Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 2: And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 2: we are going to be talking about a movie that
Speaker 2: has two faces, but one slimy toxic heart, and that
Speaker 2: is the nineteen sixty two English language version of the
Speaker 2: euro kaiju movie Reptilicous, directed by Sidney Pink. Now, one
Speaker 2: thing to mention right at the beginning here is that
Speaker 2: this movie is kind of weird. There exists two different
Speaker 2: versions of the film, one in English and one in Danish,
Speaker 2: and neither one is simply a dub of the other.
Speaker 2: There were actually two different movies shot separately, but sharing
Speaker 2: the same story and most of the same cast, but
Speaker 2: with different lines in each language and two different directors.
Speaker 2: So the Danish version you'll get was directed by Paul
Speaker 2: Bong and the English version by Sidney Pink, the latter
Speaker 2: of which, again is the one we're going to be
Speaker 2: talking about today. Both of these movies have the same
Speaker 2: basic storyline, the same scenes overall. Both films are set
Speaker 2: in Denmark and concern Danish paleontologists attempting to investigate the
Speaker 2: remains of a giant frozen dinosaur tale uncovered from deep underground,
Speaker 2: which eventually turns into a big dragon thing is named Reptilicus,
Speaker 2: and then just goes nuts on Denmark, runs around eating
Speaker 2: cows and attacking people at the beach, attacking the city,
Speaker 2: attacking famous beautiful landmarks that you should visit by the way,
Speaker 2: if you're ever in scene at Copenhagen. And yeah, and
Speaker 2: so this is a giant monster movie like many others
Speaker 2: we've talked about before, but with I don't know, some
Speaker 2: interesting distinctions we can get into as we go along.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I guess you could say it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of like the situation with nineteen thirty one's Dracula, where
Speaker 1: you have the Mexican version that is shot on the
Speaker 1: same sets, though that one doesn't have the same actors.
Speaker 1: This one has almost exclusively the same actors. They're just
Speaker 1: we just have them delivering their lines in different languages
Speaker 1: in separate shots.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It would be like if the thirty one Todd
Speaker 2: Browning Dracula and then the Spanish language version were It
Speaker 2: would be like that situation if they used mostly the
Speaker 2: same cast, but not entirely.
Speaker 1: If they had been like okay, Bella, how's your Spanish,
Speaker 1: that they went a different direction. Obviously.
Speaker 2: Yes, Now we were talking about something before we came on, Mike,
Speaker 2: which is that I think both of us really enjoyed
Speaker 2: watching Reptilicus. But I do have to be honest about
Speaker 2: this one and not over sell any of its individual merits,
Speaker 2: because I don't think it has a lot of extreme
Speaker 2: merits in any particular direction. I would not honestly be
Speaker 2: able to say that this is a great idea or
Speaker 2: a great script. I would not honestly.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we can say, like the story's kind of weak,
Speaker 2: but it's got a great cast. No offense to any
Speaker 2: of the wonderful cast members involved here, but it is
Speaker 2: not an especially stand out screen presence we're dealing with
Speaker 2: with anybody here. The I would say, even the special
Speaker 2: effects are not really that impressive. They're they're enjoyable in
Speaker 2: a certain way, but none of the they're not even
Speaker 2: on the level of Gorgo, which we'll get to in
Speaker 2: a minute. So there is really no element of this
Speaker 2: movie I can point to and say, well, at least
Speaker 2: that's really great. And yet overall, I love Reptilicus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's a charming picture, like it's a feel
Speaker 1: good monster picture, and the areas where it's rough around
Speaker 1: the edges adds to its charm. But indeed, it's hard
Speaker 1: to recommend it to folks unless you are looking for
Speaker 1: a picture like this. You gotta be on board for
Speaker 1: something that has this vibe.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So maybe despite not being stellar filmmaking in any
Speaker 2: particular direction, Reptilicus has many appealing things. One of them
Speaker 2: is just the word reptilicus, which is one of the
Speaker 2: most pleasing words to say that I've ever come across.
Speaker 2: I discovered before we came in to record. I was
Speaker 2: walking around the house with my wife, and I discovered
Speaker 2: that the word reptilicus has the same stress pattern as
Speaker 2: the word america, and then for that reason, can be
Speaker 2: subbed into any song lyrics containing the word America. So like,
Speaker 2: you know, Reptilicus the beautiful. I'm proud to be a reptilicon.
Speaker 2: They've all gone to look for reptilicus and so forth.
Speaker 2: There's been a lot of that going on at the house.
Speaker 2: So you know, take reptilicus into your vocabulary and use
Speaker 2: it with whatever gusto you please, But I will say
Speaker 2: another big appeal of Reptilicus for me is conceptual. For
Speaker 2: some reason, audiences seem to have long reacted to this
Speaker 2: movie with amusement at the idea of a giant monster
Speaker 2: attack film set in Denmark, and I recall a similar
Speaker 2: sense of fun in the way that people including us
Speaker 2: reacted to another movie we covered earlier this year, Gorgo,
Speaker 2: from nineteen sixty one, so right around the same time period.
Speaker 2: I think these were produced within like a year of
Speaker 2: each other, And Gorgo was a movie in which an
Speaker 2: enormous rat like god monster emerges from the sea off
Speaker 2: the coast of an Irish island, is captured and transported
Speaker 2: for display in a London circus, and then triggers a
Speaker 2: monster rampage in the streets of London, sort of a
Speaker 2: rat god amphibious attack from the Thames. Yes, and so
Speaker 2: of course no one language or culture owns the idea
Speaker 2: of a giant monster. Giant monsters go back in you know,
Speaker 2: literature of many different cultures deep into history. But I
Speaker 2: think it's safe to say that Japan in general and
Speaker 2: Toho Studios in particular really grew and perfected the art
Speaker 2: of the giant monster movie, though of course, the creators
Speaker 2: of films like the nineteen fifty four Godzilla were inspired
Speaker 2: at least in part by American films like RKO's King Kong.
Speaker 2: So there's plenty of trading back and forth of inspiration
Speaker 2: and creative energy across borders, as there always has been.
Speaker 2: But many of the greatest and most enduring giant monster
Speaker 2: movies ever made are Toho productions from Japan, and in
Speaker 2: the Gorko episode, I think we had a brief discussion
Speaker 2: about the question of why people seem to think it's
Speaker 2: inherently funny or counterintuitive for a giant monster to attack
Speaker 2: and crush office buildings in London or in the case
Speaker 2: of today's movie, in Denmark, in a way that it's
Speaker 2: just not counterintuitive or funny for that to happen in Japan, or,
Speaker 2: for that matter, in the United States. So like a
Speaker 2: monster from the sea, giant monster comes out and attacks
Speaker 2: Tokyo or New York. Yeah, we buy that monster comes
Speaker 2: out of the copper minds and attacks Copenhagen. That just
Speaker 2: makes people laugh. And I feel this as well, but
Speaker 2: I don't quite fully understand it. I was trying to
Speaker 2: think of reasons. And I was thinking, maybe it's as
Speaker 2: simple as this is the only Danish kaiju movie that
Speaker 2: I know of, so it's just unfamiliar. If there were
Speaker 2: more of them, it would feel normal. Or maybe it's
Speaker 2: something about the like the cultural or geographic setting that
Speaker 2: just doesn't interface as naturally with the soul of a
Speaker 2: beast like Reptilicus. Could it be something about I don't know,
Speaker 2: predominant styles of local architecture. I really don't know the answer,
Speaker 2: but I do think it's it's interesting that people quite
Speaker 2: consistently have this reaction, So it's just something to think about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think part of it is that from very
Speaker 1: early on, we associate like New York City and Tokyo
Speaker 1: with giant monster attacks and it kind of sticks, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it would we would maybe expect, like Copenhagen have its
Speaker 1: own thing, like I don't know, like you know, killer
Speaker 1: mermaids come out and attack Copenhagen. That tracks, Oh that'd
Speaker 1: be great. But I mean, but then from Danish perspective,
Speaker 1: why not Copenhagen As we learn in this film, it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful city with a lot to offer.
Speaker 2: That's all right. I was not able to research this
Speaker 2: before we recorded today. But I would love to know if,
Speaker 2: like the I don't know local the Copenhagen Tourism Board
Speaker 2: or something was a producer on this film, if they
Speaker 2: put some funding into it, because there is a segment
Speaker 2: in the middle of the movie that is an almost
Speaker 2: too good to believe just travel brochure for the city
Speaker 2: of covid Look at all of the beautiful local landmarks.
Speaker 2: You can visit the swinging you know, nightlife district. Oh,
Speaker 2: check out this gorgeous bridge and fountain. Great place to
Speaker 2: take the kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everything that they say during this ten minute travel
Speaker 1: brochure section of the film, you could easily imagine Rick
Speaker 1: Steet's saying all of it in an episode of his
Speaker 1: show or his podcast Love Rick Steeves by the way,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I can imagine him saying, like, you know,
Speaker 1: many people say that Danes were born on their bicycles
Speaker 1: and when you travel through Copenhagen and so forth.
