A Quick Look: REPTILICUS (1962 - color)

   REPTILICUS tells the story of a frozen fragment of dinosaur tissue that proves to be very much alive! When a section of the tail of an unknown dinosaur is brought up by a mining drill, the specimen is sent to Denmark. There, it begins to grow... As you might expect, the world is soon trembling under the threat of a gigantic, indestructible monster. A monster generally accepted to be the single goofiest menace the world has ever faced. This is the only giant monster movie made in Denmark, and the level of cooperation the American-backed production received from the Danish government is staggering. Naval warships firing into the sea would normally be stock footage, but here the Danish Navy was actually sent out to fire off some rounds for the movie crew! Still, the movie is pretty inept in just about every technical sense. The script is astoundingly bad, even by the standards of imported kiddie fare. It's charming, though, like seeing a movie put together by a little kid who loved monster movies but didn't have any understanding of how the world actually works. When all is said and done, the film is wildly entertaining. Despite American International being publicly ashamed the film (not that it stopped them from giving it a fully ballyhooed release), it was a huge hit for the studio, and played for years. The monster also became somewhat iconic of drive-in monsters, stock footage representing such turning up on several contemporary sitcoms. For trivia sake, it was (just like KONGA and GORGO) also spun off into a comic book, which changed the monster's name to "Reptisaurus" after only a couple of issues. Another distinction shared by all three films is that they were also adapted into pornographic paperback novels!