I
bid you all welcome to the basement at this most
wonderful time of the year. Are you sitting comfort- ably? No? Good. Let’s begin.
Big shocker: there’s no accurate Danish translation
for the Japanese word kaiju. Fair enough, there isn’t re- ally a satisfactory one in English either. “Strange mon- ster” is the term that comes up as often as not, and fair enough, that does describe Godzilla, Gamera, Rodan and King Ghidora to a certain degree. Going on the as- sumption that Google’s translation app is even halfway accurate (and halfway is about as good as it gets most of the time), that sobriquet comes back in Danish as mærkelige monster, which may explain why it never caught on over there. But what’s in a name? The Bard may have posed that question rhetorically, but I’m sure if you pressed him for an answer it’d be something along the lines of “Marry, sir, absolutely fuck-all.” And that’s why you need to dive into Reptilicus (1961), be- cause while there’s nothing rotten in the state of Den- mark in this film, there’s plenty that’s gloriously cheesy. It’s not that any unwritten law states that only the
Japanese are allowed to dabble in kaiju, yet despite the continued popularity of the genre worldwide, surpris- ingly few foreign filmmakers have at- tempted it. Sure, America has indulged its Freudian fixation with giant apes a few times (with varying degrees of success), and we can’t overlook dozens of giant bug movies from the ’50s; Britain’s sole foray into the canon, Gorgo, is a fine effort. More recently, Korea’s The Host and Cloverfield from the US enjoyed con- siderable success, so obviously our appetite for metropolis-destroying behemoths can’t have diminished much. So why do none of these films feel even remotely like kaiju? Maybe because that eccentric, hyper-stylized Japanese genre entails a lot more than giant monsters; it calls for generous helpings of low-brow (though never vulgar) comic relief, ham act- ing, bombastic dialogue (which inevitably sounds even sillier dubbed) and, as often as not, a romantic subplot. Despite some very cool creature designs and no short- age of social commentary, only one of the non-Japan-
RM102
ese efforts have ever quite pulled off the kaiju thing au- thentically – the aforementioned Reptilicus. The plot: a small chunk of the titular beastie’s tail
gets unearthed by a drilling crew in a suspiciously green and leafy Lapland; whisked away to Copenhagen, the sample is studied by white-coated eggheads (which, according to Google, translates as eggheads) and is dis- covered to be capable of sponta- neously regenerating. When one of the overworked geniuses subsequently falls asleep on the job, the critter es- capes into the ocean. It then grows to full estate and – voila! – Denmark’s first foreign invasion since the Nazis is underway in the form of a gigantic, armour-plated, winged, corrosive- green-slime-spewing, stubby-legged snake thingie with a face only Rob Bottin could love – all captured in sec- ond-unit footage that looks like it was shot on Super 8 by a kindergarten class full of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome victims. What to do? Summon the Ugly
American (Grimme Amerikaner), specifically General Grayson, who has apparently been instructed by the UN to be as rude as possible to all Danes, who are naturally incapable of undertaking even the most basic of military operations without outside help. Meanwhile, larfs are provided by slack-jawed, overall-clad yokel (or bonde-
knold) Dirch Mikkelsen, played broad-as-a-freeway by hulking Dirch Passer, a Danish comic legend who chan- nels Jackie Gleason to an astonishing degree (check out his encounter with an electric eel). Happily, all the regulation kaiju destruction and firepower are gener- ously delivered courtesy of the Danish armed forces, which reportedly were only too happy to take part. Still, in the midst of all this excitement, you wouldn’t think we’d be able to take time out for a “romantic drive through Copenhagen” to take in the Little Mermaid statue, Tivoli Gardens and a nightclub performance by singer Birthe Wilke, now, would you? Well, think again. Two versions of the film – one for the domestic mar-
ket, another for English-speaking territories – were shot, although numerous conflicting accounts of their similarities and/or differences make distinctions diffi- cult. Although it doesn’t have much of a following today outside of Denmark, Reptilicus isn’t exactly unknown elsewhere. Just a few years later, footage from the film was employed in The Monkees TV series and, much later, a South Park episode. I admit this film flew under my nerd radar until very
recently, so it would be unconscionable to conclude this column without a grateful shout-out to Serena Morrison of Belleville, Illinois, who not only brought Reptilicus to my attention but actually sent me a copy. Serena, I’m forever in your debt for this, and wish you and yours a happy and relatively razorblade-apple-free Halloween. But in the meantime I’ll have to politely ask you to får helvede ud af mit kælder.
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