Speaker 2: And it it ends with a scene of it's like
Speaker 2: two military guys who are both on a date with
Speaker 2: the same woman at the same time. That's what it's showing.
Speaker 2: I don't know what that means, but they go out
Speaker 2: on this date and they just go to a nightclub
Speaker 2: and like watch a musical number, and we watch too.
Speaker 2: Here we are.
Speaker 1: But I love that the film felt as if the
Speaker 1: film knew that American audiences might say, why Copenhagen, and
Speaker 1: so here's the answer, Here's why Copenhagen.
Speaker 2: Okay. Another thing to consider this also has come up
Speaker 2: in past episodes where we talked about giant monster films.
Speaker 2: The surprisingly sober themes that come out of some of
Speaker 2: these movies. Now, many of them are just deliberately and
Speaker 2: consciously silly, just some good wholesome atomic beast rastling, but
Speaker 2: other Kaiju movies have some pretty serious ideas in mind,
Speaker 2: at least in the back of the mind. I think
Speaker 2: it's well known that the original fifty four Godzilla obviously
Speaker 2: had nuclear weapons on its mind. Later Godzilla films have
Speaker 2: some pretty clear environmental themes, like the idea that we
Speaker 2: have polluted the earth, and the Earth is striking back
Speaker 2: in the form of like an embodied monster, a sort
Speaker 2: of meat form immago of the the very real but
Speaker 2: sometimes more invisible and diffuse human consequences downstream from pollution,
Speaker 2: pollution of the air and water, and destruction and natural habitats,
Speaker 2: and so forth. So I was wondering, does Reptilicus fit
Speaker 2: into this picture. Does Reptilicus have any serious themes in mind?
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, but we could come back to this
Speaker 2: question later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if they're there, it's a very and we can
Speaker 1: always speak to the American version here, something like this
Speaker 1: could be more stressed in the Danish version. But I
Speaker 1: got maybe mild vibes of the importance of international cooperation
Speaker 1: against threats, regenerative threats, but it's it's very shallow, it's
Speaker 1: there at all.
Speaker 2: Okay, should we hear some trailer audio?
Speaker 1: Sure? Sure? My? Oh my elevator pitch. By the way,
Speaker 1: is springboarding off? Is something you said? Is they're coming
Speaker 1: to Reptilicus today. I'm not going to sing it because
Speaker 1: I don't know if we'll get pained for that anyway. Yes,
Speaker 1: the US trailer for this is pretty fun. Let's have
Speaker 1: a listen.
Speaker 4: Somewhere in the Forbidding Tundra mountains of Lapland, high above
Speaker 4: the Arctic Circle, a group of mining engineers were prospecting
Speaker 4: for copper. But what they on earth was a story,
Speaker 4: a story that was to terrorize the whole world. Fossil bones.
Speaker 3: I have never seen bone fragments like this before.
Speaker 4: I'll work with the army through Captain Brant, Commander Svenson,
Speaker 4: you'll buy for any naval action required. As chief of police,
Speaker 4: I'll rely on you to handle the population. Handled Grayson
Speaker 4: where day out of his way? How long do you
Speaker 4: expect me to continue this hill?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 1: If you want to go out and watch Reptilicus yourself,
Speaker 1: we encourage you to do so. The Vinegar Syndrome Blu
Speaker 1: ray is clearly the best choice here, features a restored
Speaker 1: cut of the American version of the film, as well
Speaker 1: as the original Danish version, or I guess it's the original.
Speaker 1: I will say it's the original version, but anyway, both
Speaker 1: English version and Danish version.
Speaker 2: I own this Blu ray set from Vinegar Syndrome and
Speaker 2: it is gorgeous. I highly recommend it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they do great work. Sadly, this version was checked
Speaker 1: out when I went to rent a video drome. They
Speaker 1: were very apologetic. They were like they were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, you're not gonna be able to watch it
Speaker 1: in the best quality possible. And I was like, it's fine,
Speaker 1: it's this is a time constraint situation and so forth.
Speaker 1: So I had to rint an older DVD of the
Speaker 1: American cut of the film, which was fine. I thought
Speaker 1: the quality was certainly watchable, though I did have French
Speaker 1: subtitles that I could not make go away, but that
Speaker 1: did not get in the way of my enjoyment of
Speaker 1: the film.
Speaker 2: What was the movie that we watch that had hard
Speaker 2: burned Dutch subtitles was that the Hawaiian Werewolf movie.
Speaker 1: It was, Yes, there was a TV movie, so we
Speaker 1: were having to watch like a YouTube cut of it,
Speaker 1: YouTube up load of it that had been like ripped
Speaker 1: from from television.
Speaker 2: Over there, you know, with a verk beast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Death Moon. Death Moon is the motion picture. Someone
Speaker 1: needs to put it out on Blu Ray. Someone make
Speaker 1: that happen. All right, Let's get into the connections here,
Speaker 1: starting with the director we already referenced. This is Sydney W. Pink,
Speaker 1: director of the US version, producer I believe of both reptilicuses,
Speaker 1: and one of the credited writers. He lived nineteen sixteen
Speaker 1: through two thousand and two, American director and producer, often
Speaker 1: singled out for his contributions to three D cinema. In fact,
Speaker 1: he was an ap on the associate producer on the
Speaker 1: first widely released feature link three D film Bwana Devil
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty two, a film we mentioned in our
Speaker 1: previous Weird House Cinema episodes talking about three D pictures.
Speaker 1: He also gave us the cinemagic technique in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: nine's The Angry Red Planet, in which a pink red
Speaker 1: tint is applied to black and white film to give
Speaker 1: us the surface of Mars to take us to the
Speaker 1: surface of Mars. He also directed Journey to the Seventh
Speaker 1: Planet right before the picture in sixty two starring John Agar.
Speaker 4: There you Go.
Speaker 1: Also, I'm always into a good I was a title
Speaker 1: that always catches my interest. So I'll just point out
Speaker 1: that his first film, both as a director and a
Speaker 1: producer was nineteen fifty three's I Was a Burlesque Queen,
Speaker 1: which also had three D dance sequences in it.
Speaker 2: I Was a teenage Reptilicus, all right.
Speaker 1: The other writing credit goes to an individual that's come
Speaker 1: up on the show before. It's Ebe Melchior, who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen through twenty fifteen, Danish American screenwriter with some
Speaker 1: impressive credits. We previously referenced him as one of the
Speaker 1: writers of Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires.
Speaker 2: Oh, I knew I recognized the name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's a name that stands out. He
Speaker 1: wrote and directed The Angry Red Planet fifty nine, Time
Speaker 1: Traveler sixty four, co screenwriter on Robinson Crusoe on Mars
Speaker 1: And sixty four, and his nineteen sixty five short story
Speaker 1: The Racer was adapted to the nineteen seventy five Corman
Speaker 1: produced Paul Bartel directed movie Death Race two thousand.
Speaker 2: Ooh, yeah, man, I haven't seen that one in many years,
Speaker 2: but I have some fond memories about it. Is it
Speaker 2: as good as I remember? I don't know Frankenstein Frankenstein, Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 2: that's the Chardine character, right, yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And what's Stallon's in it? Right, Cass like one of
Speaker 2: the villains. He's like machine Gun Joe V Turbo or something.
Speaker 1: I don't remember him. I just remember Franken STETI. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I also remembered as being fun, all right. Now,
Speaker 1: getting into the cast, there are a lot of folks
Speaker 1: that kind of fade into the background here performing various
Speaker 1: bureaucratic kaiju fighting duties. This is often the case in
Speaker 1: some of these older Giant Monster films you have governmental
Speaker 1: bodies in organizations responding to the threat. And so there's
Speaker 1: a lot in this movie and other movies of like
Speaker 1: folks setting around having meetings and smoking cigarettes, and it
Speaker 1: can get a little boring. It can be also incredibly thrilling,
Speaker 1: as we know from films like Shin Godzilla. Yes it's
Speaker 1: not an inherently boring idea, but it can be boring.
Speaker 2: Yes, Reptiloicus has many pleasures, as we've said, but I
Speaker 2: do not think it is a highlight in the stretches
Speaker 2: where we're just like watching military men stand around a
Speaker 2: table and like you know, talk about their strategy. They're like,
Speaker 2: we're going to have to flesh them out here, we
Speaker 2: will position our artillery. It's not very thrilling.
