WTF Moments: Reptilicus (1961)

An excerpt from Polar Darkness, part of The Bad Movie Chronicles by Johnny Rewind.

The flying in the Danish cut. Reptilicus, a giant prehistoric reptile of considerable mass, develops the ability to fly at some point in the film and uses this ability during the attack on Copenhagen sequence. The flying was removed from the American version because it was unconvincing. In context — a film in which a marionette reptile is destroying miniature Danish street furniture — the flying's unconvincingness is not qualitatively different from the rest of the production's unconvincingness. The removal was an aesthetic judgment that did not improve the film.

Reptilicus secretes a green acid slime that it sprays at targets. This ability is demonstrated with practical effects that are less sophisticated than the miniature work that precedes them. The acid slime is significant enough to be mentioned in the Danish military's tactical briefings about the creature. The briefing refers to the acid slime with the matter-of-fact specificity of people who have accepted that they are dealing with a creature that secretes acid slime and have moved on.

Copenhagen is depicted as a city of considerable cultural and architectural significance, and the film's miniature version of Copenhagen is built with an attention to specific landmarks that gives the destruction sequences a specificity unusual in giant monster films of the period. Reptilicus destroys recognizable Copenhagen rather than generic city. This is either Danish pride or the production's access to Danish reference photographs.

The aquarium setting — the Danish Aquarium, which is the scientific institution responsible for the catastrophe — is used as both the film's scientific headquarters and its final location, with the scientists who thawed the tail now studying how to refreeze it. The institutional responsibility for the disaster is not formally acknowledged. The scientists continue to work in the institution that caused everything.

The tranquilizer bazooka shell that resolves the plot is the film's most creative piece of military problem-solving, and the solution's specificity — not a conventional weapon, not a scientific detonation, but a tranquilizer delivered via an existing weapons platform — gives the resolution a plausibility that the rest of the film's science does not support. Someone thought carefully about this and it is the film's best-thought-about element.

Read the full chapter, with the drinking game and the awards, in Polar Darkness.

All other stores: https://books2read.com/rl/TheBadMovieChronicles