oh, and
this is the part where we get to the Copenhagen
tourism reel. Oh, Yes, like there's this I think I
don't know German general. There's a general from somewhere named

(49:55):
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 night on the town and
see all the sights in this beautiful locale, and Grayson

(50:16):
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 palace, and
then we end up. Oh, they go over the longebro Bridge,
which is an important landmark in the movie that will happen.

(50:37):
We will encounter again later when Reptilochus 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,

(50:58):
and this like nightclub singer isinging a song called Tivoli Knights,
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 (51:09):
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love this whole sequence here again,
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 3 (51:31):
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

(51:52):
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 (52:14):
There's some fun lines, there's there are more electric eel jokes.

Speaker 3 (52:17):
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 1 (52:28):
Wonk, wonk, It's great. I like it.

Speaker 3 (52:31):
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.

(52:52):
So there's gonna 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 Reptilogus. 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 (53:12):
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 3 (53:29):
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 pe you know,
soldiers loading up into transport vehicles and heading down the road,

(53:51):
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 round 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

(54:12):
unintended implications. This soldier like he looks up when he
finally sees Reptilicus and he says, it's my god. It
is your god.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
Yeah, I mean really it could be.

Speaker 3 (54:26):
You know, you were created to serve it as a character.

Speaker 1 (54:29):
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.

(54:49):
I think he's a memorable kaiju.

Speaker 3 (54:52):
Reptilicus is kind of like a snake. Like he has
a long, thin neck, but it's covered in a very raised,
layered scale. 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 those wings are we never
see Reptilicus fly from what I recall, so the wings
might be more like, you know, neural spines. It might

(55:15):
be more for cooling purposes. To go back to a
core episode we just talked about.

Speaker 1 (55:18):
Would you say that Reptilicus is a cross between a
sorrow pod and an aquatic lizard that is striving to
become a mammal.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
Ooh yeah, wow, perfect, yes, because.

Speaker 1 (55:31):
That's how it presented a couple of times in the film.

Speaker 3 (55:35):
Aren't we all striving to become a mammal?

Speaker 1 (55:37):
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 3 (55:46):
I just want to live up to my destiny. So yeah,
the military guy's 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 (56:07):
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 3 (56:24):
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.

(56:46):
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 (57:00):
You know, I just dawned on me. The thing that's
missing that I guess Connie is 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 3 (57:13):
Yes, we do need that, yeah, to like sort of
intuit the the intentions and spirit and meaning of the monster.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
But in lieu of child Connie, we.

Speaker 3 (57:22):
Don't even know if Reptilicus is a friend to all children.
It's possible he is, and nobody even just nobody ever
gets to say so. So it's like not even considered.

Speaker 1 (57:31):
Nobody thought to try. So.

Speaker 3 (57:33):
After all this, the military and scientists 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.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
Of these battleships.

Speaker 3 (57:50):
Yeah, So they find Reptilicus with sonar and then they
launch a depth depth charges as he is slumbering on
the ocean floor. Connie tries to get the 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

(58:10):
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 on one of the boats, has a medical
event and is taken to the hospital. Later we learned
that Reptilicus has been attacking ships and ports throughout the
Baltic Sea and retaliation, so it's very Oh, the humanity

(58:33):
and then we get a scene of spin the handsome minor,
being consoled by Karen the I think by Karen, the
daughter of Martin's and Spinn says Harvard'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,

(58:56):
of all the ridiculous dark Knight of the Soul scenes
in movies, this is this is one of the best.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
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 (59:21):
Yep, shooting green slime out of his mouth. That everyone
the effect here is marvelous, not believable at all, but charming, agreed.

Speaker 3 (59:30):
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.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
Not the Little Mermaid.

Speaker 3 (59:52):
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

(01:00:13):
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 Spin,
the miner, I think, gets to have a heroic moment
because like somebody has to operate the controls of the
bridge to like lower the drawbridge so that the panicking

(01:00:35):
civilians can run away, but the guy who's supposed to
lower it is paralyzed by fear, so Spin 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,

(01:00:57):
not the stock exchange. More rampage 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.

(01:01:18):
He says Reptilicus cannot be blown to bits because the
pieces of him will regenerate, and Grayson says, I'm a soldier,
not a scientist. 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,

(01:01:41):
and 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 (01:01:54):
Yes, the drug Bozukah, another one of my favorite aspects
of this picture.

Speaker 3 (01:01:58):
So they get the idea from like they're just having
a conversation. I think it's Vin and Lisa are talk
or 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

(01:02:19):
you can see it dawn on them and they're like, bye, George,
that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
There's some great lines here, like they're they're like, well,
was there some sort of drug we could give him?
And they're like, we 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 3 (01:02:36):
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. And I love that. After this there are

(01:03:00):
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 gonna take a
crack at Reptilicus. So eventually they load up the drug
bazooka and shoot. Grayson does it, of course, you know,
he's the he's the real hero. In the end, he

(01:03:22):
shoots and it's a hit. It hits Reptilicus right in
the mouth, which was the only place they could get in,
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

(01:03:44):
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

(01:04:05):
by itself and then the end.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
You know what that means, It's going to regenerate into
a full reptilicus, and then the whole problem emerges again.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
That's right. Reptilicus can never be defeated unless they launch
him into space.

Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
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 have
to launch both of them into space today.

Speaker 3 (01:04:30):
How long does the drug sedate Reptilicus for?

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
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 3 (01:04:54):
They had to do that with one of the villains
on the Boys, right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
That's right, they did, like I forget his name, but
like the evil take on Captain America.

Speaker 3 (01:05:01):
Yeah, like couldn't be destroyed. They had to just keep
them permanently sedated.

Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
Yeah, yeah, I mean sometimes that's the way it is
with your area. As we've discussed on Weird Hoow 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.

Speaker 3 (01:05:23):
It's like a lock, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
Which, you know, it's an it. 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

(01:05:46):
and over again, in this case, giant lizards that regenerate.

Speaker 3 (01:05:49):
Yeah, well, I guess Reptilicus is an update on the
tail of the Hydra, right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
Yeah, yeah, the Hydra's very much like the classic telling
of that story. Right. 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 reptelicus, you potentially.

Speaker 3 (01:06:10):
Get more, so you got to think outside the box. Yeah,
for Hercules, it was what it was like cauterizing the
stumps with fire.

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
Yeah, and help from your cousin, right, but his cousin
helping them. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:21):
In this case, it's it's a drug bazuka.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
All right. Well, on that note, 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,

(01:06:48):
So 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
m T three K version on Netflix, so you know,
go watch it there. This is a fun movie. This
is a good one to riff on.

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
I think it was the first episode of the reboot.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
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 a reminder 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 movies

(01:07:31):
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 ym podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:07:42):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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