Speaker 1: All right. So I'm not going to have as much
Speaker 1: to say about some of these actors because a number
Speaker 1: of them, like almost almost have not exclusively worked in
Speaker 1: Danish cinema. And if there's more to add about some
Speaker 1: of these folks that we don't get into, if you
Speaker 1: were familiar with Danish cinema, if that's like your area
Speaker 1: of expertise, or if we have any Danish listeners or
Speaker 1: listeners of Danish heritage out there, and you recognize these
Speaker 1: names right in. We'd love to hear from you. So
Speaker 1: let's go through some of the names here. We have
Speaker 1: Karl Ottosen who live nineteen eighteen through nineteen seventy who
Speaker 1: too playing General Mark Grayson. He was a Danish actor
Speaker 1: who was also in Journey to the Seventh Planet. This
Speaker 1: is the dark haired general guy.
Speaker 2: He is. I think it took me a while to
Speaker 2: realize this, but he's like the voice who's narrating at
Speaker 2: the beginning of the movie, and then he shows up
Speaker 2: halfway through.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, all right. Then we have Anne Smyrner playing
Speaker 1: Lisa Martin's. She lived nineteen thirty four through twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: Danish actress who appeared in a handful of Sydney Pink movies,
Speaker 1: mostly worked in German cinema though until her retirement from
Speaker 1: acting in the seventies. And then we have Mimi Heinrich
Speaker 1: as Karen Martin's she lived nineteen thirty six through twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: Danish actress who was also in Journey to the Seventh Planet. Oh,
Speaker 1: and then we have Asjorn Anderson as Professor Otto Martins.
Speaker 1: This is the he's also the parent of the character
Speaker 1: I just reference. This actor lived nineteen oh thirty through
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight. Danish film actor and director who plays
Speaker 1: one of the more memorable parts here as the kind
Speaker 1: of l Ron Hubbard looking professor who is studying the
Speaker 1: rise of Reptilicus. He mostly worked in Danish cinema, but yeah,
Speaker 1: he's memorable here. I do like him a lot.
Speaker 2: The movie plays him like a hero, but he's kind
Speaker 2: of low key the villain of the movie. You know,
Speaker 2: he's like, yes, let's grow Reptilicus some more.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he's not presented like a mad scientist, but
Speaker 1: he does mad science for sure. Yeah, all right. We
Speaker 1: also have Bent Midgeing playing Svend Vitroloft. He lived nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven through twenty twenty four. This is our slim
Speaker 1: blonde sort of leading man type. He's the guy who
Speaker 1: goes in parties on the beach, played by award winning
Speaker 1: Danish actor here only in his third film role, but
Speaker 1: he would go on to have a long career in
Speaker 1: Danish cinema. So this is definitely I think one of
Speaker 1: those names where if Danish cinema is your sweet spot,
Speaker 1: you know, this guy and you can tell us all
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for most of the runtime, he is completely superfluous
Speaker 2: to the plot, which makes me think that originally this
Speaker 2: movie was just written to be about like the old
Speaker 2: scientists and the military guys, and the producer might have
Speaker 2: been like, what is going on, Why don't you have
Speaker 2: any like young attractive characters in here? So they just
Speaker 2: wrote in like, oh, yeah, there are just like several
Speaker 2: good looking people in their twenties who are standing around
Speaker 2: in whatever scene. So that's when we get Svinn and
Speaker 2: Lisa and Karen and that problem solved.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. And then also we have Connie here. The
Speaker 1: character of Connie, who I think was probably brought in
Speaker 1: for the same reasons, almost definitely played by Marley's Barons
Speaker 1: born nineteen thirty nine. You know, occasionally a former nationwide
Speaker 1: beauty pageant winner pops up in the movies we watch,
Speaker 1: and including Miss Mexico's. I think we've had a few
Speaker 1: different Miss Mexicos pop up, and so I was not
Speaker 1: shocked at all to read that this majorly attractive minor
Speaker 1: character in this film was played by Miss Germany nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight.
Speaker 2: Now, wait a minute, is this the actress who plays
Speaker 2: this role in the American version or in the Danish version,
Speaker 2: because I believe this role is the one that where
Speaker 2: they actually swapped out the cast, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: This is yes, you will only find her in the
Speaker 1: English cut of the film because the actress who plays
Speaker 1: Connie in the Danish version apparently she couldn't do the
Speaker 1: English lines, so they needed someone else to play the
Speaker 1: character in the English version. Okay, she didn't appear in much,
Speaker 1: but yeah, her presence here kind of highlights some aspects
Speaker 1: of the filmmaking process.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as I was saying this, this movie is full
Speaker 2: of characters who there's no plausible reason that they would
Speaker 2: actually be in the place where this scene is happening,
Speaker 2: but they're just standing around to sort of like fill
Speaker 2: out the cast. So it's not just you know, General
Speaker 2: Grayson standing there being sad and like, oh, we gotta
Speaker 2: fight Reptilicus. So let's just have Spinn and Lisa and
Speaker 2: Karen and Connie and everybody kind of pile into the
Speaker 2: shot and they'll be like, what's happening with Reptilicus?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 1: But as far as the cast goes, we save the
Speaker 1: best for the last. In my opinion, because we have,
Speaker 1: for my money, the most visually stimulating performance in this film.
Speaker 1: It's not another former Miss Germany, but rather the legendary
Speaker 1: Danish comedian and character actor Dirtsch Passer who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty six through nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: He is the true star of the film. He only
Speaker 2: gets a couple of scenes and we never learn what
Speaker 2: happens to him. We never learn of Dirtsch's fate. Does
Speaker 2: he does he succumb to Reptilicus or does he make
Speaker 2: it out and live happily ever after? We don't know
Speaker 2: knowledge at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He plays Peterson, who is very much a comic relief character,
Speaker 1: a sort of bumbling janitor slash security guard slash occasional
Speaker 1: sort of lab assistant. And he may or may not
Speaker 1: sleep in the building on chairs. It's unclear, unclear what
Speaker 1: his job is.
Speaker 2: He's a guy in overalls who is broad in by
Speaker 2: one of the professor's daughter, is almost as if like
Speaker 2: he's her boyfriend or something, and she brings him in
Speaker 2: like here he is father, and he's just this guy
Speaker 2: in overalls who's like, yes, hire me, and I will
Speaker 2: keep an eye out for anything fishy. And then he
Speaker 2: walks around the halls and like sticks his hand in
Speaker 2: eel tanks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he has some great comedic moments because Pat Passer
Speaker 1: in this film is a big man and he has
Speaker 1: one of in wearing the overalls, and he has one
Speaker 1: of the most comedically expressive faces. I think you could
Speaker 1: ask for the eyes, the mouth, the energy he's able
Speaker 1: to project through his face. We started you and I
Speaker 1: started talking about him when he showed up instills for
Speaker 1: a movie that came up in our discussions on our
Speaker 1: train episodes for stuff to blow your mind. It's a
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six what is this? I think this may
Speaker 1: have been a TV movie, a Danish TV movie called
Speaker 1: ghost Train.
Speaker 2: Oh, which was an adaptation of this. I think it
Speaker 2: was British play. There's like a play about a ghost train.
Speaker 2: People trapped in a station with a story about a
Speaker 2: ghost train, and then it all turns out to be
Speaker 2: a ruse covering up a like secret espionage caper where
Speaker 2: like communists are infiltrating Britain by way of a secret train. Yeah,
Speaker 2: which is okay, but then yeah, so there were many
Speaker 2: adaptations of this plot, and one of them is this
Speaker 2: one that has Dirt Passer in it, who I don't
Speaker 2: remember which character he plays.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he ends up on some of the promotional
Speaker 1: materials for it because he had that very expressive face,
Speaker 1: which I think he could use for sort of terror
Speaker 1: as well as comedy, like he could open his mouth
Speaker 1: really wide, and yeah, I was instantly impressed by those stills,
Speaker 1: Like you know, you see a still like that and
Speaker 1: you're like, who is this hyper expressive actor. Indeed, he
Speaker 1: was a pretty legendary within the Danish world of entertainment
Speaker 1: as an actor, a kind of a character actor, but
Speaker 1: also as a comedian, noted for his improv skills and
Speaker 1: apparently also just really explosive loud performances. Though in his
Speaker 1: private life, as is often the case, you know, he
Speaker 1: was said to be a very quiet, reserved man, huh,
Speaker 1: that's funny, but on the stage a loud speaker for
Speaker 1: the absurdity of the human condition. He was also apparently
Speaker 1: had a clown act and famously slash tragically died in
Speaker 1: his clown makeup. He suffered cardiac arrest in the midstore
Speaker 1: immediately following a performance, and so, you know, I guess
Speaker 1: this is one of the things that cannot help but
Speaker 1: sort of add to one's legendary status. But he's apparently
Speaker 1: highly influential within the Danish acting world, and I can
Speaker 1: see why. Like this is a guy that even in
Speaker 1: this small, you know, just comedic role, like he stands
Speaker 1: out like he's the main actor that sticks in my
Speaker 1: mind from this picture.
