Reptilicus

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Movie
Original title Reptilicus
Country of production Denmark , USA
original language English
Publishing year 1961
length 81 minutes
Rod
Director Poul Bang
Sidney W. Pink
script Ib Melchior
Sidney W. Pink
music Sven Gyldmark
camera Aage Wiltrup
cut Sven Methling
Edith Nisted Nielsen
occupation

Reptilicus is a Danish - US -American science fiction film from 1961 and after The Last Judgment (1916) and A Trip to Mars (1918), the third Danish SF-production. Apparently there are two very different versions, a longer Danish version by Poul Bang and an abbreviated American version by Sidney W. Pink. This article covers the latter. Production companies were Saga Studios , Copenhagen and American International Pictures .

action

Danish miners come across bloody scraps of flesh while drilling deep in Lapland . Since they cannot explain their origin, they are flown to Copenhagen and examined by Professor Martens in the Danmarks Akwarium . Shortly afterwards, the end of a gigantic reptilian tail is flown in and included in the analysis .

Martens suspects that the tail end belongs to a gigantic dinosaur . Scientists call the unknown animal, which appears to have been frozen alive, Reptilicus . The professor believes that Reptilicus is able to regenerate itself .

In fact, the tail end begins to grow. In a thunderstorm night, a creature, of which witnesses can only see a huge shadow, breaks out of the laboratory; a scientist on duty has disappeared. The traces of the being are lost in the Baltic Sea .

A disaster response team is formed, led by US General Mark Grayson. The Danish police, the navy and the army begin to search for Reptilicus (while strangely the air force does not appear). The monster is eventually sighted and attacked with guns and tanks, but appears to be invulnerable. It spits the troops with a poisonous green slime that turns out to be acid , but retreats into the sea.

A Danish Navy frigate bombs a region where the monster is suspected with depth charges. In fact, Reptilicus reappears and sinks several ships in the Baltic Sea. After all, it attacks Copenhagen. The army tries to destroy the monster by all means, including a flamethrower . But all efforts are in vain.

Finally, Martens comes up with the idea of poisoning Reptilicus . To do this, Grayson shoots a poison-filled ampoule of Reptilicus into the mouth with a bazooka ; the dinosaur perishes. However, a paw was severed and sunk in the Baltic Sea - a return of the monster is not excluded.

Production history, artistic design

The Danish-American collaboration evidently came about through the mediation of Ib Jørgensen Melchior, a Danish-American born in Denmark, who became known in 1959 through his SF film Spacecraft MR-1 Gives No Answer . According to the English Wikipedia, the Danish montage version is longer and contains a love story as well as flight scenes with Reptilicus .

Regardless of the fact that there are obviously two montage versions , the artistic and technical discrepancy between the real film and the trick shots is striking . While the real film recordings were shot with a relatively large amount of effort, especially with the help of the Danish armed forces, the animated recordings by no means correspond to the European-US standard of the late 1950s, but are reminiscent of cheap Japanese productions of the 1960s. The green slime spewed out by Reptilicus is supposedly only contained in the American version and was created by simply coloring in individual images.

Due to the outdoor shots in Copenhagen, including at Tivoli , the film has a certain documentary character and borrows from Heimatfilm . The royal Amalienburg Palace , Den Kongelige Livgarde and the Little Mermaid are shown . The singer Birthe Wilke appears in a show at Tivoli. The Danish frigate used by NATO -Kennung F 346 is apparently the 1,955 in service Flora , which at the time was this identifier. Possibly these scenes should also serve as tourist advertising for Denmark abroad.

Mounted are documentary recordings of shipwrecks that Reptilicus is said to have caused. Since there were apparently not enough color photographs available, black and white photographs were also used.

Lore

In addition to Denmark and the USA, the film was also shown in dubbed versions in France and Italy . It is not known why the film was not shown in the Federal Republic of Germany at the time. The Danish version was released on DVD in 2002 and the American version in 2003 .

A sequel to the film, which may have been planned due to the open ending, was not realized. Instead, Saga Studios produced another Danish-American science fiction production based on a script by Ib Melchior in 1962, Voyage to the Seventh Planet , which, however, was also not shown in the Federal Republic of Germany and, like Reptilicus, has no entry into that of Ronald M. Hahn and Volker Jansen edited science fiction film lexicon found.

See also

Web links

literature

  • Robert Skotak: Ib Melchior - man of imagination , Baltimore, MD (Midnight Marquee Press) 2000. ISBN 1-887664-41-6
  • Ronald M. Hahn / Volker Jansen: Lexicon of Science Fiction Films. 720 films from 1902 to 1983 , Munich (Wilhelm Heyne Verlag) 1983. ISBN 3-453-01901-6