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Reptilicus

Catalog Number
0715
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Primary Distributor (If not listed, select "OTHER")
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VHS | N/A | Slipcase
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Reptilicus (1963)

Additional Information

Additional Information
SEE: MISSLES AND ATOM BOMBS POWERLESS!

SEE; CIVILIZATION RIOTING WITH FEAR!

SEE; A MIGHTY CITY TRAMPLED TO DESTRUCTION!

A prehistoric beast born 50 million years out of time!



The tail of a dinosaur is excavated from the frozen tundra in Lapland and shipped to the Danish Aquarium in Copenhagen for safekeeping in this hilarious sci-fi mess. Someone turns off the refrigeration, alas, and the tail thaws. Regeneration sets in with alarming dispatch and soon the serpent-like monster, named "Reptilicus" by the learned paleontologist in charge, is devouring a paper mache Copenhagen. Written in Hollywood by Danish-American Ib Melchior (the son of Wagnerian opera star Lauritz Melchior) and produced in Denmark by Saga Films and American Sid Pink Productions, Reptilicus contains filmdom's perhaps least convincing monster and some of the worst performances imaginable from a hard-working Danish stock company. Carl Ottosen stars as the American General Grayson, angrily shouting his every line for unexplained reasons. Ottosen's wooden performance is second only to that of Bodil Miller, a former Universal starlet who appears here for no apparent reason other than to accompany Ottosen's general on a pleasant night out at the Tivoli amusement park. (A low point of the film is pop star Birthe Wilke's rendition of a ditty, "Tivoli Nights", to a visibly dazed audience.) The monster, meanwhile, fights his battles in what appears to be a child's model train landscape while hundreds of extras do their utmost to look sufficiently frightened. Considering that Reptilicus himself is never in the same frame as any humans, what causes the good citizens of Copenhagen to flee in such panic must be the strange sight of Carl Ottosen brandishing a bazooka while barking orders at the fashionably gowned Miller. Reptilicus was such a financial bomb that employees at the Danish production company, Saga Films, were prohibited from speaking the name for several years.


Reptilicus, a giant monster film about a fictional prehistoric reptile, is a Danish-American co-production, produced by American International Pictures and Saga Studios, and is—upon close examination—two distinctly different films helmed by two different directors.
The original version, which was shot in Danish, was directed by Danish director Poul Bang and released in Denmark on February 25, 1961.
The American version, which was in English with a nearly identical cast, was directed by the film's American producer-director Sidney W. Pink; this version was initially deemed virtually unreleasable by American International Pictures and had to be extensively reworked by the film's Danish-American screenwriter, Ib Melchior, before being finally released in America in 1962. Pink was angry at the changes and wound up in a legal dispute with AIP.[1] After Pink and others viewed the English-language version, the lawsuit was dropped.

Release Date: August 1963


Distrib: American International

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