Speaker 2: Agreed, there are some shots where as we were discussing,
Speaker 2: he has a bit of a Stephen King in the
Speaker 2: eighties energy going on. Yeah, he brings with him the
Speaker 2: great suggestion of tom foolery soon to follow. Like when
Speaker 2: he's walking down the hall and you see the eel tank,
Speaker 2: you just know before it even happens, is like he's
Speaker 2: going to end up at least part of his body
Speaker 2: is going to be in that eel tank.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, thank goodness it happens. But again we'll just
Speaker 1: going to prepare you for disappointment. He does just disappear
Speaker 1: at some point in the film and does not come
Speaker 1: back for more comedic misapps.
Speaker 2: They should have had him defeat Reptilicus.
Speaker 1: I would have bought it. Yeah, he seemed like a
Speaker 1: big guy. I think he could handled it all right. Finally,
Speaker 1: the music for this picture of the US version anyway,
Speaker 1: it's another Less Baxter score. I lived nineteen twenty two
Speaker 1: through nineteen ninety six. We've talked about him numerous times
Speaker 1: for some of his very traditional scores, his weird score
Speaker 1: for a very minimalist electronic score for Frogs in the seventies.
Speaker 1: This is another film score by the master of exotica
Speaker 1: music that I guess mostly doesn't hit any exotica notes,
Speaker 1: at least until the very end, right, it gets a
Speaker 1: little exotica right there at the end.
Speaker 2: No, there's some I mean, so, there's nothing wrong with
Speaker 2: the music in this movie except the way it is
Speaker 2: matched with what's happening on screen, like persistently funny music
Speaker 2: choices throughout. It'll have these these like stings and stings,
Speaker 2: the orchestra stings that are timed strangely. It'll have the
Speaker 2: use of like blustery march music like seventy six trombones
Speaker 2: kind of marches playing over scenes where it doesn't feel
Speaker 2: like it makes any sense, just like a car's pulling
Speaker 2: up to a building. And then one of the funniest
Speaker 2: things is like right at the end, when they're looking
Speaker 2: out over the water and it's like, well we killed reptilicas,
Speaker 2: and it's while the guy is saying this. It's playing
Speaker 2: like the nightclub music that we heard earlier, like the lounge.
Speaker 1: Song it needs it feel good film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, time just talk about the plot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's get into it.
Speaker 2: Okay. So we begin with the glorious AIP logo as
Speaker 2: we pan over a vista of rippling hills dotted with
Speaker 2: green shrubbery, and then we get a voice over. This
Speaker 2: is later going to be revealed to be I'm pretty
Speaker 2: sure it's the Milt, the General, Brigadier General Grayson, but
Speaker 2: we don't know that yet. It's just somebody saying somewhere
Speaker 2: in the forbidding tundra mountains of Lapland, high above the
Speaker 2: Arctic Circle, a group of mining engineers were prospecting for copper.
Speaker 2: But what they unearthed was a story, a story that
Speaker 2: was to terrorize the whole world. I'm already fact check
Speaker 2: they did not. This movie does not have worldwide implications.
Speaker 1: This is more regional conflict.
Speaker 2: Yes, And so what we see, by the way, when
Speaker 2: this is happening, we see some guys in like khaki
Speaker 2: jumpsuits and white helmets working on a bunch of mining
Speaker 2: equipment in the middle of a four forest. What looks
Speaker 2: to me I could be wrong. What looks to me
Speaker 2: like a pretty warm forest wherever this is. I don't
Speaker 2: think this is the tundra, as he says. But then
Speaker 2: he goes on to say, when the events began that
Speaker 2: were to place a burden of decision involving the lives
Speaker 2: of an entire city on my shoulders, I was far away, unsuspecting, unknowing.
Speaker 2: And then we zoom in on one of the miners
Speaker 2: who is busy retracting a drill bit from a borehole
Speaker 2: in the earth, and as the drill comes up out
Speaker 2: of the ground, he feeds it onto a pulley system
Speaker 2: above his head and then notices that the drill is wet,
Speaker 2: not with water or with oil, but with some viscous,
Speaker 2: bright red substance. He says, it's blood, and then we
Speaker 2: zoom on his bloody hands and then get the tidal reptilicus.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's a great start. It's shocking.
Speaker 2: I'm in dried, yeah, chiller font reptilicus. It's all dripping everywhere,
Speaker 2: and the orc extra is like stinging again and again.
Speaker 2: But after the title we rejoined the scene where the
Speaker 2: miners are freaking out about the presence of blood on
Speaker 2: their drill. They start digging at the mudcaked threads of
Speaker 2: the drill bit with their hands and then they start
Speaker 2: pulling all of this weird gore off of it, floppy,
Speaker 2: moist red flaps of something, and one of them says,
Speaker 2: it's a piece of skin, like leather.
Speaker 1: This is effectively gross that I was reminded of the
Speaker 1: music video for a sober bitool. They're like scenes of
Speaker 1: like meat moving through a tube at times, and like
Speaker 1: that's similar vibing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So more gore comes off of the drill,
Speaker 2: and it's like sometimes it's sometimes it's these flaps of stuff.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's something rigid covered in blood. And to the
Speaker 2: rigid stuff, the head miner says, bones, fossil bones. And
Speaker 2: then this other guy says what kind of thing is
Speaker 2: down there? And the head miner says, I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I intend to find out. And he decides they
Speaker 2: have to halt operations until they figure out what's going
Speaker 2: on with the drill. And there's some great dialogue here.
Speaker 2: The main guy who later will learn this guy is
Speaker 2: the character Spin. So Spin says to his friend Henry,
Speaker 2: as an American, you have drilled all over the world,
Speaker 2: What do you make of it? And Henry says, it
Speaker 2: can't be a living thing. Let it be. And so
Speaker 2: spin here is tall, blonde, handsome. He's going to be
Speaker 2: our geo hunk for the film. He's a minor and
Speaker 2: he's just a good looking, strapping lad. He says to
Speaker 2: his friend that he's going to radio someone named Navik
Speaker 2: at the University of Copenhagen. But first they're going to
Speaker 2: take some polaroids of this wheelbarrow full of bloody slop.
Speaker 2: And what they don't see, like they take some pictures
Speaker 2: and then walk away. What they don't see is that
Speaker 2: the gore starts breathing. These little sacks are inflating deflating
Speaker 2: in the gunk. Then the same voiceover from earlier resumes,
Speaker 2: saying within hours two Danish scientists had joined the mining engineers,
Speaker 2: Professor Martin's from Copenhagen's don Mark's Aquarium and his associate,
Speaker 2: doctor Peter Dalby, as well as a third man, Hans Carlson,
Speaker 2: a newspaper reporter. So we see all these guys sitting
Speaker 2: around a campfire wearing hats with ear flaps, and the
Speaker 2: narrator says the two scientists had examined the startling find
Speaker 2: hidden beneath the frozen tundra and brought up by the
Speaker 2: drill bit. They reasoned out the meaning of the gruesome
Speaker 2: puzzle without ever dreaming of its full deadly secret. So
Speaker 2: one of the scientists explains the results of their investigation.
Speaker 2: They're like, these are the bones of a gigantic creature
Speaker 2: which lies fossilized down in the ground below us. And
Speaker 2: then the miner is like, but how do you explain
Speaker 2: the blood? And Professor Martin's then says, there is quote
Speaker 2: a street of icy muck underground. The creature must be
Speaker 2: embedded in it, frozen solid. And then this was great,
Speaker 2: Dalby says, not unusual really, So they say, the drill
Speaker 2: cut through this frozen creature's flesh, the friction of the
Speaker 2: drill thawed the flesh out, and bam, there you get wet,
Speaker 2: wet blood.
Speaker 1: It's pretty I mean, for the time and for the
Speaker 1: relative vibe of the picture, pretty gory. Like it's an
Speaker 1: effective slop in.
Speaker 2: This sure, yeah. So Dalby explains that normally when this happens,
Speaker 2: the frozen animal underground is a mammal, like a wooly mammoth.
Speaker 2: In this case, the flesh brought up by the drill
Speaker 2: is instead from a giant reptile, and that is totally unique.
Speaker 2: So the scientists explain that they're going to excavate and
Speaker 2: then ship the remains to the aquarium in Copenhagen. So
Speaker 2: let's go straight straight to Copenhagen now, So we get
Speaker 2: like a Openhagen title in yellow text in this metal
Speaker 2: band font. People are walking around in the streets. We
Speaker 2: see lots of bicycles, motor traffic, old buildings and so forth.
Speaker 2: The music in this part is funny because it's just
Speaker 2: playing this march when what we're seeing is like a
Speaker 2: red convertible pulling up to a building. So the people
Speaker 2: in the car are Professor Martin's who've already met Otto
Speaker 2: Martins is his name, and his adult daughter Lisa, and
Speaker 2: she's dropping him off at the aquarium, and Lisa says,
Speaker 2: don't spend all your time with those old fossils, father,
Speaker 2: you might become one. And then Otto says, with two
Speaker 2: daughters like you and Karen, it's a pleasure to retire
Speaker 2: my old bones. From what I can tell, this was
Speaker 2: written in English and not in Danish, and then like
Speaker 2: losing something in translation, but it feels like something where
Speaker 2: we've lost something in translation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there are a lot of lines like this
Speaker 1: in the picture.
Speaker 2: So we follow Professor Martin's as he wandered through the
Speaker 2: don marx Akvarium to his laboratory. He's like passing through
Speaker 2: exhibit tanks full of fish and sea turtles on the way,
Speaker 2: and what I just noticed. They've got these sea turtles
Speaker 2: in a tank that looks quite small, and then the
Speaker 2: professor stops to bang on the glass.
Speaker 1: At them, and everyone knows you're not supposed to do that.
Speaker 2: So they get to the lab and there are various
Speaker 2: technicians at work. Martin's and Dalby discussed the remains they
Speaker 2: unearthed from the mine. Dalby has been trying to reconstruct
Speaker 2: the creature, and so far his attempts have all failed.
Speaker 2: He expresses his puzzlement, saying, I don't know why we
Speaker 2: can't put this thing back together. We've got plenty of bones,
Speaker 2: and Martin's says, too many bones. We aren't even sure
Speaker 2: they belong to the same animal, but Dalby is sure.
Speaker 2: He says it's unlike anything in the fossil record, completely unique.
Speaker 2: So anyway, Otto's other adult daughter, Karen arrives with a
Speaker 2: telegram from Spinn, the handsome miner, that apparently he found
Speaker 2: more bones and he's bringing them to the museum and
Speaker 2: he'll be here in an hour. You need somebody to
Speaker 2: pick him up at the airport with the bones. So
Speaker 2: Otto sends Karen and his daughter to pick him up
Speaker 2: at the airport, and Karen is portrayed as boy crazy.
Speaker 2: She's like, ooh, is he handsome father? And he tries
Speaker 2: to dissuade her. He says, like, no, he has three
Speaker 2: eyes in a false mustache. Now hurry up. But the
Speaker 2: next scene is that Savin and the bone fragments are
Speaker 2: already here, and this is where we get that great
Speaker 2: delivery where Otto says like, I have never seen bone
Speaker 2: fragments like this before. Well, what's so weird about the bones? Well,
Speaker 2: the professor explains they are resilient but very strong, almost
Speaker 2: like the cartilaginous bones of a shark, That's what he says. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: they discuss how they have identified the frozen piece they discovered,
Speaker 2: and it is from the creature's tail, and now it's
Speaker 2: being kept under deep freeze conditions beyond this heavy iron
Speaker 2: door in the wall of the laboratory and we get
Speaker 2: to see inside and this actually looks kind of cool.
Speaker 2: They've got it under like blue green lighting, sort of
Speaker 2: frosty and shimmering. I thought it looked like the texture
Speaker 2: of a puppet from The Nightmare before Christmas.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's good. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But then later we see a cross section of it
Speaker 2: and it looks like a beef roast. It's like an oxtail. Anyway,
Speaker 2: they can estimate just from the tail that this creature
Speaker 2: would have been among the biggest reptiles or dinosaurs ever
Speaker 2: to live. They say ninety feet or more. They don't
Speaker 2: specify in what direction, and they say it lived seventy
Speaker 2: to one hundred million years ago. And then also in
Speaker 2: this scene, Karen Martin's daughter is just coming on so
Speaker 2: strong to Spin. She says, like, father, now that you've
Speaker 2: told Spin about frozen matters, can I thaw him a little?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Oh?
Speaker 2: But then the other professor otto daughter shows up again.
Speaker 2: This is Lisa, And now Lisa brought a guy with
Speaker 2: her as well. But this is Dirt, So I don't
Speaker 2: think they actually meant that like dirtch is her boyfriend,
Speaker 2: but that's almost how it comes off. She like brings
Speaker 2: him up like here he is father.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, because again this is Peterson. He appears to
Speaker 1: work here, or at least he is here and is
Speaker 1: ordered around to do things right.
Speaker 2: So he's this strange looking guy in a gray flannel
Speaker 2: shirt and denim overalls. And by the way, in the
Speaker 2: scene like this, the sisters are mocking and sniping at
Speaker 2: each other like they're fighting over the handsome minor, the geohunk,
Speaker 2: literally pulling him in opposite directions, you know, they each
Speaker 2: take one of his arms and they're fighting over him.
Speaker 2: And then these two old scientists Martin's and dalby are
Speaker 2: acting like creeps one of them. Dalby's like, Auto, I
Speaker 2: envy that young man and running off with your daughters,
Speaker 2: and Auto is like, yes, he will be very busy now.
Speaker 2: And this gives way into the dirt passer scene where
Speaker 2: he is explaining that he is there to help them
Speaker 2: keep an eye on things when no one's around. He
Speaker 2: will be there to keep a lookout. So he seems
Speaker 2: to me more security guard than janitor, but it's still
Speaker 2: never very clear. Like basically what he does is he
Speaker 2: just walks around in the hall and gets into gets
Speaker 2: into trouble.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it gets in little mishaps. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, the scientists stressed to Peterson that the most important
Speaker 2: thing is to always keep this reptilicous tail frozen, never
Speaker 2: let the freezer thaw out. And he's like, okay, got it, boss.
Speaker 2: And so I really had my expectations subverted because as
Speaker 2: soon as I saw this scene, I was like, I
Speaker 2: know what's gonna happen. Dirt dirt passer is going to
Speaker 2: mess this up. He is going to thaw this tail.
Speaker 2: But it is not Dirt's fault, is it.
Speaker 1: No, No, not at all, which is surprising. Again, like
Speaker 1: generally when someone says, hey, make sure this doesn't happen,
Speaker 1: a thing is going to happen. And if you have
Speaker 1: a comic relief bumbling security guard like who better than
Speaker 1: to accidentally thaw the reptilicus.
Speaker 2: That's right. But so he's not the one who thows it.
Speaker 2: He does get into some other trouble. He is walking
Speaker 2: down a hallway and just in the middle of the
Speaker 2: hallway there is an open tank that has all these
Speaker 2: like electricity warning signs on it. I guess it's got
Speaker 2: electric eels in it, and dirtch is like, I just
Speaker 2: got I gotta stick my hand in the tank.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well we build up to right. It's the
Speaker 1: first is it the first scene where he just passes
Speaker 1: by and he's like he says, like, yep, everything around
Speaker 1: here runs on electricity, which is a line I genuinely
Speaker 1: laughed at. I thought, oh, yeah, it's pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, okay, No, he doesn't stick his hand in
Speaker 2: it yet. That's later, but he he comments on the
Speaker 2: fact that they're electric, just like the lights.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know that hand is going in there.
Speaker 1: You know we're going to come back to that electric eel.
Speaker 2: It's Chekhov's eel. Yeah. So later that night, Delby is
Speaker 2: taking some Reptilicus samples and analyzing them under the microscope,
Speaker 2: but he is overworked and drowsy and soon falls asleep
Speaker 2: at his desk. Meanwhile, outside there's a lightning storm raging,
Speaker 2: and somehow this leads to the freezer door falling open.
Speaker 2: I think that Dalby like didn't shut it right or
Speaker 2: something when he was getting the sample out and the
Speaker 2: freezer begins to thaw.
Speaker 1: That's right, you can't nail Peterson for this. No hand
Speaker 1: in this right, not his fault.
Speaker 2: It was Dalby. And then the next morning, Professor Martin's
Speaker 2: and Lisa. They come into the office and discover the scene.
Speaker 2: Dalby is asleep head on the desk. The freezer's hanging open,
Speaker 2: and the Reptilicus tail is dripping blood on the floor,
Speaker 2: and we see it in its thawed state after it
Speaker 2: has come up to room temperature, and it now looks
Speaker 2: much nastier than before, like it's covered in a red
Speaker 2: brown damp wool. Obviously unhappy to see this that everybody
Speaker 2: rushes in and Auto is like unfrozen. There's some general
Speaker 2: fretting and chewing out of people until they discover something shocking.
Speaker 2: The drill hole in the tail that the handsome miner
Speaker 2: made with his drill bit. It is now healing, and
Speaker 2: the scientists say, you realize what this means. You let
Speaker 2: it thaw and now it is alive. So the next
Speaker 2: scene is Professor Martin's having a meeting in his office
Speaker 2: with somebody we haven't met before. It turns out this
Speaker 2: is a UNESCO official named Connie Miller, and the first
Speaker 2: thing he says to her is some casual sexism. He's like, oh,
Speaker 2: we don't often see women as beautiful as you associated
Speaker 2: with science, and she's like, dude, I am qualified, and
Speaker 2: he's like, ah, yes, I'm sorry, I am old. But
Speaker 2: I'm still unclear on exactly what Miller's job is supposed
Speaker 2: to be here. I take it this is like a
Speaker 2: job interview where they're having this meeting here, but they
Speaker 2: don't explain exactly what she's doing. It's something related to Tilicus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure exactly what this character is supposed
Speaker 1: to be doing. Like I was mainly distracted by, like,
Speaker 1: who's this actor playing this role?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: And this is where I came upon the miss Germany factoid. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then also for some reason, the dude's daughter Lisa
Speaker 2: is just looming over this lady during the interview. Just
Speaker 2: one of many, many examples of throughout the whole film
Speaker 2: why would this character be here? But then suddenly we
Speaker 2: meet another new character, the American brigadier general named Mark Grayson,
Speaker 2: who again this is I think this was the guy
Speaker 2: narrating in voiceover earlier, but we meet him through one
Speaker 2: of those sentence completed from across the room by a
Speaker 2: newly arrived character intros. So I think Martin's is saying,
Speaker 2: we have a general coming in. His name is and
Speaker 2: then he's looking amongst his papers, and then the guy
Speaker 2: you hear another voice and he says Mark Grayson, and
Speaker 2: I have never seen a man introduce him himself in
Speaker 2: a movie with such apparent disgust. He says his own name,
Speaker 2: the way that cop talked about hippies and the living
Speaker 2: dead at Manchester More.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so weird.
Speaker 2: So Grayson wanders over to Professor Martin's. He's scowling, he's
Speaker 2: not happy about whatever's going on. The professor welcomes him,
Speaker 2: and Grayson says, I think the line is I don't
Speaker 2: know why I'm here, Professor, I assume you'll let me know. Classic,
Speaker 2: didn't We just talk about movies with the scene of
Speaker 2: the scene convention of like we're all here for a mission,
Speaker 2: but we don't know what it is. Now we're going
Speaker 2: to get the briefing.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep. We have kind of like a mini version
Speaker 1: of that here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, though, I guess we talked about how the most
Speaker 2: believable context is when it's a military things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess it makes sense here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but here all of the characters are introduced to
Speaker 2: each other. He got Miller, Lisa Grayson all saying hello, introducing,
Speaker 2: and it's very stiff all around. Now, the next scene
Speaker 2: is a news conference hosted by Otto Martin's highlights. So
Speaker 2: the press is gathered and he gives sort of a talk,
Speaker 2: and the highlights are, this creature is alive. It is
Speaker 2: quote regenerating, and he explains that by saying a lizard
Speaker 2: can regrow its tail when it's chopped off, a flatworm
Speaker 2: can regrow whole parts of its body, even its brain
Speaker 2: after being cut in half. And that's what's happening right now. Also,
Speaker 2: we learned that the animal is called reptilicus. The name
Speaker 2: is suggested by a journalist and Martins is just like reptilicus.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 1: I think the standard, right. It's like the journalist gets
Speaker 1: there first, they get to officially name a new organism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't matter what publication they're from.
Speaker 2: What if we name it the Daily Maelosaurus. So all
Speaker 2: the journals come in and flock to look at the tank,
Speaker 2: like they're clamoring up the staircase to look in the
Speaker 2: window inside, and they're murmuring. And then we see newspaper
Speaker 2: headlines spinning at the screen. We see prehistoric monster growing
Speaker 2: in huge tank. And I really like that one because
Speaker 2: it's got the word huge in it, but it refers
Speaker 2: to the tank. And then another headline prominently featuring the
Speaker 2: concept of tank, it is incubator tank feeds monster from pass.
Speaker 2: So after this there's a scene of Brigadier General Mark
Speaker 2: Grayson sulking because he is being relegated to the command
Speaker 2: of in his words, two captains, three office boys, and
Speaker 2: a damn lizard. And he's like, I'm a war hero,
Speaker 2: I'm worthy of prestige. How dare they put me on
Speaker 2: Reptilicus detail. Now, the next scene we get is a
Speaker 2: good old dirt scene. Here we're not at the eel
Speaker 2: part yet. Instead, here he's eating a sandwich and painting
Speaker 2: something on a microscope slide and then looking through the microscope,
Speaker 2: then putting his sandwich under the microscope and seeing lots
Speaker 2: of bacteria, and then he burps, and then we get
Speaker 2: like harp music playing and we cut to black.
Speaker 1: I have no idea. This is a scene where I
Speaker 1: really was trying to figure out what Peterson's role here is,
Speaker 1: Like he did not before the scene. He did not
Speaker 1: seem like a character who had microscope access.
Speaker 2: You know, It's like he's just now discovering that there
Speaker 2: are microbes on his food.
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess maybe I would not be surprised
Speaker 1: if they this was not a scene where they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's just improve some stuff. Let's just get the camera
Speaker 1: on this guy and just see what he's got.
Speaker 2: Turn dirt loose in the lab. See. Yeah, he's like
Speaker 2: Billy Crystal and h oh. Also, this right after this,
Speaker 2: I think is when he actually does cram his hand
Speaker 2: in the electric Guell tank. Yes, so he's like going
Speaker 2: down the hall and just wants to get a little
Speaker 2: taste a free sample of electric geel, and I don't know,
Speaker 2: I guess it shocks him. I assume we were to
Speaker 2: take it as him really being electrified, not him pretending
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think it was supposed to be real electrocution,
Speaker 1: because we get, we get as we're hoping, like full
Speaker 1: like a full array of facial emotions. Here he goes
Speaker 1: to the seven stages of being shocked by an eel
Speaker 1: and it's pretty great.
Speaker 2: But while this is happening, there is distraction because he
Speaker 2: hears a rumbling in the Reptilicus tank and he gets
Speaker 2: very alarmed, in fact, so alarmed that he pulls an alarm.
Speaker 2: He pulls the fire alarm. Everybody comes running. They're like,
Speaker 2: what's happening. What's wrong Peterson? And he explains, but then
Speaker 2: Martin's says to him, don't worry Peterson. Here's the quote.
Speaker 2: He says, reptilicus has no conscious life. Yet what you
Speaker 2: heard was merely involuntary embryonic movement.
Speaker 1: So you know.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, we learn more about reptilicus. The scientists
Speaker 2: are constantly studying it as it grows. Martin's is like, yes,
Speaker 2: grow more reptilicus, and they learn he has big, strong
Speaker 2: scales on his back, slimy secretion from his mouth which
Speaker 2: has a corrosive effect, like highly concentrated acid, and so
Speaker 2: they're like, yes, keep keep growing it. Oh, and this
Speaker 2: is the part where we get to the Copenhagen tourism reel.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: Yes, like there's this I think I don't know. German general.
Speaker 2: There's a general from somewhere named Brandt who is working
Speaker 2: with Grayson, and he comes into his office and he says,
Speaker 2: is there is there anything I can do for you?
Speaker 2: And Grayson says, yeah, get me transferred out of this
Speaker 2: damn place. So he's being grumpy as usual, but then
Speaker 2: Brandt suggests to him, why not go out for a
Speaker 2: night on the town and see all the sights in
Speaker 2: this beautiful locale, and Grayson is like splendid idea actually,
Speaker 2: So they go out together and we see all of
Speaker 2: the fountains and the bridges and the trams and the
Speaker 2: bicycles and the the palace, and then we end up. Oh,
Speaker 2: they go over the longebro Bridge, which is an important
Speaker 2: landmark in the movie that will happen we will encounter
Speaker 2: again later when Reptilicus is rampaging. But this is the
Speaker 2: part where Brant and Grayson both take Connie Connie Miller
Speaker 2: from Unesco on a date to dinner, and she's walking
Speaker 2: around holding both of their arms, and it's playing what
Speaker 2: the subtitles referred to as soft sultry music, and this
Speaker 2: like nightclub singer is singing a song called Tivoli Nights,
Speaker 2: Tivoli Knights. So what a sight. This might be a
Speaker 2: standard I wasn't familiar with it though, but it does
Speaker 2: include also some pretty good Danish scat singing.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love this whole sequence here again,
Speaker 1: it just it's so overt, you know, it is like
Speaker 1: a travel brochure. But at the same time. This is
Speaker 1: probably a sequence where some viewers are saying, Hey, didn't
Speaker 1: I pop in a monster movie? Isn't there supposed to
Speaker 1: be a monster rampage at some point?
Speaker 2: Well, if that's what you're thinking, you're in luck, because
Speaker 2: it is finally time for Reptilicus to break loose. So
Speaker 2: one night, I don't know if it's supposed to be
Speaker 2: the same night, but it's continuous with what we just saw.
Speaker 2: There's another frightening thunderstorm. Only Dalby and Peterson are working
Speaker 2: late in the office as usual, and they hear what
Speaker 2: sounds like a crash, and they go out in the
Speaker 2: hallway looking toward the Reptilicus tank and they see something
Speaker 2: with horror in their eyes. Dalby sends Peterson off to
Speaker 2: the police, and then there there's like a weird exchange
Speaker 2: here where I thought it was building up to some
Speaker 2: big comedic payoff, and then it doesn't. It's just Peterson
Speaker 2: and this cop playing chess with himself, going back and
Speaker 2: forth over and over trying to figure out what they're
Speaker 2: talking about about the monster being loose.
Speaker 1: There's some fun lines, there's there are more electric eel jokes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh that's right. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, you're right,
Speaker 2: because what do they say is like the electricity went out,
Speaker 2: and the cops like really, and then Peterson, yeah, even
Speaker 2: the electric eel went out?
Speaker 3: Wonk, wonk.
Speaker 1: It's great.
Speaker 4: I like it.
Speaker 2: So next thing that all the other characters arrive at
Speaker 2: the lab and Reptilicus is gone and so is Delby.
Speaker 2: Only his glasses remain. And then meanwhile, some military guys
Speaker 2: find Reptilicus's tracks leading down into the water where they vanish,
Speaker 2: And here the movie shifts into rampage and response mode.
Speaker 2: So there's going to be a lot less fewer dialogue
Speaker 2: scenes from now on, and more of people running around
Speaker 2: trying to set up artillery and soldiers and jeeps and
Speaker 2: tanks and everything to face off against Reptilicus. And Reptilicus,
Speaker 2: is he going to be put down by the artillery?
Speaker 2: Of course not. We're going to have to have some
Speaker 2: kind of secret weapon in the end, but we're not
Speaker 2: there yet.
Speaker 1: Pretty standard stuff. So when she reached this stage of
Speaker 1: a Kaichu film, you know, the stock footage is coming out.
Speaker 1: You know, they're going to be a few different plans
Speaker 1: to kill or capture the beasts. One or two are
Speaker 1: not going to work, and that third one is going
Speaker 1: to be what really is effective?
Speaker 2: That's right. So one thing that's different at this point
Speaker 2: in the movie is that General Grayson is in charge now,
Speaker 2: so what he always wanted. He's very excited, so he's
Speaker 2: he's like chasing around after the monster. The first attack
Speaker 2: is at what they call a small farm on the coast,
Speaker 2: So we see a lot of footage of people, you know, soldiers,
Speaker 2: loading up into transport vehicles and heading down the road,
Speaker 2: and we get to the farm and the farmer there
Speaker 2: he's like, oh, he killed fourteen of my best cows.
Speaker 2: And we see a bloody skinned cow head on the ground.
Speaker 2: And then it's a bunch of military dudes driving around
Speaker 2: and barking things back and forth on radios, trying to
Speaker 2: find the monster until finally they do. And I like
Speaker 2: this line delivery because it has kind of unintended implications.
Speaker 2: This soldier like he looks up when he finally sees
Speaker 2: Reptilicus and he says, it's my god. It is your god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean really it could be.
Speaker 2: You know, you were created serve it as a character.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Reptilicus is pretty it's pretty cool looking, you know,
Speaker 1: though the effects, like we say, are rough around the edges,
Speaker 1: hard not to love, but also difficult to believe. At times,
Speaker 1: he seems to he has like little stationary jazz hands,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, when he's writhing about. But I like him.
Speaker 1: I think he's a memorable kaiju.
Speaker 2: Reptilicus is kind of like a snake. Like he has
Speaker 2: a long, thin neck, but it's covered in very raised,
Speaker 2: layered scales. He has fangs like a snake and a
Speaker 2: head like a snake, and then he has big spiny wings.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, maybe these wings are We never
Speaker 2: see Reptilicus fly from what I recall, so the wings
Speaker 2: might be more like, you know, neural spines. It might
Speaker 2: be more for cooling purposes. To go back to a
Speaker 2: core episode we just talked about.
Speaker 1: Would you say that Reptilicus is a cross between a
Speaker 1: sorrow pod and an aquatic lizard that is striving to
Speaker 1: become a mammal?
Speaker 2: Ooh yeah, wow, the perfect yes, because.
Speaker 1: That's how it presented a couple of times in the film.
Speaker 2: Aren't we all striving to become a mammal?
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I mean every day it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's you get up every morning, and you strive to
Speaker 1: become a mammal, stay a mammal, be a mammal, and
Speaker 1: so forth.
Speaker 2: I just want to live up to my destiny. So yeah,
Speaker 2: the military guys unleash artillery and machine gun fire at Reptilicus.
Speaker 2: They and then they even so that doesn't work at first,
Speaker 2: but then they try a giant flamethrower, and Reptilicus really
Speaker 2: does not like the flamethrower. Reptilicus squeals quite repetitively. The
Speaker 2: same sound effect is used over and over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's terrifying stock footage of a military flamethrower, Like
Speaker 1: not one of these like novelty. You know, I'm still
Speaker 1: dangerous things you see like it, you know, burns and whatnot,
Speaker 1: but like the real jelly gasoline horror show. So I
Speaker 1: understand Reptilicus's response here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not mega weapon. It's like, actually you're seeing
Speaker 2: the jet come out. It's scary as hell. Yeah, but Reptilicus,
Speaker 2: after being hit with the flamethrower, gets really upset and
Speaker 2: then slithers off into the sea. So all of the
Speaker 2: characters are standing here on the beach. Why are they
Speaker 2: all here? I don't know, But they're like spins here.
Speaker 2: The daughters are here, they're all here on the beach.
Speaker 2: They're watching what's going on. Grayson is like, maybe he'll die,
Speaker 2: and then Connie, for some reason says, not a chance.
Speaker 2: He's just taking time to let his wounds heal. And
Speaker 2: then Grayson says, regeneration.
Speaker 1: You know, I just dawned on me. The thing that's
Speaker 1: missing that I guess Connie's kind of filling in for
Speaker 1: here is we need a child. We need a child
Speaker 1: that is having revelations about the kaiju. Like that's what's
Speaker 1: missing here, Timmy, if you will.
Speaker 2: Yes, we do need that, yeah, to like sort of
Speaker 2: intuit the intentions and spirit and meaning of the monster. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but in lieu of child, Connie, we don't even know
Speaker 2: if Reptilicus is a friend to all children. It's possible
Speaker 2: he is, and nobody and just nobody ever gets to
Speaker 2: say so. So it's like not even considered, nobody thought
Speaker 2: to try. So. After all this, the military and scientists
Speaker 2: regroup and they launch a naval search operation to find Reptilicus.
Speaker 2: So we're out on the water and we see all
Speaker 2: these you know, battleships and destroyers going around and again
Speaker 2: Why is Spinn the miner on one of these battleships. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So they find Reptilicus with sonar and then they launch
Speaker 2: a depth depth charges as he is slumbering on the
Speaker 2: ocean floor. Connie tries to get them to stop. She's like,
Speaker 2: don't you realize what you're doing. If Reptilicus is hit,
Speaker 2: you'll never find all the pieces underwater. He'll regenerate Mark.
Speaker 2: But it's too late. We see some bloody Reptilicus chunks
Speaker 2: floating around in the water column, so it's too late.
Speaker 2: And then there's fallout from this. Martin's, who was also
Speaker 2: on one of the boats, has a medical event and
Speaker 2: is taken to the hospital. Later we learned that Reptilicus
Speaker 2: has been attacking ships in ports throughout the Baltic Sea
Speaker 2: and retaliation, so it's very oh the humanity. And then
Speaker 2: we get a scene of Spin, the handsome minor, being
Speaker 2: consoled by Karen the I think by Karen, the daughter
Speaker 2: of Martin's, and Spinn says Harbor's freighters, I had the
Speaker 2: blood of Reptilicus on my hands. Sometimes I feel that
Speaker 2: it's perhaps also the blood of all those people, Yes,
Speaker 2: of all the ridiculous dark Knight of the Soul.
Speaker 1: Scenes in movies.
Speaker 2: This is one of the best.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: Oh, anyway, next, this movie has been very short on
Speaker 2: like bikinis up to this point, so they just bring you, like,
Speaker 2: what if we did a Jaws style beach scene, beach
Speaker 2: attack scene, So that's what's next. We just go to
Speaker 2: the beach, a bunch of young hip people hanging out
Speaker 2: in bathing suits, lounging in the sand, and then here's Reptilicus.
Speaker 1: Yep, shooting green slime out of his mouth. That everyone
Speaker 1: the effect here is marvelous, not believable at all, but
Speaker 1: but charming.
Speaker 2: Agreed. So when Reptilicus rears up out of the water,
Speaker 2: everybody panics and runs away. And then we see more
Speaker 2: military personnel and vehicles getting into position to face the
Speaker 2: Reptilicus menace. And we just know now is the time
Speaker 2: for Reptilicus to attack all of those beautiful tourist friendly
Speaker 2: landmarks and affordable locations in Copenhagen, not the Little Mermaid.
Speaker 2: So we see like the you know, the military, they're
Speaker 2: just shooting and shooting and shooting and shooting. They unload
Speaker 2: zillion bullets into Reptilicus but it's just making him matter.
Speaker 2: Reptilicus rides around, he slams his head into little models
Speaker 2: of buildings. They say, we can't use our flame throwers,
Speaker 2: which he didn't like last time, because we can't get
Speaker 2: close to the acid slime. Now Reptilicus is like spitting
Speaker 2: green goo at people so they can't get too close.
Speaker 2: And next we see Reptilicus attack the lungebro Bridge where
Speaker 2: s Vin the miner I think to have a heroic
Speaker 2: moment because like somebody has to operate the controls of
Speaker 2: the bridge to lower the drawbridge so that the panicking
Speaker 2: civilians can run away, but the guy who's supposed to
Speaker 2: lower it is paralyzed by fear, so Spinn has to
Speaker 2: do it. I think that's what happened. Yeah, so the
Speaker 2: military tries more plans. They're going to try to like
Speaker 2: steer Reptilicus in one place or another to so they
Speaker 2: can use certain weapons. Reptilicus attacks the stock exchange. Oh no,
Speaker 2: not the stock exchange. More rampaging and shooting, all heading
Speaker 2: toward a final confrontation. So we get the lead up
Speaker 2: to that final showdown where there's another plotting scene where
Speaker 2: they're all like standing around in a room over a map,
Speaker 2: and Grayson says he wants to use bombs, but Martin appears,
Speaker 2: now recovered from his medical event, to argue. He says
Speaker 2: Reptilicus cannot be blown to bits because the pieces of
Speaker 2: him will regenerate, and Grayson says, I'm a soldier, not
Speaker 2: a science That's the way I know how to kill,
Speaker 2: and then Martin says, then you will have to learn
Speaker 2: another way. So what's it going to be? We have
Speaker 2: a showdown here between these worldviews, is like science versus militarism,
Speaker 2: and who's which one is going to triumph over Reptilicus.
Speaker 2: It seems like they go for a synthesis of the
Speaker 2: two because ladies and gentlemen, the solution to all of
Speaker 2: the Reptilicus problems in this movie is a drug Bazuka.
Speaker 1: Yes, the drug Bozuka another one of my favorite aspects
Speaker 1: of this picture.
Speaker 2: So they get the idea from like they're just having
Speaker 2: a conversation. I think it's Vin and Lisa are talk
Speaker 2: Svin and Karen are talking and he's like, how's your
Speaker 2: father and she says sedated? They gave him a hypo
Speaker 2: And then somebody says, what about reptilicus, and somebody says,
Speaker 2: if only we could give him a hypo, and then
Speaker 2: you can see it dawn on them and they're like, bye, George,
Speaker 2: that's it.
Speaker 1: There's some great lines here, like they're they're like, well,
Speaker 1: is there some sort of we could give him? And
Speaker 1: they're like, could we get enough of that drug? And
Speaker 1: somebody in the midst of this I don't remember who's
Speaker 1: like drug, Like they'd never heard the word before.
Speaker 2: One of them says, by my calculations, we'll need a
Speaker 2: gallon of it for reptilicus. So yeah, they well, they
Speaker 2: kind of split up into different teams, like the young
Speaker 2: attractive people all go to get a gallon of reptilicus drugs,
Speaker 2: and Grayson is like rigging up some way to deliver it,
Speaker 2: and I love that. After this spart there are repeated
Speaker 2: scenes of people explaining the drug bazuka concept to each
Speaker 2: other in detail, as Reptilicus is raging in the background,
Speaker 2: and they keep saying things like I'm going to take
Speaker 2: a crack at reptilicus. So eventually they load up the
Speaker 2: drug bazuoka and shoot, Grayson does it. Of course, you know,
Speaker 2: he's the he's the real hero. In the end, he
Speaker 2: shoots and it's a hit. It hits Reptilicus right in
Speaker 2: the mouth, which was the only place they could get him,
Speaker 2: but it works, and then Reptilicus thrashes around a little
Speaker 2: bit and then falls asleep. So afterwards we surveyed the destruction,
Speaker 2: you know, the burned and crushed buildings, and everybody wandering
Speaker 2: around looking like what happened? What has Reptilicus wrought? But
Speaker 2: then the weirdest thing I mentioned this earlier, the what
Speaker 2: the subtitles describe as soft, sultry nightclub music starts playing
Speaker 2: and Grayson is standing there with Connie and he says,
Speaker 2: it's a good thing that there's no more like him.
Speaker 2: And then we cut to the bottom of the ocean
Speaker 2: where one of Reptilicus's legs, severed legs, is walking around
Speaker 2: by itself.
Speaker 1: And then the end, you know what that means. It's
Speaker 1: going to regenerate into a full Reptilicus, And then the
Speaker 1: whole problem emerges again.
Speaker 2: That's right, Reptilicus can never be defeated unless they launch
Speaker 2: him into space.
Speaker 1: That's right. I mean, I guess that's where we're going
Speaker 1: in the sequel, Like maybe sedated reptilicus versus new regenerated reptilicus,
Speaker 1: and then we have to just yeah, we to launch
Speaker 1: both of them into space today.
Speaker 2: How long does the drug sedate reptilicus for?
Speaker 1: Though, I don't know. They don't really get into that, Like,
Speaker 1: what's the plan next? Yeah, launch him into space, freeze him.
Speaker 1: We don't know. It just we have to trust that
Speaker 1: the scientific world will take care of it this time,
Speaker 1: even though they're the ones that accidentally thawed the foot
Speaker 1: to begin with and did the mad science that got
Speaker 1: us to this predicament in the first place.
Speaker 2: They had to do that with one of the villains
Speaker 2: on the Boys, right.
Speaker 1: That's right, they did, like I forget his name, but
Speaker 1: like the evil take on Captain America.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like couldn't be destroyed. They had to just keep
Speaker 2: him permanently sedated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean sometimes that's the way it is
Speaker 1: with your area. As we've discussed on weirdhow some of
Speaker 1: your various takes on vampires and werewolves, Like, is the
Speaker 1: what does the stake do to the unholy creature? Does
Speaker 1: it murder them or does it just hold them in place?
Speaker 1: A steak that may one day be removed And free them.
Speaker 1: It's like a lock, yeah, which you know, it's an it.
Speaker 1: I feel like if Reptilicus does have any kind of
Speaker 1: like deeper meaning, it is getting at the idea that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: solutions to problems are not permanent solutions. They are They
Speaker 1: are all inherently temporary, you know, and you have to
Speaker 1: you have to keep at it and or keep solving
Speaker 1: the same problems over and over again. In this case,
Speaker 1: giant lizards that regenerate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I guess Reptilicus is an update on the
Speaker 2: tail of the hydra, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the hydra is very much like the classic
Speaker 1: telling of that story.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: The problem not only a problem that keeps springing back up,
Speaker 1: but springs up, you know, with additional problems. Every time
Speaker 1: you cut away the head, you get more heads, and indeed,
Speaker 1: every time you defeat one reptilicus, you potentially get more.
Speaker 2: So you got to think outside the box. For Hercules,
Speaker 2: it was what it was like cauterizing the stumps with fire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and help from your cousin, right, but his cousin
Speaker 1: helping them. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In this case, it's it's a drug bazuoka.
Speaker 1: All right, well, and that we're going to go ahead
Speaker 1: and close it out here. We hope everyone has a
Speaker 1: good Turkey Day if you celebrate Turkey Day. In the past,
Speaker 1: we've kind of made it an official thing to do,
Speaker 1: or an unofficial thing even to sort of to do
Speaker 1: a film that has been covered on Mystery Science Theater
Speaker 1: three thousand, you know, thinking back to those Turkey Day
Speaker 1: marathons of old and they still put it on, So
Speaker 1: look for that if you're into it. But this movie
Speaker 1: was of course covered on one of the recent seasons
Speaker 1: of Mystery Science Theater three thousand, so just a reminder that, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you don't want to seek out the original version,
Speaker 1: I think you can still find the MST three K
Speaker 1: version on Netflix, so you know, go watch it there.
Speaker 1: This is a fun movie. This is a good one
Speaker 1: to refund.
Speaker 2: I think it was the first episode of the reboot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it was a Jonah episode. I think it
Speaker 1: had a fun song in there about how every country,
Speaker 1: every culture has its monster. So oh yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: just to remind it that Stuff. To Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes
Speaker 1: on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside
Speaker 1: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema. Find the full list of the
Speaker 1: movies we've done on a letterbox dot com that's l
Speaker 1: E T T E R B o x d dot com.
Speaker 1: Our username is weird House and if you're on Instagram,
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Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, Jjposway.
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Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 2: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
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